Director: Sandy Williams IV

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: 40°N, 73°W documents a multilayered public performance that took place in the sky above Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Juneteenth 2023. A skywriter traced the borders of the historic Weeksville community—an area 492.72 acres in total—in the sky to honor the legacy of one of the first recognized free Black communities in the country, which occupied the location from 1838 to around 1930. This skywriting pays homage to the memory of Freedmen communities and acknowledges histories and social oppressions that are often unseen and paved over, by connecting current national inequities to the failures of Reconstruction in the United States after the Civil War.

Trailer | Website

Director: Josh Weissbach

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A father and daughter make a new movie after the daughter requests to make a film with sound after making a silent one the previous year.

Website

Director: Anthony Parisi

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Two outlaws disguise themselves as priests for a robbery at a desert chapel, but their plan is disrupted when Hannah, a parishioner, comes by looking for help.

Trailer | Website

[ US PREMIERE ]

Director: Helena Houghton

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Synopsis: A Woodland camping trip becomes a nightmare, when the careless Josh is separated from Sarah and given a stark choice- become the Fae Queens consort or perish.

Trailer | Website

Director: Josh Whiteman

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: An anonymous individual relives an old pastime and reflects on his life while taking a film crew through a drainage tunnel underneath Home Depot.

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Director: Kevin Ralston

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Rebecca comes home from work one day to find her TV is missing. Detective JW Bond arrives on the scene to find out what happened to Rebecca’s TV. Together, they find more than what they bargained for.

Website

Director: Cheyenne Chapman Rudolph

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: In the process of making a sandwich, a young woman makes a mess.

Director: Dana Ollestad

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: The narrator wonders what he'll leave behind as he helps his grandparents downsize during a move.

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Director: Eric Larson

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: An anxious man at a party must do the unthinkable after he clogs the only toilet.

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[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: David Lee Hess

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A Suite of Cooking Clips w/ Special Guests !!

Director: James Benson

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Chip works in a town that has been on fire for 60 years. When he receives his DNA test results in the mail, he discovers he is related to a family of billionaires and goes to ask them for $20.

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Director: Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A young boxer confronts long festering criticisms hidden inside the ring.

Director: Craig Smith

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Dear, When I Met You is a meditation on how art can be both ephemeral and immortal at the same time.

Visually, the film begins with a badly deteriorating 1928 musical short and reworks it into something new by celebrating the beauty of the original film’s aging.

Sonically, I have added six additional recordings of this mostly forgotten song. They run simultaneously with the original, creating a new performance which both echoes and advances the image.

Dear, When I Met You also addresses the impact motion pictures had on stage performers of the 1920s. Performer Yvette Rugel knew that filmed performances would affect her stage career, but she also realized that motion pictures were becoming a financial necessity.

Director: Janelle VanderKelen

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: As a tree muses on their role in the Order of Things, this being (which humans normally think of as immobile) reveals the speed, agility, and finesse integral to their experience of the world.

Trailer | Website

[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Franco Andrade Ortiz

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A particularly intense experience of strangeness. An exploration of the distortion of what once was the most familiar and friendly: the concept of identity and the fear of losing it.

[ US PREMIERE ]

Director: Marko Gutić Mižimakov

Country of Origin: Croatia

Synopsis: Taking Samuel Delany’s SciFi novel ‘Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand’ as a point of departure, this experimental mid-length is at once a dance, fantasy, and a queer road film. Its protagonists, animated by the weirdening landscape of the Dalmatian Hinterland and enraptured by the sound of the conch shell, partake in the melding tradition of Dragon Hunting. An exploration in media translation, mimicry, and the sensuous, Dragon Hunt is a result of collaborative processes between fellow artist friends and different machine learning algorithms.

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Director: Alan Dunne

Country of Origin: Ireland

Synopsis: Family Night is an offbeat short horror film set in the winter of 1996 in Dublin, Ireland. It tells the story of a family forced to take part in a family night by their extremely strict father played by Eoin Quinn.

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[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Clay Steakley

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: This installation of The Fire Cycle surfs the tension between the natural world and today's breakneck, overly engineered environment.

