The Irish Retirement Plan, winner of the Grand Jury and Audience Awards at SXSW, took shape after Dublin born director John Kelly, 45, suffered a panic attack. “I’m a list person and, like a lot of us, I’m drowning in lists,” he said. “But I think the lists are a kind of cocktail: fix the garden fence, regrout the shower. And then there also more meaningful lists about spending more time with my kids and parents. And I remember the exact moment this film popped into my head. I was just sitting in an airplane, a little hung over, and I had a mild panic attack. I’d been to an awards show and lost in London, and questioned what I was doing with my time.”

Kelly became much more aware of how much he wanted to do, how he wanted to spend his life, and he started making bucket lists. He worked with a co-writer, Tara Lawall, in conjuring a story about a listless, 40-something guy named Ray (Domhnall Gleeson), who is determined to turn his life around, emphasizing the gap between aspiration and reality with humor and melancholy.

“I direct commercials, mostly stop-frame animation and some live-action puppetry,” Kelly added, “but this was a pendulum swing where I didn’t need a huge crew. I didn’t need a studio space because I couldn’t afford that for a short film. It was just me and two animators [Marah Curran and Eamonn O’Neill] and a producer [Julie Murnaghan], pretty much. And lowering the stakes was the biggest revelation. And just trying to get it on its feet with my terrible drawings and my voice on an animatic, thrashing out the edit.”

Yet Kelly was fortunate to land Gleeson, who provided humor and poignancy and unpredictability. “I had imagine someone my age or Domhnall’s age, projecting 20 years into the future and that list is going to get longer. And he brought so much to it. He’s very funny in person, very quick witted. So he threw in quite a lot of improvised lines in the final take. You get the sense that he treats a seven-minute short with the same seriousness as a much bigger project. I didn’t get a sense of any gear shift.”

The minimalism and simplicity were inspired by many works, particuarly the HBO documentary series How To with John Wilson. “It’s this videographer who has basically spent 20 years collecting footage in New York, so it’s quite voice driven. And sometimes it’s very funny. He’ll take these humurous cuts of like a rat pulling a slice of pizza up the stairs next to a couple eating outside. And so we just wanted to treat it almost like an independent, low-budget documentary, where the camera is on a tripod unless it needs to move.

“Weirdly, one of the biggest challenges was the location, the setting. When I first pitched it, I wanted to set it in America, to give it the best chance at film festivals, where it’s more likely to go down well. But I don’t know one city from another and my wife asked,  ‘Why is it set in America?’ And I didn’t really have an answer for that. So I switched to Dublin, where I live.”

What’s been surprising for Kelly, however, is the positive response to his short from people in their 20s. “I think it’s because they’re more likely to be changing lanes at that stage,” he said. “And they’re also much more bombarded by algorithms and choice and stuff than probably we are. This film is only the second short I’ve made in about 20 years, and it’s the most fun I’ve had making anything. And it’s because I decided to just follow my passion.”