Live Action Short Films

Screened in the morning session

Brotherhood

Meryam Joobeur and Maria Gracia Turgeon, Tunesia

Mohamed is deeply shaken and suspicious when his estranged eldest son Malek returns home to rural Tunisia with a mysterious young wife in tow. The emotional complexities of a family reunion and past wounds lead to tragic consequences..

Nefta Football Club

Yves Piat and Damien Megherb, Tunesia/France

In south Tunisia, two football fan brothers bump into a headphones-wearing donkey in the desert on the border of Algeria. Unaware that two men are waiting for the donkey and its hidden drug stash, the brothers take the animal back home with them.

The Neighbor’s Window

Marshall Curry, USA

The life of a middle-aged woman with small children is shaken up when two free-spirited twenty-somethings move in across the street.

Saria

Bryan Buckley and Matt Lefebvre, USA

Inseparable orphaned sisters Saria and Ximena are fighting against daily abuse and unimaginable hardship at the Virgen de La Asuncion Safe Home in Guatemala when a tragic fire claims the lives of 41 orphaned girls.

Une Soeur (A Sister)

Delphine Girard, Belgium

An emergency services dispatcher must tap into all her professional skills when she receives a call from a woman in a desperate situation.

Animated Short Films

Screened in the afternoon

Dcera (Daughter)

Daria Kashcheeva, Czech Republic

In a hospital room, the Daughter recalls a difficult childhood moment when as a little girl she tried to share her experience with an injured bird with her Father..

Hair Love

Matthew A. Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver, USA

An African-American father learns to do his daughter’s hair for the first time.

Kitbull

Rosana Sullivan and Kathryn Hendrickson, USA

A fiercely independent stray kitten and a chained-up pit bull experience friendship for the first time.

Memorable

Bruno Collet and Jean-François Le Corre, France

Painter Louis and his wife Michelle are experiencing strange events. Their world seems to be mutating. Slowly, furniture, objects, and people lose their realism. They are “destructuring,” sometimes disintegrating.

Sister

Siqi Song, China/USA

A man remembers his childhood and growing up with an annoying little sister in 1990s China. How would his life have been if things had gone differently?

Documentary Short Films

Screened in the afternoon

In the Absence

Yi Seung-Jun and Gary Byung-Seok Kam, South Korea

When the MV Sewol ferry sank off the coast of South Korea in 2014, over three hundred people lost their lives, most of them schoolchildren. Years later, the victims’ families and survivors are still demanding justice from national authorities.

Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you’re a Girl)

Carol Dysinger and Elena Andreicheva, UK

Over the course of 15 years, a class of young girls from disadvantaged neighborhoods in war-torn Kabul, learn to read and write, and grow together in confidence through the joy of skateboarding.

Life overtakes Me

John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson, Sweden/USA

Hundreds of refugee children in Sweden who have fled with their families from extreme trauma in their home countries have become afflicted with Resignation Syndrome. Facing deportation, they withdraw from the world into a coma-like state, as if frozen, for months or even years.

St. Louis Superman

Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan, USA

Bruce Franks Jr., a leading Ferguson activist and battle rapper who was elected to the overwhelmingly white and Republican Missouri House of Representatives, must overcome both personal trauma and political obstacles to pass a bill critical to his community.

Walk, Run, Cha-Cha

Laura Nix and Colette Sandstedt, USA

Chipaul and Millie Cao reunited in 1980s Los Angeles after being separated by the Vietnam War. Forty years later, they become ballroom dancers to reconnect again and make up for lost time.