In this film, two unnamed characters communicate across separate (but adjacent) worlds, finding a way to travel between them and to spark a cycle of regeneration through birth, death, and rebirth.

The dance in this film was choreographed and performed by Becca Hoback (https://www.beccahoback.com/) with cinematography from Tyler Dunning Evans (https://www.tylerdunningevans.com/). Both Hoback and Evans are frequent collaborators on Fire Cycle projects.

All of The Fire Cycle (poetry, music, film, theatre) deals with impermanence and interconnectedness, with deep time and the constant birth, death, and rebirth of all the elements. Here, we travel between worlds, seeking renewal through rest, seeking peace in the midst chaos and quiet in clamor. And we find out that even this is a constantly regenerating cycle.

Trailer | Website

Director: Jared Watson

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Set in a near distant future, where the natural environment has collapsed and remnants of industry and its waste are all that remain, a Fisherman struggles on. Unexpectedly one day, he discovers a mermaid tangled in an old fishing net. Desperate and lonely, the Fisherman brings the mermaid home and prepares her to present to his daughter for dinner.

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Director: Neil Ferron

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: In this supernatural dark comedy, a pathetic Irish fishmonger must survive a sex pact with an ancient fish creature in order to save his mother's soul from burning in hell.

Trailer | Website

Director: Tiffany Bedwell & John Mossman

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Dina, a 40 year-old actor and Child of Deaf Adults (CODA), relives a trauma while following her agent's marketing instructions: Ask ten strangers for their first impressions of her. Weathering IRL likes and trolls, Dina awakens her authorial CODA voice.

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Director: Zach Strum

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A lot of backflips.

[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Elisabeth Donaldson

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A Dark Comedy about that guy you met on Hinge

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[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Jesseca Ynez Simmons

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: In 'Heaven in a Wild Flower' we immerse ourselves in a lyrical exploration of the perilous consequences of pesticides on bees and their intricate ecosystem. In a mesmerizing microscopic world, science meets artistry, fraught with danger and beauty.

Website

Director: Ruth Hayes

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Animation against the evisceration of American women's reproductive rights. An iterative process incorporating rubbings, images, text and voices from the New York Times and the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health arguments before the United States Supreme Court moves the film from formal experimentation to an expression of outrage about the effects of abortion bans on women's health.

Website

*OPENING SHORT FILM

[ US PREMIERE ]

Director: Amber Rose McNeill

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A loop, a cycle, a merry-go-round, a syndrome… the fantasy cycle of heteronormative romance is deconstructed then reconstructed; re-looped into a ruthless, yet realistic, mosaic that lays bare the dangers that lurk within the merry-go-round of this normative romance syndrome.

Trailer | Website

Director: Fabrice Chan

Country of Origin: Belgium

Synopsis: When Guillaume Bogaert (28) learns that he has a serious health problem, he asks a film crew to make a documentary of him. In case he doesn't survive, he wants to leave a memory to someone.

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Director: Jay Curtis Miller

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Two co-workers engage in an affair on Halloween night. Someone's watching from out(in)side.

Website

*FEATURE FILM

Director: Aaron Irons

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: In 2023, filmmaker Aaron Irons went missing in a cave in the wilderness area known as Jeffrey’s Hell. This documentary explores the truth behind what really happened to Aaron and the terrifying footage he left behind.

Trailer | Website

Director: Jake Myers

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A musician trapped in an office job tries the free kombucha that helps his coworkers hit their quotas with a smile. Unfortunately, the kombucha has a series of nasty side effects that give new meaning to being consumed by your work.

Trailer | Website

Director: Michael Granberry

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A mysterious rabbit with a set of magic keys summons a host of strange creatures to entertain a wicked king and his decadent court in this dark stop-motion animated fantasy inspired by the works of Ladislas Starevich.

Trailer | Website

Director: Kevin Allen

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A lovestruck individual pontificates about life to his crush in hopes of forming a romantic connection with her.

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Director: Tij D'oyen

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A woman recounts her sensual yet macabre childhood memory about the boy next door.

Trailer | Website

Director: Teresita Carson

Country of Origin: Mexico / United States

Synopsis: Part experimental essay film, part videopoem, Monolith braids found footage, documentary, experimental, 3D animation and narrative filmmaking devices to explore notions of collectivity, dissent, indigenous knowledge and non-linear time. This shape-shifting film questions the ongoing legacies of nationalist archives, archeology, and coloniality.

