On this second to last day of the TIFF, the spark is slowly fading. The number of screenings and Q&A sessions has decreased dramatically, and even the weather was dour, with pouring rain and winds so strong people’s umbrellas were turning inside out. In keeping with the muted festival atmosphere, two unassuming yet potent character-driven films were screened.

First was the Croatian-German co-production, Armin. The film focuses on Ibro and Armin, a father and son who travel from their native Bosnia to Croatia. Armin, 14 years old, is attending an audition for a German-produced film on the Bosnian War, a move that is clearly Ibro’s doing.

Armin, with soft features that suggest baby fat, initially comes off as a pushover, and his father a smothering stage parent. The film does not provide any major plot developments, but every little moment affects the father-son relationship. We come to see more in them: Armin’s sullenness and rebelliousness, Ibro’s desire to care for Armin and to push him to realize his full potential.

Director Ognjen Svilicic makes a pointed comment on filmmakers from advanced nations and how they mine the history of poorer nations in order to make “enlightened” films. “The war again?” asks Armin with equal parts incredulity and disgust when he is first handed the audition script. Svilicic suggests that by making a film about the Bosnia war, the people are being re-victimized, when what they want most is to continue with their lives.

My next film was the Polish production Tricks, another film short on plot and long on character. Set in a small, not particularly prosperous town in Poland, the film’s protagonist is a little boy named Stefek. He lives with his mother, a shopkeeper, and his older sister Elka, a waitress. Elka looks after him, and he adores her, even horning in on her dates. He has never met his father.

Since it’s the summer holidays, Stefek spends his days playing with an old man’s pet pigeons, hanging around the train tracks, and sitting at the train station. One day, he points to a man in a suit standing near the platform and says matter-of-factly, “Our dad is sitting there.” He spends the rest of the film trying to prove this by playing tricks on fate, attempting to make things go the way he wants them to.

Director Andrzej Jakimowski has created a wonderfully calibrated film, the whimsy perfectly tempered with realism, Stefek and Elka’s relationship touching without being cloying, the depiction of working-class life realistic without being horribly downbeat. He draws pitch-perfect performances from his actors, who hardly seem to be acting. Like Svilicic, he favors a near-static camera, with close-ups, all the more to capture the subtle inflections of expression.

A Q&A was held with the director and production designer (who turned out to be husband and wife). Jakimowski’s anecdotes, such as how Damian Ul, (Stefek) lives in the town where the film was shot, simply turned up one day for auditions, and how Elka’s boyfriend’s motorcycle is one that he persuaded a passing rider to let him use, seemed particularly significant when considering the film’s naturalism. The director also explained the cultural difference of crossing your fingers (in Poland, you make your hands into fists), as well as the significance of recurring motifs such as trains and pigeons, which enriched the audience’s experience of an already excellent film.

The only bad thing I have to say about Tricks is that this gem of a film has still not been picked up for international distribution. What a shame!