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.

In a small Indian village, Ranjit wakes up to find that his 13-year-old daughter has not returned from a family wedding. A few hours later, she’s found stumbling home. After being abducted into the woods, she was sexually assaulted by three men. Ranjit goes to the police, and the men are arrested. But Ranjit’s relief is short-lived, as the villagers and their leaders launch a sustained campaign to force the family to drop the charges.

A cinematic documentary, To Kill a Tiger follows Ranjit’s uphill battle to find justice for his child. In India, where a rape is reported every 20 minutes and conviction rates are less than 30 percent, Ranjit’s decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of. With tremendous access, we witness the emotional journey of an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances. A father whose love for his daughter forces a social reckoning that will reverberate for years to come.

Starring: Talia Ryder, Earl Cave, Simon Rex, Jacob Elordi, Jeremy O. Harris, Ayo Edebiri

The Sweet East is a picaresque journey through the cities and woods of the Eastern seaboard of the United States undertaken by Lillian, a high school senior from South Carolina who gets her first glimpse of the wider world on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Separated from her schoolmates, she embarks on a fractured fairy tale travelogue into America, where she is granted access to a variety of the strange factions that proliferate the present-day unreality of contemporary life.

Starring: Lane Smith, Viggo Mortensen, Chelsea Field, Andre De Shields, Lincoln Kilpatrick

One year before his contribution to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (Part 4, The Dream Master), Renny Harlin got practice with the malevolent supernatural in Prison, a gooey haunted penitentiary thriller that finds a wrongfully convicted-and-executed inmate back for revenge.

When a prison is reopened years after Charlie Forsythe’s death by electrocution, Warden Ethan Sharpe is plagued by sweat-soaked nightmares. Soon the incarcerated men and guards begin to die in horrific ways, making it quickly apparent that these are no accidents. Starring a baby-faced Viggo Mortensen, Prison teems with fire, smoke and billowing light, and some really disgusting deaths that will have you swearing you see Freddy Krueger in the haze.