Trailer

*FEATURE FILM

[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Heather LeRoy

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Charlie quits her antidepressants and is concurrently dumped by her fiancee thwarting her into the ghost world she thought she'd left behind …
When a familiar knock at the door brings Depression back into her life, Charlie must confront her old companion in all its forms from Noir seductress to shrill confidant — the question is, will she become bewitched by Depression and continue down her self destructive path or break this maladaptive cycle once and for all?

Website

Director: Carme Puche Moré

Country of Origin: Spain

Synopsis: Who defines who we are? What happens when images betray our words? How do we survive in a world that constantly misunderstands us? 'My Word' is an audiovisual creation project based on artificial intelligence where a woman shows us her journey to define herself.

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Director: Victor Dos Santos

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Hermes is a beloved bike messenger in his town, he always delivers everyones packages on time and receives nothing but smiles and good fortune in return. After delivering a package to a very disgruntled Mr. George however, Hermes' world is turned upside down.

Trailer | Website

Director: Ben Bovington-Key

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: After new evidence proves his innocence, the wife of a notorious serial killer must come to terms with the fact that her husband is not the psychotic killer she fell in love with.

Trailer | Website

[ US PREMIERE ]

Director: Fjolla Hoxha & Dylan Simon

Country of Origin: Kosova / United States

Synopsis: Palosja e Jugave (The Folding of Yugas) is a vision that came at dawn. A sleepless night perhaps. The urge to consume the white rose is met with the limits that nature discloses when its boundaries are stepped on.

On a macro-level, out of a melancholia for time-reversibility and parallel time-spaces, the video interprets the space time bending theory from the Hindu perspective of the 5 cycles of life; If Yugas were napkins and we could fold them, what might happen within the universes they carry within them?

Website

Director: Marjorie Lhomme

Country of Origin: France

Synopsis: Paris-Brussels is a road movie that starts out as a holiday. But a different kind of adventure is in store. Today, 8-year-old Loulou is driving to Belgium with her family for the euthanasia of her grandmother, Blanche.

Director: Brian Zahm

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Seeds. Light. Water. Life.

Trailer | Website

[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Rusty Enger

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A woman goes to great lengths to inject life into her stagnating relationship.

Director: Jack Schurman

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Horace and Jeremy are roommates at the end of their rope…or maybe just lost dreams fighting for space in the same head. “Popcorn Shrimp and Dishwater” explores the impossibility of escaping yourself, and how sometimes a blood let is required to find equilibrium.

Trailer | Website

[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Kirsten Johnson

Country of Origin: Canada

Synopsis: A fantastical imagining of a single moment frozen in time just before a life-or-death bicycle accident.

Director: Roger Horn

Country of Origin: United States / South Africa

Synopsis: "Questioning the Existence of Alec" is comprised of found footage utilizing stop motion and additional in camera effects recorded on the beaches of South Africa during the 1940s. In this dreamlike journey, two or three friends, one of whom may be Alec are presented from adolescence through adulthood. The surreal journey blurs the boundary between the past and present, reality and fantasy, and invites viewers to question for themselves the nature of reality, dreams, and the existence of the protagonists on both sides of the camera.

Trailer | Website

Director: Steve Parnell

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Recipe For Fun is a collage of moments from the lives of early 2000's Skateboarders from the small town of Gallatin, TN.
A Film by Steve Parnell

This film originated at DARE TO FAIL!s "COUNTER CULTURE" Showcase as a part of Kindling Arts Festival in 2023.

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*OPENING SHORT FILM

Director: Salomé Crickx

Country of Origin: Belgium

Synopsis: Today is the 167th annual Shedding, a cheerful ceremony that brings all generations together to promote ideological renewal. This year, Ben and her parents will experience it first hand.

Director: Pisie Hochheim & Tony Oswald

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: After a visit from the ghost of her grandmother, a woman discovers a mysterious pepper plant which causes her to question whether she will follow in her mother’s footsteps or take a different path.

