One of the great joys of documentary filmmaking is its ability to introduce audiences to worlds they never knew existed. Joe Kowalski‘s Micronations does exactly that, plunging viewers into a community of self-declared kings, queens, emperors, and presidents who have carved out their own sovereign states in backyards, villages, deserts, and forgotten corners of the…
The title That Friend immediately suggests a familiar archetype. We all know someone who can turn a quiet evening into an all-night adventure, someone whose enthusiasm is both infectious and exhausting in equal measure. What makes Alex Wall and Will Sterling‘s comedy work so well is that it never settles for the easy joke of…
Heartbreak is universal. So too is the tendency to tell ourselves we’re ready to move on when we’re anything but. In General Admission, writer Sarah Adina channels one of the most vulnerable chapters of her own life into a sharply observed comedy about a woman who attends a support group hoping to heal, only to…
In an industry built on trends, commerce, and relentless reinvention, threeASFOUR: FULL CIRCLE shines a spotlight on a fashion collective that has spent more than two decades refusing to play by those rules. Directed by Sean Ono Lennon and Brian C. Gonzalez, the documentary follows avant-garde New York design trio Gabi Asfour, Angela Donhauser, and…
“All this shit actually happened.” That opening declaration lands with a sting, immediately setting the tone for Stacey Sargeant’s sharp, funny, and quietly infuriating short film Stand Clear ’ the Closing Doors. It’s a deliberately blunt replacement for the more familiar “based on a true story,” and it perfectly captures the film’s mentality: exhausted, self-aware,…
Grief, closure, and control collide in Holo, a quietly unsettling sci-fi short from Alexander DeSouza that feels unnervingly close to our present reality. Built around a deceptively simple concept – a company offering artificial encounters with the dead through performance and facial technology – the film quickly reveals itself to be something far more intimate,…
There’s an undeniably sharp hook at the centre of Deepfake – a near-future (or arguably present-day) world where friendship, identity and self-worth can be outsourced with the tap of an app. It’s a premise that feels both heightened and uncomfortably familiar, tapping into a culture where validation is currency and the lives we curate online…
A very specific kind of panic defines Last Minute – the kind born from a pre-internet world, where deadlines couldn’t be solved with a quick search and “doing homework” often became a family-wide emergency. Set in 1989, the short leans into that pressure with warmth, humour, and an undercurrent of genuine affection for a time…
What begins as a simple story about a kid leaving his homework until the very last minute becomes something far more poignant in Last Minute. Set in 1989, before smartphones, Google, and instant answers, writer-director Michael Cusumano‘s charming short follows a single mother racing against the clock to help her son complete a major school…
In a city already bursting with energy, colour and larger-than-life personalities, it takes a particularly special creature to stand out. Enter Kaboom, a fluffy pink force of magical chaos who descends upon New York City in ChikaBoom!, a delightfully inventive animated short that combines heart, humour and a striking visual style. At its centre is…
Packing a full emotional spiral, character study, and sharp comedic pivot into under ten minutes is no small feat, yet General Admission pulls it off with an impressive control and confidence. Writer Sarah Adina and director Kaily Morgan Smith craft a deceptively simple setup – a woman attending a support group to reclaim her sense…
Addiction dramas are rarely designed to be “enjoyable,” and Cotton Fever understands that from its opening moments. Daniel Blake Schwartz’s debut feature is an emotionally heavy, deeply intimate portrait of people trapped in cycles of dependency, survival, and recovery, refusing to romanticise the realities of addiction or soften the damage it leaves behind. The result is…
In an age where a single unread message can trigger a full-blown existential crisis, Drew van Steenbergen‘s Buckets taps into a painfully familiar modern phenomenon. The sharply observed short follows a man whose life begins to unravel after a late-night dating app match leaves him waiting for a follow-up text, spiralling through anxiety, self-doubt, and…
In the age of dating apps, where a single delayed reply can send even the most rational person into a tailspin, Buckets captures a very specific form of modern anxiety with remarkable honesty, humour, and self-awareness. Writer-director-editor Drew van Steenbergen turns the camera on himself as a man who spirals over the course of 48…
With her feature debut Lucy Schulman, writer, director and star Ellie Sachs has crafted a charming, painfully relatable comedy about the dangers of building your identity around other people. Following a devastating breakup, Lucy returns home to live with her eccentric father and begins the messy process of figuring out who she is when she’s…
