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What does found footage still have to offer when audiences already know the rules of the game? INFIRMARY approaches that question without trying to reinvent the wheel, which, honestly, after almost 30 years (technically longer, but that’s a conversation for another time), feels oddly refreshing. Rather than chasing innovation, the film chooses refinement through discipline and control. Set almost entirely inside an actual abandoned mental hospital, INFIRMARY understands that credibility in found-footage horror comes less from invention than from commitment to its environment and limitations.

What if the strangest parts of the world weren’t accidents of evolution, but compromises made under the fluorescent lights of meetings by people who hadn’t slept in days? COMMITTEE ANIMAL takes that question and commits to it, delivering an observed workplace satire that understands exactly how much story a short film should tell and when to get out of its own way.

What happens when faith becomes something you measure yourself against instead of something you live by? BY THE GRAPE OF GOD starts with a premise that feels almost deceptively light, then tightens its grip as it reveals what it’s actually interested in examining. This is not really a movie about wine, or even about religion in the institutional sense. It’s a character study about comparison, resentment, and the panic that sets in when a life built on belief begins to feel hollow.

What does acceptance really mean when fear enters the room? SANCTUARY: A WITCH’S TALE builds its entire premise around that question, using supernatural identity not as a main focus, but as a stress test for a supposedly progressive community. Set in a small English town where witches live openly alongside non-magical residents, the series begins with a sudden death that fractures the illusion of harmony almost instantly.

What does hope mean when it has to coexist with addiction, exploitation, and survival rather than replace them? HOLY GHETTO asks that question without romanticizing its answers. Set within Tel Aviv’s red-light district, the documentary turns its attention to people who live inside systems designed to erase them. Director iLan Azoulai doesn’t present their stories as cautionary tales or inspirational arcs; instead, he frames them as ongoing negotiations with trauma, faith, and endurance.

What happens when a past decision, once thought inconsequential, suddenly ‘demands’ accountability decades later? That question is at the center of DAD GENES, a documentary that is never sensationalistic even as it tells a story that feels tailor-made for it. In an era where DNA tests casually rewrite family histories and private lives can become public property overnight, Craig Downing’s film chooses a more restrained, human-scale approach. It isn’t interested in shock; it’s interested in what people do after the shock has passed.

What do we owe our children when the damage we carry predates them? That issue endures throughout THE CONFESSION, a supernatural horror film that reaches for generational reckoning even as it struggles to keep its own mythology in check. Writer/director Will Canon builds the story around grief, inheritance, and moral debt, crafting a film that wants to unsettle both emotionally and spiritually, even if it never reconciles its ambition with execution.

What does power look like when the world has already decided you don’t have any? PONIES begins with that question embedded deep in its DNA, not as a slogan or thesis, but as its core message. Set in 1977 Moscow, the series doesn’t treat espionage as a fantasy of dominance or bravado. Instead, it frames spycraft as an act of endurance, adaptation, and emotional intelligence, told through two women who were never meant to matter to that world and therefore become dangerous precisely because of it.

What does it mean to document a place without turning it into a character? That question sits quietly at the center of GLENDORA, not as a thesis statement but as a guiding principle. Isabelle Armand’s first feature documentary isn’t quite an exposé or even corrective; instead, it positions itself as a long conversation, one built over half a decade of presence, listening, and shared time. The result is a film that feels less like an argument and more like an invitation to witness a community on its own terms. I wasn’t sure what to expect before starting the film, and even after watching it, I was still left with a lingering sense of so many unknowns.

What happens when a cabin-in-the-woods movie stops worrying about who the villain is and starts asking how quickly people turn on each other once fear sets in? CABIN FEVER opens with that underlying question simmering beneath its surface, immediately showing that Eli Roth wasn’t interested in delivering a standard genre film. Instead, his feature debut barrels forward with the confidence of someone who knows exactly how divisive the result will be and welcomes it. The film doesn’t ease you into its world; it drops you into a chaotic, intentionally uncomfortable situation, daring you to keep up.

What do we judge when the film in front of us was never allowed to finish becoming itself? QUEEN KELLY exists in that uncomfortable space between artifact and artwork, a film that cannot be separated from its collapse yet refuses to be dismissed because of it. Any serious engagement with this work has to accept that incompleteness isn’t a defect bolted onto the experience—it’s the experience. What survives is not a tidy narrative, but a raw exposure of ambition colliding with power, ego, censorship, and the end of an entire cinematic era.

What happens to trust when the future stops being abstract and starts knocking at your door? THE STRANGE DARK frames its central question with quiet confidence, stripping science fiction down to its most intimate stakes and asking how certainty corrodes relationships long before it saves them. This is a chamber thriller built less on spectacle than on erosion—of faith, of communication, of the fragile agreements that keep families functioning when reality no longer behaves as expected.

What happens when the thing that once defined you refuses to let you mature alongside the world? MYSTERY TEAM builds its entire identity around that question, then dares to stretch what should be a ten-minute sketch into a feature-length experiment that somehow survives on commitment alone. On paper, the concept sounds thin: former child detectives, now legally adults, still solving playground crimes while the rest of the world has moved on. In execution, though, the film leans so aggressively into that arrested state that it becomes less a parody of detective stories and more a portrait of people who never learned how to recalibrate their identity once the applause stopped.

What happens when a horror-comedy doesn’t care enough about scares or laughs? FULL MOON HIGH is one of those films that practically dares you to misunderstand it. On the surface, it looks like a goofy werewolf parody that came on the scene at the exact wrong moment, released in the same year as some genuinely transformative genre landmarks. That surface exploration is easy, and for many viewers, it’s where the conversation ends. But writer/director Larry Cohen was never interested in making things easy, and even his silliest film carries teeth beneath the fur.

What happens when grief doesn’t want to be processed, but instead wants to be felt again and again, no matter the cost? COME CLOSER begins inside that unresolved ache and never pretends there’s a way out of it. Written and directed by Tom Nesher, the film is intensely personal, shaped by loss, and that authenticity bleeds into every creative choice. The story follows Eden, a young woman whose identity has been tethered to her brother, Nati. When he dies suddenly, the rupture isn’t just emotional; it’s existential. Eden doesn’t know who she is without him, and rather than learning how to exist alone, she searches for a way to keep him present by proxy. That search leads her to Maya, the secret girlfriend she never knew existed, and the film’s central relationship is born from that collision of mourning and curiosity.