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.
Audiences of each program screening had the chance to vote for their favorites, resulting in a killer mix of genres and styles.
THE SOLDIER
Sam Cullman, Trip Cullman / U.S. / 2020 / 17 min
Filmed while sheltering in place and made for no money other than Legos to pay one of our actors, THE SOLDIER is the story of 4 year old Sid, left to fend for himself after his family dies. A man shows up, having walked the barren road, and a simple and life sustaining truce is negotiated.
NUEVO RICO
Kristian Mercado / Puerto Rico, U.S. / 2020 / 16 min
A brother and sister stumble upon a celestial secret that changes their lives forever and propels them into Reggaetón stardom, but they soon discover that their newfound fame comes at a deep price.
THE STRANGE MONSTER AT THE RIVERA HOUSE (EL EXTRAÑO EN LA CASA RIVERA) Esteban Bailey / Puerto Rico, U.S. / 2021 / 11 min
Aida and her daughter Aidita are struggling to survive the ravages of a hurricane that has devastated the island of Puerto Rico, when they suddenly find a strange creature living in their backyard.
THREADS OF DESIRE
Bianca Di Marco / Italy, U.S. / 2021 / 9 min
A farmer’s monotonous life in the Italian countryside is unsettled after she steals an elegant dress.
PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY
Tynan DeLong / U.S. / 2021 / 10 min
An anxious musician finds himself unable to leave his hotel room.
YOU AND ME THIS SUMMER
Emily Berge, Spencer Thielmann / U.S. / 2021 / 16 min
Set in the backwoods of rural Iowa, this is Regan and Addisyn’s last summer before college. As Addisyn tries to manage her mother’s addiction, Regan reckons with her Native culture and decision to leave their small hometown behind.
Starring: Mike Myers, Nancy Travis, Anthony LaPaglia, Amanda Plummer, Brenda Fricker, Debi Mazar
Just after a bad breakup, Charlie MacKenzie (Mike Myers) falls for lovely butcher Harriet Michaels (Nancy Travis) and introduces her to his parents. But, as voracious consumers of sensational tabloids, his parents soon come to suspect that Harriet is actually a notorious serial killer — “Mrs. X” — wanted in connection with a string of bizarre honeymoon killings. Thinking his parents foolish, Charlie proposes to Harriet. But while on his honeymoon with her, he begins to fear they were right.
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Russell Crowe, Tessa Thompson, Chris Pratt, Taika Waititi
Thor: Love and Thunder finds Thor (Chris Hemsworth) on a journey unlike anything he’s ever faced — a quest for inner peace. But his retirement is interrupted by a galactic killer known as Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale), who seeks the extinction of the gods. To combat the threat, Thor enlists the help of King Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), Korg (Taika Waititi) and ex-girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), who — to Thor’s surprise — inexplicably wields his magical hammer, Mjolnir, as the Mighty Thor. Together, they embark upon a harrowing cosmic adventure to uncover the mystery of the God Butcher’s vengeance and stop him before it’s too late.
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, John Travolta, Laraine Newman, Anne De Salvo, Marilu Henner, Jann Wenner
Are you Perfect? If not (lol), join the creators of the hit Chippendales podcast Welcome to Your Fantasy for an evening of ‘80s aerobic stars, investigative intrigue, and hip-thrusting in neon leotards. Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta star in this glittering exposé based on a real-life Rolling Stone article that also features the real-life Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner essentially playing himself. Yes folks, despite the cameos from real-life Chippendales stars, this is actually a movie about journalism. Travolta goes down the rabbit hole of sexy fitness clubs and LA drugs dealers, and tries not to fall in love in the process. Your hosts for the evening, Natalia Petrzela and Eleanor Kagan, bring you the backstory and the Easter eggs, then we can all sweat it out together.
About Welcome to Your Fantasy:
In the 1980s the “male exotic dancers” of Chippendales were everywhere, selling the promise of women’s liberation for the price of a few dollars in a g-string. But behind the powerful mullets, oiled pecs, and non-stop parties lies a much darker story of greed, corruption and murder. Hosted by historian Natalia Petrzela, Welcome To Your Fantasy exposes one of the great, sordid, unexamined stories in American culture.
The Lost Record is a movie about a girl’s relationship to a record she finds, a valueless “lost record” from the cut out bin, which she brings to wider attention; first to her friends and then to mass culture.
The Lost Record she finds is obscure, unknown, and different than other records in that it talks to the listener. The girl and the record develop a very close relationship but tension arises; the Record urges her to turn her friends on to it, play it at parties, etc, while the girl would rather keep their thing intimate, to herself.
The Lost Record is a film about art, music, fetish, creation, popularity, fame, love, value, money, property and records.
Starring: Chris Evans, Taika Waititi, Keke Palmer, James Brolin, Efren Ramirez, Uzo Aduba
Buzz Lightyear embarks on an intergalactic adventure with a group of ambitious recruits and his robot companion.
Starring: Kristen Schaal, H. Jon Benjamin, John Roberts, Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Larry Murphy
The Bob’s Burgers Movie is an animated, big-screen, musical comedy-mystery-adventure based on the long-running Emmy-winning series. The story begins when a ruptured water main creates an enormous sinkhole right in front of Bob’s Burgers, blocking the entrance indefinitely and ruining the Belchers’ plans for a successful summer. While Bob and Linda struggle to keep the business afloat, the kids try to solve a mystery that could save their family’s restaurant. As the dangers mount, these underdogs help each other find hope and fight to get back behind the counter, where they belong.
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Rory Kinnear, Paapa Essiedu, Gayle Rankin
In the aftermath of a personal tragedy, Harper (Jessie Buckley) retreats alone to the beautiful English countryside, hoping to have found a place to heal. But someone or something from the surrounding woods appears to be stalking her. What begins as simmering dread becomes a fully-formed nightmare, inhabited by her darkest memories and fears in visionary filmmaker Alex Garland’s (Ex Machina, Annihilation) feverish, shape-shifting new horror film.
Starring: Pris McEver, Emilie Crewe, Hope Esser, Yael Gabi
Co-presented by Screen Slate. Choose the “Reserved + $5 donation” ticket to add on a $5 donation to support Screen Slate with your ticket purchase!
With its inimitable style and attention to detail (down to walls of VHS tapes), Video Diary of a Lost Girl is the vision of writer/director Lindsay Denniberg, made while she was a student at School of the Art Institute Chicago. Combining her obsessions of body horror with a VHS aesthetic, she concocted something truly original using repurposed art materials and green screen.
This neon-slathered feature is the story of Louise, descendant of demon-mother Lilith, fulfilling her predestined need to have sex with a man, and then kill him, every full moon. When she meets Charlie, a reincarnated lover from her past, she struggles to avoid making him her victim as she did decades before.