In one of the earliest moments of Lucy Schulman, Lucy (Ellie Sachs) reflects on her childhood obsession with mallards. While other kids loved trains or Barbies, she was fixated on the idea that these birds seemed to mate for life – and that when one died, the other often wasn’t far behind. To Lucy, that…
Seven years after releasing the Grammy-winning Amidst the Chaos, Sara Bareilles returns to the studio not simply to make another record, but to process a life irrevocably altered by grief, transition, and time. In director Josh Alexander’s deeply moving documentary Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, the creation of an album becomes something far more intimate: a…
Set against the intensely competitive backdrop of professional tennis, Fault is less interested in the sport itself than the emotional and psychological battles raging beneath the surface. Written and directed by Misha Calvert, this powerful short film delivers an unflinching exploration of abuse, trauma, and the vastly different ways survivors learn to cope with their…
A summer night around a dinner table becomes the launchpad for a murder mystery in Kids Like Me, as 12-year-old Oliver enthusiastically assigns character roles to friends and family with the confidence of a seasoned director. “You’re the jealous mistress, you’re the corrupt cop…” he declares, transforming an ordinary gathering into a sprawling whodunit powered…
Delighting in the type of self-centred behaviour that more of us are guilty of than not, the character at the core of The Travel Companion, Alex Mallis and Travis Wood’s debut feature, sprouts lyrical to anyone who’ll listen (or tolerate) about his forthcoming directorial feature – an experimental, hybrid docu-fiction-travelogue about the cultural bridges and…
The age-old question around if a tree falling in the forest makes a sound is asked in quite a compelling, pressure-cooker type of way in A Tree Fell in the Woods, Nora Kirkpatrick‘s debut dramedy about the implosion of relationships between two couples across a New Year’s Eve getaway in the snowy forests of Utah….
“Are you here for the boat or the tooth?” And with that sentence, writer/director Olivia Accardo welcomes us into the bizarre reality of Baby Tooth, a wild five minute short film screening as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival; it’s set to play before the feature The Trainer, as well as being included in…
Whilst Everything’s Going to Be Great starts out a bit more eccentric and comedically minded than how it ends, the performances at the core of Jon S. Baird‘s dramedy, and the sense that it celebrates art and those that have always felt a little different in doing so, keeps it continually moving at an enjoyable…
One of the great things about documentaries such as The Rose: Come Back to Me is that it both provides further insight into a rock outfit for the legions of fans, as well as introducing uninitiated viewers into a world that proves endlessly fascinating. I am personally of the latter, as going into this film,…
If hearing the title I Was Born This Way immediately brings to mind the Lady Gaga song “Born This Way”, the coincidence is intentional. Gaga, one of the few interviewees featured in Daniel Junge and Sam Pollard‘s beautiful, insightful documentary, talks about how Carl Bean‘s legacy influenced her songwriting, as he did for the likes…
Set in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley and based on a harrowing true story, Rosemead is a gripping, emotionally charged portrait of a mother’s love pushed to its limits. Lucy Liu delivers a transformative performance as a terminally ill Chinese immigrant who uncovers her teenage son’s disturbing fixation with mass shootings. As her health deteriorates, she takes…
A film that embraces a more eclectic hobby over ridiculing its eccentricities, Horsegirls is a sweet natured drama that speaks to the importance of independence and inclusivity. Written and directed by Lauren Meyering, Horsegirls embraces the defiance of its lead character, Margarita (so beautifully embodied by Lillian Carrier), and how her perceived fragility gives way…
There’s a lived-in mentality to Poreless that is sure to resonate with certain audiences – it’s lead is a gay Muslim – but the comedic nature of its script, written by director Harris Doran and Fawzia Mirza, is particularly universal, looking at the vapid disconnection of the beauty world, the tightrope many walk when it…
A fabulous, queer Muslim beauty entrepreneur must figure out how to compete in a Shark Tank-like product pitch contest after suffering an untimely allergic reaction. Such is the logline for Poreless, a biting, commentative short currently screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Headlined and produced by Akbar Hamid, the performer is making a plenty…
Highlighting the drama behind the for-the-camera-smiles of the 1970s variety show, Kate McCarthy‘s The Hicks Happy Hour is a moment-in-time short feature that escalates with a certain tension, before it ultimately pivots for a more cathartic climax that speaks to one woman’s eventual truth. “Stars stay smiling” is the Hicks family motto, something mother Jill…
