Film Category
White Box
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
A young medical researcher wakes from a disturbing nightmare and sets out for another routine day at work. She prepares for an experiment on a white box, but when she cuts into it, she finds a strange creature pulsing inside. As the creature stares back at her, the researcher is forced to confront the violence behind her work and the relationship between herself and her test subjects.
Film Category
CARROÑA
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
Peddling off-putting wares and stories in their no-name town, a trio of street dwellers are shown nothing but the door until a nighttime apparition leads Andrés, an eager boy, to opportunity– the obscure operations of a calculating butcher and his faithful dog.
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Mexican folklore, magical realism elements, and mischievous humor immerse us in the context of our characters, exploring themes grounded in the real world. At its core, "Carroña" delves into the early and forceful letting go of innocence in a world that won't look after the vulnerable.
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Mexican folklore, magical realism elements, and mischievous humor immerse us in the context of our characters, exploring themes grounded in the real world. At its core, "Carroña" delves into the early and forceful letting go of innocence in a world that won't look after the vulnerable.
Film Category
DANGLING
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
Mart appears to have the perfect life: a loving wife, a beautiful home in a good neighborhood, and a baby on the way. Yet, he feels unfulfilled. For as long as he can remember, he has been tormented by an overwhelming urge to kill. One he has managed to suppress until now. His self-control is pushed to the limit when he stumbles upon his neighbor’s failed suicide attempt. Unable to resist his dark obsession, he drags the barely conscious man up to his attic, where he faces an impossible choice: give in to his long-repressed urges or continue a life of restraint.
As the pressure mounts, Mart’s situation grows even more dangerous—especially when he realizes that just downstairs, his wife is leading the village-wide search for the missing neighbor.
As the pressure mounts, Mart’s situation grows even more dangerous—especially when he realizes that just downstairs, his wife is leading the village-wide search for the missing neighbor.
Film Category
On Time Off Time
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
In a dystopian world, Mother Time controls all time. Her daughter, Junji, is frequently off-time. When Junji gets into a heated fight with Mother Time, she is pulled into a portal, taking her to the Off-Time world, a land of timelessness. She wakes in a surreal circus town full of timeless creatures engaging in uncanny activities. Junji must navigate the balance between control and chaos.
Film Category
Shedding
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
In a dark, isolated home, a Chinese American teenage girl lives under the strict control of her mother, who treats punishment as care and obedience as survival. As the girl’s compulsive hair-pulling turns into a secret obsession, the tension between them builds toward a violent confrontation.
Film Category
CopyPaste!
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
When a glitch overtakes the dress-up game, “Copy Paste”, its main character, Dolly, disappears. Molly, her sidekick, must survive the destabilized world as it forces her to take Dolly’s role. Pressured by her warping reality and the game’s player, Molly must decide who she is; or who she must become.
Film Category
The Dogleg
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
In a Polish village in the early 2000s, young motocross riders spend the summer immersed in their passion. The idyll is violently disrupted when the infamous Henryk returns to the village. His arrival sets off a chain of events that leads to an inevitable confrontation.
Film Category
The Woman is Perfected
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
As she waits in her plastic surgeon’s office, Cassie drifts through the private logic of her own unraveling. Young, striking, and consumed by a need to perfect herself, she moves through a world shaped by impossible beauty standards and the corrosive pull of an abusive partner.
What begins as a search for control through cosmetic intervention becomes something darker: a ritual of self-correction that mirrors the emotional dependencies she cannot escape. Trapped between the fantasy of reinvention and the reality of her life, Cassie mistakes transformation for liberation, even as both her relationship and her sense of self begin to fracture. The deeper she disappears into the pursuit of an unattainable ideal, the harder it becomes to recognize the forces consuming her.
TWIP is a psychological character study about beauty, coercion, and the seductive violence of wanting to become someone else.
What begins as a search for control through cosmetic intervention becomes something darker: a ritual of self-correction that mirrors the emotional dependencies she cannot escape. Trapped between the fantasy of reinvention and the reality of her life, Cassie mistakes transformation for liberation, even as both her relationship and her sense of self begin to fracture. The deeper she disappears into the pursuit of an unattainable ideal, the harder it becomes to recognize the forces consuming her.
TWIP is a psychological character study about beauty, coercion, and the seductive violence of wanting to become someone else.
Film Category
Terroir
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
A young wine critic (Madison Hu) returns to a French vineyard one year after giving it a bad review. There, she and her friends become the target of a masked killer.
Film Category
Beautify
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
In a world obsessed with appearances, a young woman struggles to reshape herself to fit society’s impossible standards of beauty. As she alters and adjusts her reflection, she loses sight of who she truly is. Beautify is a visually striking animated short that explores the pressures of perfection, the fragility of identity, and the courage it takes to embrace one’s authentic self.
Film Category
The King in Yellow
Meet the Filmmaker
Synopsis
How do you read a play that makes you go insane? In this modern adaptation of the 1895 short stories by Robert W. Chambers, three grad students come up with a plan to split the dangerous work into thirds to safely perform research on the notorious play, The King in Yellow. But events take a sinister turn when one of them reads more than just his share.