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WE ARE STILL HERE leans into its sorrow like an elegy wrapped in blood and frost. Set in a wintry New England landscape, the film opens in the iciness of loss. A couple, grieving the death of their son, moves into a desolate farmhouse hoping for peace. What they find is far from silence. Ted Geoghegan’s directorial debut manages to create a haunting atmosphere that fuses horror with the raw ache of emotional trauma, and it doesn’t take long for the snow-covered calm to begin unraveling into something far more dangerous.

THE MUSICIANS opens with a rare opportunity and a heavy burden. Astrid Carlson (Valérie Donzelli), daughter of a classical music lover, has managed to reunite four legendary Stradivarius instruments to perform a long-lost composition. However, her father’s dream quickly turns into a logistical nightmare for her. Despite gathering the perfect tools, she’s working with flawed human parts—four brilliant musicians with egos too big to fit in the same room, let alone the same measure.

BOYS GO TO JUPITER plays like a backyard musical staged inside a 3D diorama—bright, elastic, and oddly tender. A day in suburban Florida is an inspired starting point: the calendar feels stalled, the air hangs heavy, and the future refuses to announce itself. That’s where Billy 5000 lives—between errands on a delivery app and a self-imposed deadline to scrape together five grand before New Year’s. Money is the plot device, but the movie’s real currency is attention: to textures, to small talk, to loneliness that looks like boredom until it doesn’t.

ANIMALE sinks its teeth into familiar genre territory but refuses to follow a predictable path. It emerges as a personal horror tale about identity, transformation, and the hidden violence embedded in tradition. Filmmaker Emma Benestan doesn’t just challenge expectations—she tears them open with a protagonist whose body and fate unravel with clarity.

There’s giant dramatic fallout or grand romantic gesture in WAVERLY—just two people trying to hold on to each other as the world quietly pushes them apart. Clocking in at just 17 minutes, this short drama lands a surprisingly potent emotional punch, grounded in subtle performances and a setting that feels lived-in rather than staged. Co-directed by Marie-Pier Diamond and Gilles Plouffe, it’s the kind of story that doesn’t ask for your attention—it earns it. It’s rare to see a short that doesn’t try to extend beyond its framing. This is exactly what it sets out to be and knows that from the first frame.

There’s a moment early in UP / DOWN that encapsulates its entire thesis—John Karlston (Michael Cooke) finds himself in a fluorescent-filled waiting room that looks more like a medical clinic than the afterlife. The receptionist tells him to sit tight. What’s he waiting for? That’s the question the entire short film dances around with precision and just enough bite to leave an impression long after its 11-minute runtime ends.

There are vampire films that seduce, others that scare, and then there are the rare few that leave a mark not with their fangs, but with their slow, psychological burn. HOW FAR DOES THE DARK GO? is one of those films. Directed by Bears Rebecca Fonté, this supernatural romance doesn't just draw blood—it asks what you’re willing to trade for power, connection, and control.

TOUCH ME doesn’t care if you’re ready for the journey ahead. It just grabs hold and drags you into a neon-soaked spiral of grief, desire, and seduction, where logic is fluid and feelings are uncomfortable, and dare I say, sticky—often literally. For writer-director Addison Heimann, last seen at Fantasia with his 2022 breakout HYPOCHONDRIAC, this is a full-blown eruption of genre chaos that somehow still circles back to something deeply personal.

Some stories speak softly but leave you stunned. SORRY FOR YOUR COST is a perfect example of how to nail that idea. Writer-director Rosie Choo Pidcock crafts a deeply affecting short that doesn’t try to shout over its audience—it simply invites you to sit with uncomfortable truths. Running a brisk 15 minutes, this is a film that understands the power of restraint. Through intimate moments, cultural nuance, and quiet, yet devastating decisions, it captures a particular kind of heartbreak rarely addressed on screen: the toll of grief when it meets financial hardship.

What happens when rebellion melts into horror and rage gets mixed into something unnervingly sweet? SUGAR ROT explodes onto the screen with all the subtlety of a Molotov cocktail in a candy store. This is body horror with purpose, satire soaked in syrup and spiked with venom — a film that dares to look obscene, feel grotesque, and shout back at every force trying to control the female body.

There’s a kind of dread that doesn’t arrive with screams, but with silence. THE SPARROW IN THE CHIMNEY is soaked in that specific discomfort — an eerie stillness that hovers over every frame, each interaction brimming with withheld emotions and domestic disquiet. The final chapter in Ramon Zürcher’s loosely connected “animal trilogy” is his most blistering and refined yet — a psychological slow burn that turns a seemingly mundane family gathering into an experience as suffocating as it is hypnotic.

There’s a fine line between recovering the past and being consumed by it. SITE plants itself firmly at the intersection of memory, trauma, and metaphysical unease, unraveling a slow-burn psychological thriller that’s just as much about family and grief as it is about sci-fi horror. While the concept may evoke something familiar, the execution feels personal and ambitious, driven by a lead performance that elevates its darkest moments.

THE SCHOOL DUEL demands your attention, shakes it, and leaves it wrecked. Set in a twisted, secessionist Florida where gun control is outlawed and school shootings have metastasized into a normalized part of adolescence (okay, so maybe not too far from reality), Todd Wiseman Jr.’s debut feature isn’t science fiction so much as it is prophecy. It takes the notion of "what if things keep going this way" and strips it of metaphor, replacing it with state-sponsored bloodsport—and still, somehow, it doesn’t feel that far-fetched.

If there’s a modern horror equivalent to “never start a band with your friends,” it’s probably “never start a monetized content house with unstable influencers.” THE QUIET ONES takes that premise and runs with it—sprinting into a fever dream of egos, algorithms, and chaos disguised as camaraderie. Written and directed by Nicholas Winter, this indie LGBTQIA2S+ thriller is sharp, mean, sexy, and laced with a streak of irreverent pitch-black humor. It has more style and substance than you would ever expect, in the best way possible.