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What does it mean to be American when the definition keeps changing depending on where you stand, how you sound, and who gets to decide? FIL-AM starts with that issue quietly embedded in its bones rather than declared outright, and it trusts the audience to feel the tension long before it names it. Writer-director Ralph Torrefranca frames his short not as a thesis statement about Filipino American identity, but as a lived-in memory shaped by displacement, resentment, and reluctant adaptation.

What does it mean to owe your life to a sacrifice you never asked for? HOME explores that unspoken question and allows it to echo across decades, cultures, and roles without ever demanding an answer. Marijana Janković’s feature debut draws directly from lived experience, but it resists the trappings of autobiography as self-explanation. Instead, the film positions memory as something fragmented and unresolved, shaped as much by absence as by presence.

How does the body and soul carry the weight of war long after the fighting stops? THE SOUNDS OF THINGS ABLAZE answers that question not through detailed explanation, but through sensation. In just under seven minutes, Hayat Najm’s animated short captures the aftershocks of violence as something lived physically, instinctively, and involuntarily, transforming trauma into movement rather than memory.

What does it mean to belong somewhere when even death refuses to make that decision simple? 2m² opens with a deceptively modest premise and steadily reveals itself as one of the more quietly disarming documentaries I’ve seen in some time, using a single profession to examine migration, identity, and the uneasy compromises that define life lived between cultures. There’s something about following along in a process that lets you see those final moments that will make you look at things differently. (‘How Much Land Does a Man Require?’ is the English title of an 1886 short story by Leo Tolstoy. In contemporary terms, the answer could be: 2m² – the size of a grave.)

What does resistance look like when survival itself becomes a radical act? IN THE ROOM doesn’t approach that question through historical overview, but through presence, conversation, and an unflinching willingness to sit with discomfort. Directed by Brishkay Ahmed, the documentary brings together five Afghan women whose lives have been shaped by visibility, backlash, exile, and courage, not as symbols, but as people reckoning with what it means to speak when silence is safer.

What happens when a crime story stops caring whether the crime is solved, or even whether it matters? CONRAD & CRAB – IDIOTIC GEMS opens with the promise of an investigation but dismantles it piece by piece, replacing that push with observation and paying off with patience. Claude Schmitz has no interest in building suspense in the traditional sense; instead, he’s far more invested in what happens when people drift through lives they’re no longer especially good at performing. This is an intentionally loud movie, and it works because it knows that it is.

SCARLET LETTER is a microcosm of an exploration of love’s volatility — the soaring highs that feel world-defining and the sudden heartbreaks that threaten to undo it all. Across just three minutes, writer/director/co-star Cole Komssi distills a relationship into emotionally loaded moments that show how affection and pain often coexist, sometimes within the same breath.

DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ: A BODY OF WORK takes a fascinating premise — the pursuit of a long-lost artistic masterpiece — and gives it a psychological twist, exploring how desire, obsession, and secrecy can blur the lines between admiration and fixation. Director Walter Ernest Haussner crafts a short drama that feels like a collision between art history and tension, reminding viewers that sometimes the most dangerous mysteries aren’t locked away in museums, but hidden in human behavior.

ARTISTS THAT INSPIRE FUTURE GENERATIONS: 10TH ANNIVERSARY JCYMAP PROGRAM is a celebration of what happens when creativity is not only encouraged but invested in. This documentary showcases the Jersey City Mural Arts Program (JCYMAP) and the transformational experience it provides young artists, aged 13 to 25, as they learn to shape public space with their own visions. The film serves as both a milestone marker and a testament to the enduring impact of community-driven art.

PRETEND I EXISTED is a deeply personal short that understands how memory becomes its own kind of storytelling — fragmented, emotional, shaped as much by feeling as by facts. In just under six minutes, filmmaker Quoc Huy Tran reflects on his relationship with his mother during her cancer treatment in Japan, capturing the fragile space between fear and love that emerges when illness alters the roles of parent and child. It’s a film built on reflection rather than drama, and that restraint gives its core remarkable strength.

ASCENDING BEYOND SHADOWS is a reminder that the most powerful journeys don’t need massive runtimes or sweeping narration to feel profound. Through the lens of rock climbing, this short documentary explores how one person turns a physically demanding pursuit into a lifeline — a means of coping with hardship and refusing to let struggle define his future. Director Patrick Civitelli approaches this emotional reality not through sentimental overstatement but through earned perspective, showing how climbing becomes less a sport and more a path toward healing.

VIVISECT is a smart, unsettling thriller that understands how fear doesn’t always come from loud scares or sudden shocks. Sometimes terror grows slowly, like discomfort creeping into a room where you initially felt welcome. In just eleven minutes, writer-director Ava Dell’Orfano explores that shift with precision, crafting a story that begins with relatable stress and spirals into something much darker. Here, the familiar setting of a study session becomes a breeding ground for manipulation, obsession, and survival.

