Last night, I attended the Short. Sweet. Film Fest. in Cleveland, Ohio. There, my film “Couple’s Counseling” was part of the Friday night block of animated films screened at the Atlas Cinemas at Shaker Square.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a diverse range of subject matter and animation styles in one night. The range of animation techniques—everything from two-dimensional cutouts to CGI—was of course amazing, but what really struck me was the serious, hard-hitting tone of many of the selections. “Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragadom,” from director Natalia Leon, and which won the People’s Choice Award, dealt with sexual trafficking in Mexico. “GIGI,” from director Cynthia Calvi, was a first-person narration about being a transsexual woman in France. “FILKOOL,” by directors Maral Forouzesh and Naser Rezaeiyan, depicted the subjective reality of a narrator with Down syndrome. “Dad Said” from director Livia May dealt with child abuse and abandonment. Ironically, given my background in the horror genre, mine was one of only a few films that had a light tone.

When I mentioned this surprising tone landscape to one of the other filmmakers, she responded with the most insightful thing I heard all weekend: “This just goes to show you that animation is not a genre. It’s a medium.” She went on to explain that animation is such a varied toolbox that it can be used to tell any story imaginable, with any tone. That’s an observation I’ll be thinking about a lot in the coming days.

My thanks to Mike Suglio, director of the festival, for having me.

Here are some photos. I look really vampiric in the red carpet photo because Cleveland is nearly a seven-hour drive from Staunton.