BEST OF FEST
Bleeding
Dir: Dany Horiuchi
Mollie, a young woman in her twenties, is struggling with her mental health. She writes a diary entry, pouring out all the emotions she can’t express aloud. Her words reveal the depth of her isolation and the hopelessness of feeling all this pain bleed out of her without anyone noticing.
Girl No. 60427
Dir: Shulamit Lifshitz, Oriel Berkovits
Tel Aviv, 1998, summer vacation. Reut finds and reads her grandmother's secret notebook from the Holocaust. Grandma's story resonates in Reut's well-developed imagination, and the fun week in Tel Aviv with Grandpa and Grandma turns into something else entirely. Reut’s relationship with her Grandma is changed forever.
The Axe Forgets
Dir: John Christopher
Inspired by a true a story.
In 1888 James S. Jameson, heir to the Jameson Whiskey dynasty, returns to Ireland after a year long expedition to the Congo. Things start to unravel as he attempts a return to normality. Will he choose to face the truth? Or will he choose the axe once more?
Baigun Baigun
Dir: Reneel Singh
Baigun Baigun is a bold, bilingual music video that blends Fijian Hindi and English to celebrate the spirit of Westernized Desis with humor, flair, and unapologetic swag. With catchy beats, cheeky lyrics, and sharp visuals, this vibrant piece flips the script on traditional expectations
Kāinga Tupu
Dir: Kā'eo Luke
Kāinga Tupu ("Homeland") is a 2D hand-drawn film that brings attention to New Zealand’s endangered forest parrot, the Kākāpō. This story follows the bird as he explores his home. But, something doesn't seem right. Noises and lights in the distance seem to be coming faster and faster. The forest monsters approach...
The Brown Owl
Dir: Reuben Edwards
An Owl flies through a City and catches glimpses of everyday life.
The Beneath
Dir: Lisette Vlassak
Haunted by pressure and self-doubt, young model Lone retreats to her garden, her only refuge from a world that consumes her. But when a mysterious underground creature begins destroying her sanctuary, Lone’s battle to save it forces her to confront something far darker than what lurks beneath the soil: herself.
Erebus
Dir: Brian Reynolds
A haunting tale about the indelible and irrevocable power of memory, love, and loss. Nestled in the twisted woods of their private and broken world, Miles and Sarah must consider the cost they are willing to pay to keep their love alive.
Doon
Dir: Sarine Arslanian, Russell Agro
Doon is a visceral exploration of exile and homecoming through Armenian dance—an embodied remembering of loss, ancestral memory and the deep currents that move beneath the visible.
Through the ancient language of Armenian dance, renowned dance artist, Shakeh Major Tchilingirian, invites us to listen with our hearts as she dances the stories never told, the grief too heavy for words, the love for a homeland many have never seen, and the universal yearning to come home: to the body, to the self, to one another. Doon is a cinematic offering to the body’s knowing and the subtle spaces where transformation begins—a creative act of remembrance, resilience and return.
Horizon
Dir: analogmirage
"Sometimes I look at the horizon and it feels like something in me slips away."
Horizon is an AI-generated short film, the story of the Air Runner Girl, a girl who can fly through dreams.
Two Worlds Apart
Dir: Marley Kahiau Davidson
Marley Davidson, an Asian Pacific Islander High School Senior, reflects on how shifting between the rural westside of Oahu and the big city affects her ability to balance her Native Hawaiian identity and personal values.
*Premiered on PBS Hawai'i as part of the Hiki Nō Program; Official Selection: HIFF 'Ōpiofest, Olelo Youth Xchange Awards, and Native Indigenous Student Academy for Cinematic Arts Film Festival.
Other, I
Dir: Alina Popescu
In a vast cathedral devoted to a strange, otherworldly deity, a young girl offers gifts that begin as harmless token of devotion but escalate into brutal sacrifices of her own body. This haunting allegory asks what happens when blind faith and the comforts we never question demand more of us than we have to give.