NoBudge is excited to take part in the Nitehawk Shorts Festival to co-present a program of new work from a group of emerging indie filmmakers. These eight short films are an intriguing mix of narrative, documentary, and animation. A series of intimate portraits and darkly funny visions, each film a fresh take on contemporary life and its myriad lifestyles and identities.

Q&A moderated by Kentucker Audley, NoBudge

Organic Matter
Emily Halaka / U.S. / 2022 / 9 min. / English
A group of scavengers navigate a surreal, acid-colored planet in the aftermath of an ecological reckoning.

Foot Trouble
Vanessa Meyer / U.S. / 2021 / 13 min. / English
Foot Trouble takes a walk in 16 yr old Jade’s uncomfortable shoes – through gym class, an awkward encounter with a crush, and her mom’s new boyfriend.

HAPPY ENDING
Ahmad Bakrin / U.S. / 2023 / 9 min. / English
When a young line cook hears the voices of his favorite podcasters beckoning him like sirens, the mundane becomes macabre.

Mush Luv
N’namdi Andersen / U.S. / 2023 / 7 min. / English
“Tony and Ajani, two mushroom foragers based in Minneapolis, spend the day foraging at a local park and musing on the power of nature.”

Side Hustle
Abby Harri / U.S. / 2023 / 15 min. / English
Side Hustle follows a day and night in the life of Eden, a dancer in New York City who pays the bills with financial support from her sugar daddy.

Hive Wedding
Sam Kerns / U.S. / 2023 / 19 min. / English
Mizzy, bride-to-be, chooses an abandoned nightclub to host her wedding. ‘The Hive’ opens for a final soirée, where club-goers come to send her off in style.

Carmen & Moony
Kate Adams, Max Azulay / U.S. / 2022 / 15 min. / English
A romantic comedy about a semi-recovered kleptomaniac who goes home for the holidays and invites an unlikely guest to her family dinner.

Call Me Mommy
Haley Alea Erickson, Taylor Washington / U.S. / 2022 / 13 min. / English
A pedantic mother-to-be hires a stranger to role-play as her unborn daughter.

Wrapping up our 2024 festival we have a World Premiere by a first time filmmaker, gloriously cinematic sci fi that will burst on the big screen, a richly colorful shot on 16mm piece with fantastical elements, lonely people failing to connect, and a hilarious depiction of a man who risks death over stabbing himself with an EpiPen.

Q&A moderated by Cristina Cacioppo, Nitehawk Cinema

PALOOKAVILLE
Theodore Collatos / U.S. / 2023 / 16 min. / English
Things get turned upside down when JoJo wakes up believing he’s Joe Louis – one of boxing’s greatest legends… (SLAMDANCE *Grand Jury Prize*)

Prick
Alex DiBucci / U.S. / 2022 / 9 min. / English
When a man with a needle phobia has an allergic reaction all alone, he has two choices: face his fear and stab himself with an epi pen, or die trying not to.

Everything Dies Out Here
Sean Mallers, Cian Mallers / U.S. / 2023 / 10 min. / English
A guilt-ridden traveller traverses a wasteland with a peculiar companion in tow: A flower.

Daddy
Jo Steinhart / U.S. / 2022 / 20 min. / English
An aspiring porn star spends the summer sleeping with men who pass through her family’s motel – until she’s forced to contend with her father’s darkest secret.

To My Dearest Red
Red Addis / U.S. / 2022 / 6 min. / English
One mother’s advice to her child during adolescence transcends time as the pair reminisces on their relationship at different stages throughout their life.

Goldilocks
Meryl Jones / U.S. / 2020 – 2022 / 20 min. / English
Two siblings learn a painful lesson when one pursues the other into the woods in search of an elusive mountain lion.

Gold and Mud
Conor Dooley / U.S. / 2022 / 9 min. / English
A sprawling story of love and loss, as reflected on a single face.

Variety is the spice of life, and you’ll find plenty in this year’s Midnite program. These films directed by a majority of women and non-binary filmmakers present frights, funnies, and friskiness in a completely astounding package. These filmmakers are an assurance that Midnite movies will always continue to thrive.

Q&A moderated by Desmond Thorne, Nitehawk Cinema

Pussy Love
Linda Krauss / Germany / 2023 / 4 min. / English
Hey Puss! Still playing hard to get? Let me be your pussycat.

Mosquito Lady
Kristine Gerolaga / U.S. / 2023 / 13 min. / Tagalog, English
Terrified of telling her parents that she’s pregnant as restrictions to abortion access worsen, a desperate teenager seeks the help of a reclusive neighbor.

THE MöBIUS TRIP
Simone Smith / Scotland / 2023 / 17 min. / English
A road trip to a wedding pushes a dysfunctional family to the brink after their journey descends into a claustrophobic hallucinatory nightmare.

Go To Bed Raymond
Nikki Taylor Roberts / U.S. / 2022 / 7 min. / English
A father discovers the surprising truth about why his son won’t go to bed.

