These are the films that stood out for our programming team and jury, including overall Jury Winner, Runner Up, Music Driven, Midnite and New Filmmaker, plus a few of programmer-selected favorites.

BURROS (Favorite of Programmer John Woods)
Jefferson Stein / U.S. / 2021 / 15 min
A young Indigenous girl discovers a Hispanic migrant her age who has been separated from her father in the beautiful but dangerous Sonoran desert.

COUSINS (Jury Prize runner up)
Mandy Marcus / U.S. / 2021 / 13 min
A Brooklyn teenager reunites with her Guyanese cousin for the funeral of a relative. On the last day of the wake the girls venture out into the city alone.

HELLO FROM TAIWAN (Favorite of Programmer Desmond Thorne)
Tiffany Frances / U.S. / 2019 / 16 min
A Taiwanese American family struggles to reunite across language and cultural barriers, set in the late 1980s and told from a child’s perspective.

IN LOVING MEMORY (OF WHO WE USED TO BE) (New Filmmaker Award)
Vicky Lee / U.S. / 2021 / 8 min
IN LOVING MEMORY (OF WHO WE USED TO BE) is reminiscent of the growing pains and awkward tween years of a Chinese-American girl.

MERCY (Music Driven winner)
Nalani Williams / U.S. / 2021 / 4 min
Layering stop-motion and hand-drawn animation, this experimental piece created for the song “Mercy” by musician Domino Kirke, illuminates—through ethereal landscapes and painterly figures—the grief and loss of miscarriage as metaphor for the shared universal cycle of hope and despair.

ATROPHY (Favorite of Programmer Cristina Cacioppo)
Nick Hartanto, Sam Roden / U.S. / 2020 / 15 min
A stroke victim descends into a nightmare after her husband unearths a mysterious object from their garage.

INHERITANCE (Midnite Winner)
Annalise Lockhart / U.S. / 2021 / 14 min
A Black family strives to shield their rural Vermont home from the gaze of the spirits that surround it.

NYC TIPS AND TRICKS (Jury Prize Winner)
Amber Schaefer / U.S. / 2021 / 11 min
A small time travel vlogger’s tour of Coney Island is interrupted by an unexpected call.