Ryan and Jennifer are opposites who definitely do not attract. At least that's what they always believed. When they met as twelve-year-olds, they disliked one another. When they met again as teenagers, they loathed each other. But when they meet in college, the uptight Ryan and the free-spirited Jennifer find that their differences bind them together and a rare friendship develops.
A young girl buries in her soul a memory of a painful moment, when as a child she brought home an injured bird and her father burdened by his own weight of worries didn’t notice her feelings and longing for understanding. The girl took her father’s reaction as indifference and closed herself in her inner world longing for her father’s love and its manifestations. Since that moment she and her dad continued to grow apart, and as an adult she is no longer able to accept his endearments. The father suffers from guilt and searches for a way back to his daughter, trying to revive their lost relationship.
In a corporate world void of human interaction, Ennis has lost her ability to relate to others. When the company fires her and forces her into a crowded tenement building, Ennis must overcome her fear of human connection to begin again.
A Chinese "study mama" considers her daughter Nana as her everything, sometimes her fantasy world. But after having a fight this morning, she finds Nana's missing.
Over a devastating night, a couple grapples with memories from the Gulf War.
U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau risks his job and his reputation by leaking memos to the New York Times and becoming the first whistleblower of the Armenian Genocide. (Based on "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" by Henry Morgenthau)
Days Off is a short film, an homage to the puppet and city. By combining puppet animation and live action it builds a certain strange kind of reality, a reality that is based in the real world. It is an audiovisual testimony using the language of surrealism, satire, parody, irony and gallows humor, a dark mirror reflecting today’s world.
An idle, Arab American stoner discovers a portal to the war memories of his mother's past while doing the laundry chore.
When two teenage girls plot to steal liquor for themselves, their plan goes awry when they decide to visit their old piano teacher who's developed dementia.
The dress is too lavish and the toilet cubicle too small for the bride to fit in. The ballroom is jam-packed and the mood is alarmingly good. Something is about to burst: the groom’s delusion of grandeur? The pregnant belly of deaf Betti? Her step-father’s patience? Or the wine-filled bladder of his ex-wife?
A road movie about three guys (two hitchhikers, one driver) and one woman.
LETTERS, a dramatic historical fiction written by Mrs. Evelyn Merritt in 2010, tells the story of U.S. soldiers and their loved ones through their correspondence beginning with the Civil War and ending with the War in Iraq. Sahuarita High School students adapted the Readers’ Theatre play into a movie, reasoning the student actors would be kept safe from Covid-19 by filming them individually, and afterward the footage could be reassembled into a screenplay following the original dialogue.
A hyper sensitive film student falls in love with an older woman.
Hollywood beckons for recent film school grad Nick Chapman, who is out to capitalize on the momentum from his national award-winning student film. Studio executive Allen Habel seduces Nick with a dream deal to make his first feature, but once production gets rolling, corporate reality begins to intervene: Nick is unable to control a series of compromises to his high-minded vision, and it's all he can do to maintain his integrity in the midst of filmmaking chaos.
When, in a very strict Catholic school, a teacher enters a bathroom and surprises two students engaged in forbidden sexual practices, some of their classmates do not know whether to remain silent or rat out their own friends when questioned by school authorities.
Daydream Therapy is set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got to Change.” Filmed in Burton Chace Park in Marina del Rey by activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas as his first project at UCLA, this short film poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. —Allyson Nadia Field
Darren Aronofsky’s AFI short opens with angry slacker Dave sitting in a dreary, empty junkyard. Dave stares into space, sips beer, and beats the hell out of a cracked guitar. We quickly realize the emptiness of the dump parallels the emptiness of Dave’s life which consists of smoking weed, staring at television screens and watching school children. Dave’s friend Pete is shortly introduced, along with their friend, Ari, who despite calling her pals losers, doesn’t seem to accomplishing much herself. These three are going nowhere fast. They’re the amoebas of life… protozoa….