Cara Feinberg
11 min | 2019 | Boston, MA
Patty Maestranzi's family has run the same two-room lockshop in South Boston for nearly a century. Small shops like hers used to line the neighborhood. Now, her Lockshop is among the last.
A FELLOW AMERICAN
Adrian Atwood
5 min | 209 | Boston, MA
In 2018, a survivor of a shooting spree that took place in Boston in 1968 reflects on his experience and the persistence of gun violence in America.
THE HUSTLE IS REAL
Thomas B Draudt
12 min | 2019 | Boston, MA | East Coast Premiere
“It’s like Thelonious Monk said: Do your own thing. In 15, 20 years, people will catch on.”-Jamison Harvey, aka DJ Prestige. A story about creating your own lane to make money doing what you love and the hustle and grind that goes along with it.
DEAR GEORGINA
Adam Mazo and Ben Pender-Cudlip
15 min | 2019 | Boston, MA | MA Premiere
A Passamaquoddy elder tries to sharpen the blurry outlines of her identity. Despite age, Georgina’s experience of being removed from her indigenous biological family and placed with Anglo’s still haunts her.
THE GERMAN KING
Adetokumboh M'Cormack
20 min | 2019 | US | MA Premiere
Set in 1914 at the start of World War I, The German King is the unbelievable true story of King Rudolf Douala Manga Bell; a German raised African prince who becomes king after his father’s death. Upon returning home to Cameroon, he sees his people being subjugated and enslaved under Kaiser Wilhelmʼs II oppressive colonial rule. He realizes the only way to put an end to his peoples suffering, is to lead a rebellion against the man he once considered his brother.
PFAUNENINSEL - PEACOCK ISLAND
Miklos Gaál
39 min | 2019 | Netherlands/Germany | US Premiere
An essayistic narration about a garden island in Berlin with a peacock population founded in 1793. Pfaueninsel is looked upon through the peacock, its present-day audience and the transition of spring season. The story is a composition of precise observations of the peacock, natural phenomena, and of passages of historical literature from its day. The arresting peacock displaced from its natural habitat reflects age-old ideas about pristine nature, while the storyline gradually reinterprets eighteenth-century philosophical concerns linked to habitual separations of culture and nature, and the sacred and the secular.
ANNA
Dekel Berenson
16 min | 2019 | UK/Ukraine | East Coast Premiere
Living in war-torn Eastern Ukraine, Anna is an aging single mother who is desperate for a change. Lured by a radio advertisement, she goes to party with a group of American men who are touring the country, searching for love.
WAY BACK
Per Kasch
4 min | 2019 | S. Africa | New England Premiere
It is a coincidental discovery that tears a broken private detective out of his daily routine and turns his life upside down. He embarks on a search into the past to change his future.
SELKINCHEK - THE SWING
Samara Sagynbaeva
20 min | 2019 | Kyrgyzstan | US Premiere
An elderly and honest Bolot works as a heating man at a village school. When the coal in his house finishes, his wife persuades him to steal coal from the school, despite the school’s small supply.
THE DIVISIBLE
Marcus T. Thomas
24 min | 2019 | US
After the election of a fascist, alt-right candidate to the highest office in the land, an interracial couple fights to protect their son in a dystopian nation divided by race.
MOCHITSUKI
Sky Bergman
5 min | 2020 | US
The ancient tradition of preparing Mochi to celebrate the Japanese New Year goes back centuries. Join one close-knit intergenerational community who revels in the ceremonial pounding of the cooked rice, the forming of the warm Mochi cakes, and of course eating the yummy results!! Elders and kids alike reflect on what Mochi means to them, leaving not a cheek untouched by rice flour.
JUST ME AND YOU
Sandrine Brodeur-Desrosiers
22 min | 2019 | Canada | MA Premiere
8-year-old Eva goes on a Montreal-Mexico road trip with her father aboard an 18-wheeler…the trip has another purpose.
PANDEMIA
Yiannis Biliris
4 min | Hong Kong | US Premiere
Messaging. Social media scrolling. Multitasking. Social Distancing. Filmed a year before the Covid-19 outbreak, this short is about how we create distancing among our peers, even when we are free to choose where to go and what to do. What does human experience mean? Are we heading towards a new norm, before we even realize it?
OSLO
Shady Srour
16 min | 2019 | Israel | MA Premiere
A Palestinian day laborer is denied entry into Israel for work that day. Not wanting to return home empty handed after promising his daughter meat for dinner, he needs to get creative. A poetic and tragic reflection on the everyday struggle of Palestinian breadwinners.
SWEET
Leon Oldstrong
7 min | 2019 | UK | US Premiere
The story of TFL station officer Sylvain’s struggles with loneliness after he moved to Europe from Côte d’Ivoire. The subsequent death of his only family member left in his home country died in 2016, and how he tries to make everyone who passes through the station smile.
THE AMERICAN BULL
BEST NARRATIVE SHORT
Fatemeh Tous
15 min | 2020 | Iran
In a border village between Iran and Iraq, a group of villagers practice animal husbandry. Saheb, the teenage boy who owns the only male American bull, is heavily dependent on his bull and earns money by its servicing for breeding.
IL VESTITO - THE SUIT
Maurizio Ravallese
15 min | 2020 | Italy
An immigrant works in a laundry to buy a wedding suit. One day he is found stealing a suit from a sick groom who has just been left at the altar. To atone for his sins, he will have to avenge the robbed man.
ŞEMS
Mehmet Can Bindal
20 min | 2020 | Turkey
A Uzbek man establishes himself as a dog walker in Cihangir, an area of Istanbul where the intellectual people live. After 10 years he is seen as a family member of his clients and when he decides to return home, how will they survive without him?
MY BROTHER JUAN
Cristina Martin Barcelona & Maria José Martin Barcelona
10 min | 2019 | Spain
Ana is a 6 years old girl who is undergoing child therapy with a psychologist. Through games and drawings, she tells the psychologist about her family, in particular about her older brother, Juan. She describes what he’s like, how he feels about her, how they play together. But soon, it will be revealed that things are not always exactly what they seem.
CITYLIFE 2
Graciela Cassel
7 min | 2019 | USA
Emphasizing the abstract nature of the geometry so prevalent in the contemporary urban grid. Shooting at night, the splices and overlays of the illuminated train cars, streetlights and window reflections create a vocabulary of images in a video collage that becomes a meditation on cities.