Trailer | Website

Director: Warren Fischer

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A young female violinist with undiagnosed autism spirals out of control as she works on a new opus with a domineering composer, embarking on a psychedelic journey that both pushes her to the edge of mental collapse and fuels her creative power.

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Director: Nick Grau

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Inside his own tormented fantasy, Draco tries to reject the advances of an irresistible lover.

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Director: Sophia Parella

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A man gains a deeper understanding of purpose after helping a talking streetlight through its existential crisis.

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Director: Robert Campbell

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Short experimental animation with improvisational jazz soundtrack by Triptet from their album SLOWLY, AWAY.

Website

Director: Jesse Emiliano Vela Alegría

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: This documentary mainly surrounds remembrance of my relative, who had difficult problems that eventually claimed their life. Their world was my grandparents, and they reunited with them in the house they grew up in. My mom remembers them a certain way, while I remember them else wise because I didn’t know as much. Nevertheless, the AI acts as a “bridge” for our memories to collide visually, but the authentic connection relies on ourselves and the stories we tell.

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Director: E.T. Russian and Edward Mast

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: An animated dream of displacement and apocalypse.

Trailer | Website | Website

Director: Kris Lefcoe

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: When a lonely man’s sex robot malfunctions in "dominance" mode, it leads to what might be the most awkward customer support call in history.

Trailer | Website

Directors: Sarah Wisner and Sean Temple

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: In 19th century Vermont, a young woman's parents drink sleeping tea in order to survive the harsh winter, but an early thaw leads to horrifying results.

Trailer | Website

[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Scott Soder

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A man has a near-death experience while mowing his lawn on the solar eclipse and wanders down the rabbit hole.

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[ WORLD PREMIERE ]

Director: Alex Donnelly

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Track Meat is the story of a chicken drumstick who has it all; he's got his package, he's got the comfort of the meat section...everything is perfect...until the day of reckoning comes! A humunculus giant beast comes to the grocery store and buys a sizable mixture meats. This putrid beast takes the chicken drumstick away from the comfortable life in the meat section and forces the chicken drumstick to move on and possibly "meat his maker"!

*FEATURE FILM

Director: Greyson Horst

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Michael, terrified of pursuing his musical dreams and exploring romantic intimacy, relies on his best friend and her girlfriend for support and affection. However, when he meets a newly open married couple seeking a casual encounter, the three men enter into a relationship that is more vulnerable than any of them ever expected.

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Director: John Theo

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A highfalutin art movie crumbles into a meta-fictional disaster that betrays its director's incompetence in real time, and it's all on film.

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Director: Desirée Tolchin

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: Submerged into a stream of life and death, we meet different forms of people, places, and things. All shot on Super 8 film over the course of 3 years.

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Director: Alan Rexroth

Country of Origin: Germany

Synopsis: We live in a digital world. But we're fairly analog creatures.

Aurelio, a young man from Guatemala, sets out for the promised land.
On the roof of La Bestia, a Mexican freight train, he wants to reach the U.S. southern border and cross illegally.
The image of a society in which everyone seems to be doing well has reached him via digital communication.

His smartphone becomes an indispensable travel companion.
It is the means of communication with his smuggler, family album and flashlight-his only connection to his old life.

Trailer | Website

Director: Andrew Hahn

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A woman is experiencing a lucid dream. Or perhaps she is being reprogrammed. She believes she will die in the morning. Or perhaps she is already dead. WENT THE NIGHT WELL? collages the dialogue of Diana Dors with the music of Delia Derbyshire and Paul Zaza. The montage of subjective camera shots, placing us inside the head of our nameless heroine, were culled from 40 classic films.

*OPENING SHORT FILM

Director: Luca Silver

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A multimedia sex-ed video from a world where humans have corkscrew penises and corkscrew vaginas.

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Director: Cody Duncum

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: When a young boy shoots at a bird and misses, he embarks on a search to find where the bullet went.

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Director: Beth Park

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Synopsis: A wealthy woman discovers an abandoned baby in the remote wilderness. Set on finding the child’s mother, she realises that she is being followed.

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Director: Eleanor Morrison

Country of Origin: United States

Synopsis: A married couple discusses a sexual assault.

Trailer | Website