A man in New York becomes obsessed with a girl he keeps seeing. “Nadja,” directed by Abe Dassa Kaye, is a moment-to-moment look at a young man’s brief episode of infatuation. Chatting over some drinks during the day, the young man tells his two friends about a recent romantic interest: there’s a ...

In a rapidly gentrifying dive bar, two men pick a fight. “Last Nite at Sam’s,” directed by Devon Manney, is an intense animated film that depicts a violent night spiraling out of control with vivid soundscapes and compositions. What starts as an ordinary evening — one patron picks a song from the...

A hermitic stop-motion animator is tasked with caring for a collection of strange plants and a bullfrog. Nick Schoenbrodt directs ”Oops! I’ve Been Driven Mundane,” an eerie dramedy driven by its frantic lead and bold visual storytelling. Morkie rises in the morning, stretching her arms and lettin...

A simple, restrained story of an afternoon with a babysitter, well-acted and carefully crafted. Actress Joslyn Jensen is eminently watchable as Elizabeth, the sitter, as she was in the excellent 2011 film, "Without." Director Christopher Bell presents an uncommon combination of the hyper-real and...

A mail-order bride on the way to meet her new husband searches for a restroom in Chinatown, where an unassuming young man outside of a sandwich shop offers his nearby apartment. “Persimmon Night,” directed by Scarlett Li, highlights a brief encounter between two strangers that opens up a window i...

A collection of vignettes involving people in everyday moments who are tethered to otherworldly beings. “Others,” directed by Grace Rex, is a study in mood and hidden meaning, a strange, experimental portrait mostly free of dialogue but thick in atmosphere. In one segment, a woman named Dianne wh...

An inept pig-man sets out to make the movie of a lifetime, but not without a few small setbacks. “Life Movie,” created by Nick Lane, follows a neurotic digital creator in an energetic tag-along through a highly surveilled New York. "Moe R. Paine" aka "Moe" is a mutant pig-man. With surveillance d...

It’s no secret that if you scratch an open-mic comedian, a Beckettian epic of beaten, wretched perseverance is bound to fall out (see: Muck, which we featured on this site last year, or Richard Pryor’s autobiopic Jo Jo Dancer Your Life is Calling, or whatever Louis C.K. is cooking up as I write t...

An intimate portrait and concert experience profiling Juan Wauters, the NYC mainstay underground musician from Uruguay. “Introducing… Juan Wauters,” directed by Sean Patrick O’Brien, matches the scrappy, lo-fi spirit of its subject as he expresses his thoughts on life and music, and prepares for ...

A teenager confesses five secrets to their mother on an anonymous online forum. Presented entirely as a screen capture of an old desktop computer, “Five Secrets to Mom,” by director Charles Dillon Ward, applies rudimentary digital tools in service of a modern teen admission, and the film alternat...

A lo-fi parable about a young kid in Detroit who turns to scrapping to provide for his family. Portraying poverty and struggle without sensationalizing, it treats its characters as complicated individuals -- real people faced with real choices -- not as symbols of poor urban life. The oldest sibl...

A portrait of a roommate named Kayla, a teacher who watches French movies and drinks three cups of tea at a time. Directed by Travis Wood, “Kayla in 1A” is a film about two strangers living together and establishing no connection. “We’ve lived together for six months. I don’t know anything about ...

Brent struggles with the meaning of his girlfriend's suicide, which she acted out with her ex-boyfriend who she seemed to continue loving in secret. “Dearly Departed,” directed by Ester Song Kim, is a painfully dark comedy about being blindsided by someone you thought you knew. It’s a fine line b...

After a New York City biker gets injured, he turns to desperate measures to afford paying the hospital bill. “Health Not Wealth,” directed by Bucky Illingworth, explores the depressing aftermath of a medical emergency — after a visit to the hospital, Emmet receives a $15,000 bill in the mail. Wit...

A glimpse at the goings-on of a 21-year-old in Brooklyn interrupted by a sojourn to North Carolina. Liam Barton directs “Blatant Interest,” a 16mm hangout film comprising a series of brief vignettes and electronica interludes. Beer cans litter Lyle’s rooftop. Instead of beginning the day with a c...