THREAT wastes no time establishing its stakes. In under ten minutes, it takes on the emotional and psychological strain of espionage — a life where orders clash with personal values, and consequences ripple far beyond the mission. Stories about covert duty often lean into spectacle, globe-trotting action, or elaborate gadgetry. Director Arthur Dupuis and writer/lead Michael-Eoin Stanney aim for something more grounded: a human caught between loyalty and identity.

There’s a unique kind of pressure baked into emergency stories — every moment is a countdown, every decision potentially irreversible. LIFE SUPPORT manages to bring viewers into that reality in just ten minutes, proving that a film doesn’t need a long runtime to leave a heavy impression. Centering on an emergency physician and a young medical student watching and learning in real time, this short explores more than the mechanics of saving a life. It aims at the human cost of being responsible for the outcome.

PEARLS wastes no time in plunging the viewer into a story that feels equal parts absurd, unsettling, and disturbingly relatable. With only fifteen minutes to make its mark, Alastair Train’s short film approaches the horrors of fertility struggles through a lens of body horror, distorted imagery, and the kind of creeping discomfort that stays long after the credits fade. It’s not a film that politely asks for attention—it forces it, much like the invasive presence of the oysters at its core.

This documentary manages to take something as familiar as baseball and remind us how much weight it can carry beyond the confines of a field. DIAMOND DIPLOMACY is one of those rare films that doesn’t just tell the story of a sport, but instead reshapes how we understand its place in the world. In under ninety minutes, it captures more than 150 years of history between the United States and Japan, demonstrating how the game became a vessel for unity, resilience, and repair.

The setup for BAD HAIRCUT is deceptively simple—a college kid, Billy, just needs a haircut, but instead finds himself trapped with a barber whose peculiarities are a shade of full-blown menace. What might sound like a punchline stretches into a full-length feature that balances bizarre humor, energy, and a surprisingly earnest core of coming-of-age. The film is tailor-made for a late-night crowd that thrives on outrageous genre hybrids.

OPEN WIDE is a ten-minute short that proves sometimes the scariest setups aren’t about haunted houses or supernatural monsters, but about what can happen when human desire collides with dysfunction. Directed by Sam Fox, who co-wrote and produced alongside Lara Repko, the film turns a seemingly playful night into a nightmare that gnaws at both faith and intimacy. It’s uncomfortable and intentionally disorienting, utilizing a limited canvas to create something with impact that extends well beyond its brief runtime.

This film explores topics and subject matter that may be incredibly difficult to watch and process. It’s not an easy watch, but it's a reality that feels true to the world. WEIGHTLESS finds tension in ordinary moments: a glance across a field, a joke that lands too sharply when you already feel too much. Set at a summer health camp bordered by forest and sea, the film follows fifteen-year-old Lea as she attempts to change her body and, more so, the way she inhabits her own life. That aim sounds simple; the execution is anything but. The camp’s routines—measured portions, group activities, quiet hours—promise control. What the program can’t regulate is attention, and the film understands that attention can be as intoxicating, as painful, and as formative as any number on a chart.

PRIDE & PRAYER is less about giving answers and more about daring to live inside the questions. In her debut feature-length documentary, Canadian-Kurdish filmmaker and performer Panta Mosleh turns the camera on herself, exploring the clash between two pillars of her identity: her Muslim faith and her queerness. The result is a deeply intimate film that offers no easy resolutions but instead presents a raw and ongoing negotiation of belonging. For anyone who has ever felt pulled in opposite directions by community, belief, and personal truth, this film will resonate deeply.

DOLLY never lets the heart settle. It’s a grim fairytale, a film that treats survival as a messy rather than a triumphant montage. Rod Blackhurst leans into folk horror with the confidence of someone who knows the lineage—Grimms, New French Extremity, the scrappy terror of 70s American horror—and then pushes the tradition into something thornier and more personal. Macy is our core, but this is also the rare monster story that invites the audience to look directly at the mask and wonder what fragile human needs might be hiding underneath. The premise is brutally straightforward: a young woman is abducted by a monstrous figure who intends to “raise” her. The execution is anything but simple. The film’s sting comes from the way it frames captivity not just as restraint, but as emotional reprogramming—a ritual of forced dependency that echoes the most unsettling fairy tales.

SHAPE OF MOMO is a patient, deeply human drama that draws its strength from silence as much as from dialogue. Tribeny Rai, making her feature film debut, crafts a story that feels intimate yet expansive, grounded in the textures of Himalayan village life but resonating with universal questions of duty, independence, and identity. The film is rooted in the community, tradition, and expectation. Yet, it also carries an undercurrent of rebellion, pushing against the constraints that women often inherit when family and culture collide.

BODY BLOW doesn’t just resurrect the heyday of the erotic thriller — it rips it apart, drenches it in excess, and rebuilds it through a proudly queer lens. Dean Francis crafts a crime saga that feels nostalgic for the audacity of the 90s and radical in its refusal to trim its edges. The film declares itself a work of defiance: dirty, dangerous, and designed for audiences hungry for something riskier than what genre cinema typically allows.