Charting a cross country journey through rodeos, deserts, and motels, “I Know What I Saw,” is a poetic travelogue of American landscapes and small encounters. Directed by Gillian Waldo, who narrates a series of postcards addressed to someone named “N” — detailing low-key run-ins with cops and par...

In a seaside town in Maine, a group of young skateboarders go about their normal lives—skating, smoking weed, and shooting the shit. A slice-of-life snapshot directed by Gideon Baeza, “Hope is Hip” tracks the lifestyle and personalities of an outsider subculture just beyond a quaint tourist distr...

While recuperating from cosmetic surgery, an actress stops in a small town expecting peace and quiet, but instead finds herself absorbed in a local legend. “Pure Immersion,” directed by Dave Biddle and Dave Ehrenreich, is a strangely engrossing tale of a young woman covered in face bandages makin...

In the future, a data limit is reached causing the internet to spill out into the real world. Luke Strickler directs and animates “2064,” an absurdist art video using stock 3D models of common American products and brands to paint a ridiculous future. A giant floating Mario becomes the Earth’s ne...

A family quarantining together at their home in New Jersey are unable to leave their kitchen. Michelle Uranowitz directs “I Can’t Get Out of the Kitchen,” an absurdist home video filmed on an old VHS camera which is an intriguing combination of the mundane and the unexplainable. A dad makes a san...

To help his struggling sister, a young man sells his belongings retrieved by visiting women he’s wronged in the past. Darius D. Dudley directs “Skid Marks,” an off-kilter afternoon with a meandering, SoCal slacker. Missy just got dumped and kicked out by her boyfriend. She goes to Malcolm, her br...

On New Year's Eve 2080, a new age radiologist travels from outer space to Earth to practice some desert yoga. Grace Sloan directs “Death Valley,” a scrappy sci-fi oddity built with charmingly hand-crafted sets and analog VFX. Floating through space in a one-person capsule, Zadie video chats with ...

Chris invites an online date to his Brooklyn apartment where it gets off to a rocky start and ends suddenly (kind of). “Lucy in the Morning,” directed by Isaac Cole, is both an admission of the awkwardness and unromantic standards of modern “dating,” and an increasingly tender portrait of two str...

A grandson relieves himself of guilt. “Discharge,” directed by Aidan Macaluso, is a brisk dark comedy showing the phone call between a grandson and his grandmother, and the action that follows. With his grandma suffering from dementia, the young man lies about sending her gifts. It feels good in ...

A group of police cadets are mercilessly hazed as they suffer through the worst day of their training. Andrew T. Betzer directs “Important Police Shit,” a series of provocative vignettes tracking the physical and emotional abuse that cops-in-training endure, a captivating but painful glimpse insi...

A young woman experiences strange hallucinations while going about her daily life in Los Angeles. Directed by and starring Shereen Lani Younes, “Fall” is an unsettling psychological drama about dealing with a reality that appears to be crumbling. Words are jumbled on menus, the ceiling warps as i...

When a doomsday cult leader decides that he can’t spend eternity with his most aggravating follower, their plan falls into chaos. “Exit Statement,” by director Ben Kitnick, is an oddball comedy about a ragtag group of believers aiming to transcend to a higher plane. It’s December 31st, 1999, and ...

An archival exploration of a St. Louis housing project, Pruitt–Igoe, that tends to the dark spaces concealed in a collective past. Lorenzo Bradford’s “shadow work” is an experimental archival documentary where awashed materials are recycled and used to examine Black life and dispossession. Broken...

When a random couple asks him to take a photo in the park, a doe-eyed newcomer finds out what it means to be a New Yorker. Adam Kelleher directs “New York Movie,” a comic portrait of a blissfully oblivious Brit as he’s brutally broken by the Big Apple. Willy buys himself a hot dog before taking a...

Raptor is coming! A musical odyssey starring Robert Malone, who wins NoBudge actor of the year for his 3 films, films which have taken the seriousness of our site down 1,000%. This one, our first musical, is miraculously even goofier than "Fresh Starts for Stale People" and "The Confabulators", s...

A young creative working on an animation portfolio receives feedback from a friend and a stranger. Matt Barats and Andrew Tisher write and star in “My Creation,” a farcical comedy which highlights two radically different responses to an artist’s work. Dennis is passionate (perhaps overly so) abou...

Sacha gallops around Florida and gets his heart crushed by an older female. Harleigh Shaw directs “The Day that Sherrie Stopped,” a 3D animated film that’s both dreamy and somber, its surreal visual landscapes filled with color and youthful energy. After getting popsicles in the park with his fri...

A wannabe Zumba instructor has an encounter with an alien while driving through the desert. “Planet Fitness,” directed by Paul Emerson, is a lo-fi, lighthearted comedy carried by the awkward charm of Katy Fullan, who writes and stars as Jessie, a hopelessly unemployed woman. As she drives, she st...

A reflection on the intimacy of being seen and our perception of time. Shereen Lani Younes’ “no one has seen me naked in a long time” is an audio-visual journal made of existential realizations and peculiar scenes from her everyday life. We hear the filmmaker’s train-of-thought as a sequence of s...

Meet the Directors call with Max Azulay, Kate Adams, Caitlin O'Connell, and Peter Friedman.