Ken Wardrop has been thinking about mouths lately — his, yours, everyone’s, really. The Dublin director received a commission last year from Channel Four, the British public broadcasting service, and “desperately” needed ideas to film. Sometimes, to an artist at least, desperation is a gift. Having ample time to complete a project can mean the project doesn’t get completed at all. The idea of mouths came to Wardrop and he ended up making four shorts about them: Contagious (about yawning); Scoring (kissing); Tongue Tied (sticking your tongue out); and Farewell Packets of Ten (smoking).

Two of them, Farewell Packets of Ten and Scoring, screen in the Documentary Spotlight Shorts Program this year, but Farewell Packets of Ten reveals the most about Wardrop, who received honorable mention at the 2006 Festival for his lyrical short Undressing My Mother.

Farewell Packets of Ten opens with two longtime smokers who have never met one another — Wardrop’s mother, Ethel, and Nancy Howling, a witty 89-year-old “neighborhood character” who lives next to Wardrop’s office — seated at a table talking about smoking. “It’s school kids and everything now,” Nancy says in a scolding tone. “The minute they’re coming out of schools — even from the convent schools! — they’re coming out and smoking cigarettes, smoking along the streets. Not funny!” To which Ethel promptly replies, “I think we’ll have one.” “Well, it wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Nancy agrees.

The mordantly Irish humor of that moment reveals more than just the two ladies’ flair for irony. Farewell Packets of Ten also emerged as a reaction to Ireland’s smoking ban. In March of 2004, Ireland became the first country to ban smoking in all enclosed workplaces — “so that’s basically everywhere,” including pubs, Wardrop pointed out. “We thought [the ban] would be very harmful.” A few months after the ban was established, English actor Paul Bettany was quoted as saying, “I thought the Irish would have risen up as one to overthrow it.” But according to media coverage of the ban, “it’s been adhered to very well,” Wardrop said. All of which is reflected in the two women Wardrop features in the short: They may grouse about restrictions placed on Irish smokers, but they go along with the ban just the same.

How two women sitting at a table talking about smoking can be so engaging is partly a result of the short’s pared-down production. The 33-year-old Wardrop, who attended Ireland’s National Film School and co-owns a production company in Dublin, had a crew of two and very little film, leaving him no room for mistakes. “I was running around like a crazy person,” he recalled, throwing out questions to the women, though they ended up creating a dialogue between themselves. Wardrop turned the camera on at 2 p.m. and the shoot was done by 6 p.m. The other reason Farewell Packets of Ten is engaging has to do with the women featured in it. Wardrop’s main worry ended up being the least of his concerns: “The biggest ordeal, really, is that you hope that the characters will remain natural and not get nervous in front of the camera.”