2024 FEATURE FILMS
2024 SHORT FILMS
Director: Eric M Boso
Runtime: 7 min 47 sec
A mechanical pencil finds a lifelong friend.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Ali Rose Bianco
Runtime: 17 min 7 sec
Fiona, a cautious yet brave young woman, hears of the possible overturning of Roe V. Wade and decides to get a Copper IUD as a pre-emptive protective measure. However, after the Copper IUD is inserted, it takes its form as Damim, a domineering woman, looking to control Fiona from within, causing excessive bleeding and sing-songy nightmares.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Alexis Schuknecht
Runtime: 1 min 27 sec
On the evening of Samhain, when the veil is thinnest between the world of the living and the dead, a lonely young girl participates in a ritual to ease her grieving heart.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Max Fogle
Runtime: 14 min 59 sec
Eliot fixes up old lamps and sells them online. But a secret lurks beneath the surface.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Jiyoung Kim
Runtime: 10 min 51 sec
Ondo is a heartwarming story that illustrates the love of a matriarch of an immigrant family. Mijung is a ghost, unaware she is dead. She remains at home, still looking after her granddaughter, Ondo. Haunting her in the most loving way.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Maya Wanner
Runtime: 19 min 39 sec
As the filmmaker and her mother attempt to heal their relationship, their memories reflect, refract, and reverberate in this personal multi-generational documentary about forgiveness and reconnection.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Kaylin Allshouse
Runtime: 12 min 43 sec
After burglars ransacked her mother’s childhood home, Frankie must help her mom clean the mess, but since the loss of her father, Frankie and her mother struggle to get along. Now, faced with so many reminders of the past, the two must find a way to navigate a world where they only have each other.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 1 at the Drexel
Director: Lydia Cornett
Runtime: 7 min 3 sec
At a butcher shop in Jeromesville, Ohio, four meat processors situate their labor within their own minds and bodies.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Payton Burkhammer
Runtime: 10 min 52 sec
After a recent breakup, social media obsessed Maria faces her deepest fear – spending the night alone. What will she do to pass the time? Not even she knows. Through facing her ex-boyfriend, celebrating her birthday, and a chance encounter with a delivery driver, she learns a lesson in what it means to choose yourself.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Jordan Sommerlad
Runtime: 6 min 14 sec
On the day of their wedding, a tornado derails a couple’s vision for their future.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Hao Zhou
Runtime: 20 min 49 sec
A costume designer leaves their life in Iowa to return to their hometown in Guam and make costumes for a children’s theater, hoping to reconnect with estranged parents.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Cameron Granger
Runtime: 23 min 11 sec
Five years ago the east side neighborhood of a town called Bad City was leveled by giant monsters called the Titans. I was recently hired by the city to document the community’s recovery efforts — and now I’m seeing just how different the road to recovery can look for a city, and for its people.
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Rafal Sokolowski & Kanat Omurbekov
Runtime: 11 min 45 sec
River, a trans woman, returns home to attend the funeral of her estranged father. She arrives consumed by regret for not seeing him before he passed, but instead of closure, she finds that the funeral has been staged and that her father faked his death to lure her into “conversion therapy.”
SHORTS BLOCK: Local Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Jonathan Pickett
Runtime: 16 min 2 sec
An aging country musician who’s struggling to make ends meet receives an offer for an unusual private gig. Based on the life of cowboy singer Johnny Bencomo, who plays himself in the film.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 1 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Matthew Everitt
Runtime: 26 min 5 sec
A spate of local disappearances. A hill that may (or may not) be a conduit to the next life. A recluse, living off the grid, who hasn’t been seen for years—until one of his high school bandmates shows up with a birthday cake.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 1 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Neha Aziz
Runtime: 8 min
Sheila and Imran haven’t seen each other since college, but when Imran moves back to Austin, an opportunity arises for the pair to get acquainted once more.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 1 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Searit Kahsay Huluf
Runtime: 17 min 6 sec
An infatuated African-American chef creates an imaginary romantic relationship with an Ethiopian chef across the street—but her fantasies soon begin to overpower her senses, causing her to lose her grip on reality.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 1 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Victoria Negri
Runtime: 12 min 37 sec
A codependent long-term friendship is challenged when one of the women suddenly transforms into a mermaid.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 1 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Jacqueline Rosenthal
Runtime: 18 min 6 sec
In 2006, Mallory Newell (all names changed) was brutally assaulted and date-raped on her 21st birthday. The next day, she underwent a painful scientific 4-6 hour medical examination to collect clinical evidence. But because of the bureaucracy of the justice system, the police shelved her evidence and evaded her for almost two years, claiming the case to be “unwinnable.” But Mallory continued to help survivors, working at a rape treatment crisis center, where she is asked to advocate to end the Rape Kit Backlogs. Eventually, she finds insurmountable courage to become the key witness at the Senate Judiciary hearing in 2010.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 1 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Jason Headley
Runtime: 5 min 12 sec
A man misses his chance to say goodbye to his dying brother.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Em Yue
Runtime: 4 min 40 sec
We played games to pass the time in our parents’ Chinese restaurants. They weren’t authentic, but they were good.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Cameron Tyler Carr
Runtime: 17 min 34 sec
An Afro-futurist scrapbook storytelling of a Harlem Black family’s beautiful destruction during the 2008 recession. A natural disaster so mesmerizing you can’t look away from the tragedy.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Hajdi El-Omari
Runtime: 15 min
Haunted by her mother’s death and recurring attacks on her city, a young girl becomes obsessed with death. Reality invades their world as her father tries to distract her by making a stop-motion film. When his efforts to shelter his daughter fail, fantasy and imagination cross paths to help her, and in that fraction of time, story frees, and a touch of mar mama’s magic saves.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Bridget Frances Harris
Runtime: 12 min 58 sec
After an incident following Sunday mass, a Catholic altar server starts having visions of The Virgin Mary, forcing her to confront queer feelings for a movie theater coworker.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: Vero Kompalic
Runtime: 33 min 26 sec
A film crew documents a progressively sadistic commander, as he forces a group of actors playing soldiers to violent ends.
SHORTS BLOCK: Shorts Block 2 at Gateway Film Center
Director: ETA
Runtime: 31 min 15 sec
Latine twentysomething, Gema, is forced to confront the looming threat of gentrification head-on—after having no choice but to let an overeager stranger move in or risk being evicted. The uneasy peace soon turns sinister, exposing her to something far more invasive.
SHORTS BLOCK: Late Night Shorts at Studio 35 Cinema
Director: Laura Lee
Runtime: 13 min 30 sec
Even though Trundle makes the best borscht in the city, Mr. Murray says he is too hideous to work the counter. But when a Regular wants to thank the chef, Trundle takes matters into his own hands.
SHORTS BLOCK: Late Night Shorts at Studio 35 Cinema
Director: Brendan Butler
Runtime: 15 min
Stetson, a recovering addict trying to escape his past life, moves into a new apartment where he discovers a hole in his wall allowing him to watch in on his neighbors … who may or may not be watching him.
SHORTS BLOCK: Late Night Shorts at Studio 35 Cinema
Director: Carlos A.F. Lopez
Runtime: 12 min
A couple awakens in the night to sounds emanating from an unlikely orifice.
SHORTS BLOCK: Late Night Shorts at Studio 35 Cinema
Director: Tyler C. Peterson
Runtime: 15 min 3 sec
A drag queen embarks on a quest for better workplace rights, but finds herself in a dicey situation when her new lawyer, a tone-deaf straight woman, is revealed to be a drag super stan.
SHORTS BLOCK: Late Night Shorts at Studio 35 Cinema
