A mechanic in a small midwestern town would do anything to leave her boring life but she can’t seem to break free. Tipper Newton directs and stars in “The Dangerous Type,” an entertaining throwback to 80’s (and before) tropes that renders its snappy banter and B-movie characterizations with style...

After revealing something new to her long-term partner, a young couple has an emotionally fraught conversation at the grocery store. “Chores,” directed by Christina Tucker, is a dramatic vignette on the subject of poor communication and hitting personal limits. In the vegetable aisle, Samantha br...

Struggling to fit in at a sleepaway camp with a group of white girls, 11-year-old Aaliyah Khan tries to befriend a new arrival. Samina Saifee’s “AmeriGirl,” nuances the coming-of-age realities of assimilation and conformity to American beauty standards. After being unembraced by two fellow camper...

Overwhelmed by voices inside her head, a farmhand teeters between reality, nightmare, and an alternate dimension. Marisa DeMarini directs “Member’s Mark,” an elliptical experimental film that frames a psychological breakdown as a disorienting series of motifs - mirrors, lights, extreme close ups ...

A short anthology of four loosely related vignettes in which the central characters throw away their opportunities at happiness for something even more out of reach. | Director & Editor: Rob Schmidt. Writer: Nick Funess.

Although money is tight, a former stadium headliner plans to skip another dive bar show in a small town. “The Rock Star,” directed by Niels Blumel, takes us to the American outskirts where we observe a slacked-out musician in his endeavor to feel desired. The rockstar, Babyface Jones, has no inte...

A frustrated husband spirals during his pre-planned fight with his wife at Ruby Tuesdays. Luke Strickler directs “I Decided To Fight With My Wife Over Salmon,” a constantly morphing digital art collage about love, hate, and death. The misogynistic man sees fine dining as the perfect opportunity t...

A meager apology tests a woman's fortitude to forgive. “Squirrel,” by director Alex Kavutskiy, is a masterfully-crafted cringe comedy about the unlikely intersection of two L.A. residents who must come to terms with a new reality and one another. As their scenario unfolds, Noreen and Patrick, pla...

An uninvited houseguest makes herself at home. “Sticky,” directed by Aisha Schliessler, is a stylish experiment — an exploration of a living space inhabited by somebody who doesn’t live there. With unclear intentions, the woman makes her way through the house: in the kitchen, she drinks from a bo...

The musician Dekunle dances through a supermarket in a suit accompanied by doo-wop backup singers with effervescent smiles, in this satirical take on the issue of food deserts. | Director: John Connor Hammond. Musician: Dekunle.

As she tries to wrangle her two-year-old daughter and an old dog, a young, single mother collects recyclables. Jefferey Liu’s “Hustle Mode” is a textured, New York City story shot on 16mm rendered with flustered charisma. With a waddling Beagle by her side, Lexi takes a bag of cans and bottles to...

A young woman moves into a new apartment and discovers a growth on her wall that mysteriously moves. Each time it does, she covers it with cardboard or a mirror, but as soon as it's covered, it pops up elsewhere. The woman can’t define what she’s seeing, and she can’t pin it down, but it’s there,...

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, two friends on a FaceTime call experience a dispute with a neighbor. Entirely presented as a video screen capture, Tanner Jarman’s film becomes an inadvertent tour through the racist viral videos of the day as we follow a young black man walking down the str...