Wally’s surprise birthday party turns weird after an existential reaction. Jordan Michael Blake directs “Birthday Boy,” an unsettling portrait of emotional whiplash shot with a family camcorder, which contains years of unrelated home videos that occasionally bleed through. Everything seems rather...

John and Mel are an impossibly lovey-dovey young couple moving out on their own for the first time. At work, they’re caught in the service industry spin cycle. At home, they tease and tussle with the play-aggression of puppies. John agrees to be directed by Mel in the lead role of a script he wro...

A young woman daydreams to escape from a mundane day at the office with her boss and co-worker. Eren Gülfidan directs “Daydreaming,” a collection of surreal images presented as a stream-of-consciousness tone poem. A brain falls from the sky. A mime juggles on the train. The woman imagines herself...

Traveling the continental United States, two vagabond thieves rob from sick, twisted sexual deviants. Griffin Sauter directs “Mousetrap,” an experimental road film following two drifters as they traverse a crude American landscape. From warehouse to ghost town, the two partners front as a “critte...

An aspiring pop star travels to Hollywood to meet a music producer she met over Instagram. Samantha Carroll directs and stars in “Love Liz,” a dryly comedic take on an evergreen tale — dreamer seeks fame. From Delaware, Liz has just flown into L.A. with the hopes of making it big. After a pit sto...

An intimate dinner takes a left turn when a lesbian couple receives an unsolicited offer from their unhappily married friends. | Director: Molly Schiot. Written By: Cass Buggé & Lucas Kavner. Cast: Cass Buggé, Lucas Kavner, Fay Wolf, Leah Rudick.

A tech entrepreneur attends a silent yoga retreat. Charlie Sosnick directs “Silent Yoga,” a slapstick comedy where a cultish yoga event is attended by Zach, a wunderkind founder of a “decentralized finance unicorn.” Along with his unrelenting smart phone, which keeps buzzing due to possibly being...

An actress is challenged by an eccentric director when rehearsing a gruesome kill scene for his horror movie. Taryn Segal’s “Up and Coming” is a handheld satire that pokes fun at the expectations of performance and the day-to-day lives of actors. As Taryn lies on the floor of what looks like any ...

A fourteen-year-old girl experiences a sleepwalking episode, leaving her haunted and determined to solve its mystery. Molly Longwell directs “Disco,” a careful, psychological thriller involving youth friendship and abuse. Jojo sleepwalks to an undisclosed barn in the middle of the evening. A whit...

Travis scratches off lottery tickets everyday out of routine, never thinking about how scary it'd be to actually win. “Scratch Offs,” directed by Andrew Lewis, is an intriguing piece of slow cinema, notable for its deadpan depiction of a young man who appears to have just won a million dollars an...

Note: The film with commentary begins around the 5 minute mark. Before that, there is an extended audio intro with no visuals.

On the edge of adolescence, a little brother visits his sister in the big city for the first time. This documentary snapshot directed by Dominique van Olm (who also stars) is a beautifully intimate account of their weekend in Toronto. The low-key course of events makes an effective case for the p...

A city construction worker, played by Buddy Anthony Diaz, gets his girlfriend Taco Bell for their anniversary dinner. Ted Marsden directs “Amor to Love,” a Hi-8 character study of a guy who can’t seem to get things under his control. We meet Buddy working traffic management at a hectic constructi...

A surreal moment out of time is shared between two siblings. David Findlay directs the music video for “Leaning into your Palms,” a song by pro-skater and musician Austyn Gillette. We meet the siblings, brother played by Gilette himself and sister played by Agathe Rousselle, recently from “Titane...

After the sound guy cancels, Garry, an aspiring filmmaker asks his roommate to fill in last minute. “The Sound and the Fury,” directed by Linas Phillips and Lisa DeLarios, is a lighthearted satire of a no-budget film production being helmed by a man wearing a top-bun and a vest over his t-shirt. ...

Two commercial actors in L.A. navigate awkward social interactions and problematic behavior. Whit Conway directs “Mo & Bert,” a buddy comedy centered around ethnographic stereotypes. Mo, a middle-eastern American, and Bert, a Latino-American, arrive at a commercial audition. There, a receptionist...

On a laid-back summer day, a young woman spends some time with her casual partner. Irmak Akgur directs “Limerence,” a slice-of-life portrait that flows in uninhibited vignettes. Minimally plotted but tonally sharp, Akgur’s film captures a couple of free spirits in their element — spending the day...

A two-man band called Maurice makes a pilgrimage to Queens to discover a street that shares their name. Travis Wood directs “Another Miracle,” a hybrid music video combining on-the-street performance and lighthearted interviews with local residents. Between lyrics, New Yorkers share anecdotes on ...

Spending his days in a café in Paris watching people, Antoine falls for a woman he sees walking to the cinema. Paul Rigoux directs “Thus Began Antoine's Down-Going,” a poetic contemplation of love, art, and self; both an iconic depiction of a youthful French romance and a meta dissection of one. ...

An off-put man tries to make a heartfelt toast for his brother's baby shower but, instead, he completely unravels. Victor Tadashi Suarez and Max Azulay direct “Uncle Morris,” a dark comedy where cultish LA family rituals and a tiny crown of destiny are revealed through a confession. Doug and Tris...

A little girl receives a letter from Santa Claus in this short and sweet holiday film from director Eric Paschal Johnson, co-director of “Observatory Blues”. Over a series of richly melancholic 16mm compositions of a young girl lugging a Christmas tree through fields and forests, Santa narrates a...

A widowed mother tries to make it on her own in Eugene, Oregon. “Vonnie,” the highly personal story of Tynan DeLong and his mother and their family history, is utterly devastating, and a drastic pivot from DeLong’s previous work - goofy comedy vids which we’ve featured with great regularity start...

A depressed writer in L.A. tries to find her way through the grieving process while her estranged brother returns home after a three year absence. “Pasadena,” the directorial debut feature from Gaston Stabiszewski, is a patiently observed character study about two siblings stuck in extreme patter...