Krush The Wrestler
Alex Megaro / U.S. / 2023 / 14 min. / English
Exploring the innate intimacy of submission wrestling, a lifelong wrestler turns his talents into an on-demand fetish video service.

The Girl Who Cried
Jared Greenberg / U.S. / 2023 / 15 min. / English
A family gets back together for the first time in awhile, but a dark revelation threatens not only their evening, but the family itself.

It Takes A Village
Glam Hag / U.S. / 2022 / 8 min. / English
Today is the day these two pregnant cult members have been waiting for.

Shadow (35mm)
Kamell Allaway / U.S. / 2021 / 12 min. / English
A young mother’s shadow takes on a life of its own, terrorizing her and her daughter over the course of one night.

Human connections and relationships are explored in this innovative and insightful group of films. How people negotiate the environment they live in in and the often complex dynamics of relating to one another is laid out with a keen observation. Personal convictions and courage are a common thread in these stories which are all told in creative and unconventional ways utilizing different techniques and textures. This is a very introspective and engrossing program.

Q&A moderated by Shay Filmore, Film Programmer

The Old Young Crow
Liam LoPinto / Japan, U.S. / 2023 / 12 min. / Farsi, Japanese
In the twilight of his life, Mehrdad, now an elderly man, reminisces about his transformative journey from Iran to Japan.

Palm Sunday
Wes Andre Goodrich / U.S. / 2023 / 15 min. / English
A southern gothic drama about a young Black Caribbean Immigrant who feels called by God to assimilate into an all-white church in 1970 Raleigh, North Carolina.

Eli, Briefly
Celine Sutter / U.S. / 2022 / 14 min. / English
Newly successful actor Eli loses their keys after blacking out at a party. Told in an invasive structure, Eli must reckon with their past to get a spare set.

Mirasol
Annalise Lockhart / U.S. / 2023 / 9 min. / English
Mirasol lives a monotonous and lonely life on a farm with her mother & grandmother. One day out gardening, she finds a seedling growing in a puddle outside.

Four Nights and a Fire
Alex Nystrom / U.S. / 2023 / 13 min. / English
A young Ojibwe man fights to keep a sacred fire burning in mourning of his father while his father’s spirit prepares for the afterlife.

Hair Care
Fatima Wardy / U.S. / 2023 / 12 min. / English, French
After a visit to the African hair salon goes awry, a young Ivorian-American woman must traverse a fantastically animated Abidjan to track down her hair braider.

Olive
Lev Omelchenko / U.S. / 2023 / 13 min. / English
“Olive” follows Olive Hagemeier, an energetic older woman, on her daily routine of salvaging, repackaging and redistributing food across Atlanta

Flutz
Ryan McCown / U.S. / 2022 / 8 min. / English
A rivalry between two figure skaters. And a witch.

Our festival kicks off with an array of films that examine body maintenance, struggles in caring for family members, and characters who seek to fill a void, be it with sex or fame. Some evoke a creeping sense of dread while others use humor to bring light to dark moments. All are invigoratingly original in their voices.

Q&A moderated by Cristina Cacioppo, Nitehawk Cinema

Mahogany Drive
Jerah Milligan / U.S. / 2023 / 13 min. / English
Three Black men on vacay realize the house that they’re staying in is killing white women.

At Little Wheelie Three Days Ago
Andrew Stephen Lee / U.S. / 2022 / 18 min. / English
A viral video rattles an out-of-work father.

Terminally Ill
Christopher J. Cole / U.S. / 2023 / 8 min. / English
When a rapper is summoned to his grandmother’s deathbed, he engages in a madcap freestyle in a desperate attempt to prevent her from dying.

Thirstygirl
Alexandra Qin / U.S. / 2023 / 10 min. / English
On a road trip with her younger sister, Charlie struggles to hide a secret addiction.

Dilating For Maximum Results
Nyala Moon / U.S. / 2023 / 14 min. / English
A whack, irreverent comedy about a black trans woman who tries to dilate, after four years of not dilating, to hook-up IRL with her online boyfriend.

Sucker
Deni Cheng / U.S. / 2023 / 18 min. / English
Andy loses his job at a local parking garage and is confronted with the realities of being the caretaker of his little brother, Tom Tom.

Beyond Failure
Marissa Losoya / U.S. / 2023 / 9 min. / English
After falling down a youtube hole, a woman thinks she can hip thrust her way out of dealing with her potentially harmful internal monologue.

Starring: Hannah Waddingham, Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicholas Hoult

Garfield has an unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, a scruffy street cat who draws him into a high-stakes heist.

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Cailey Fleming, Steve Carell, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gossett Jr.

After discovering she can see everyone’s imaginary friends, a girl embarks on a magical adventure to reconnect forgotten IFs with their kids.

Starring: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, William H. Macy, Peter Macon, Eka Darville

Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Stephanie Hsu, Winston Duke, Hannah Waddingham

He’s a stuntman, and like everyone in the stunt community, he gets blown up, shot, crashed, thrown through windows and dropped from the highest of heights, all for our entertainment. And now, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, this working-class hero has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right?

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Alyla Browne, Tom Burke, Nathan Jones, Angus Sampson

As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.