Hope kills. William has a dream: To have the fastest relay race team in the upcoming San Fernando Valley Games. Except, there’s one little problem. Including himself, he has only three men to compete in a four-man sport. But that obstacle only makes William more determined in Jared Varava’s sweetly low-key comedy The Fourth, which is embedded above. The film runs about 17 minutes.

The film, written by Jared’s brother Justin Varava, has some very funny bits in it, but it’s really the pacing and the wonderfully drawn characters that really make this a winning film. While walking an extremely fine line between being overly-cartoonish on the one hand and very human on the other, it manages to strike a perfect balance of those two sides. I also really like the look of the film, which sort of has a Wes Anderson kind of vibe to it.

The Varava brothers are quite the busy duo. Their production “company,” An Illusion of Movement, has several short films, music videos and trailers for other projects uploaded to Vimeo. I did previously review The Fourth, as well as The Shadow Effect and Bicentennial Curious, on the Underground Film Journal, all of which you can now watch on Vimeo.

Separately, Jared also shoots and edits films for other folks, such as the wildly entertaining short documentary Hair Cowboy and the feature indie comedy On Holiday. Justin currently writes for the hit Disney Channel show The Wizards of Waverly Place.