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After lighting up and getting the munchies, four college girls’ sleepover takes a dark turn when they stumble into a botched robbery at their local convenience store. They must squash their giggles and outsmart the robber to make it out alive.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director: Jaelyn Ellis
Producer: Jaelyn Ellis
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After a miscommunication leads her coworkers to believe that she is pregnant, a seemingly barren waitress allows the fantasy to overtake the reality and finds herself navigating an ever-growing web of lies as she gets closer and closer to her imaginary “full term.”
Project type: Fiction Short
Co-Directors/Producers: Arden Grier, Roxanna Dunlop
Writer: Julia Dixon
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Producer: Aishwarya Sonar
Director of Photography: Milind Shah
Production Designer: Prabhakaran
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Comprised of Necessity Part I: Oil, Water and Climate Resistance and Necessity Part II: Rivers, Resistance and Oil by Rail, NECESSITY traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying toxic tar sands oil through North America. Home to much of the world’s precious freshwater resources, the state is also the site of expanding oil industry infrastructure. The film follows indigenous activists and non-indigenous allies in their resistance to the pipelines traversing native lands and essential waterways.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer: Jan Haaken
Co-Director: Samantha Praus
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Never Move Backwards is an intimate portrait of an all female parkour troupe in Shiraz, Iran as they train for competition. The film explores themes of rebellion, youth, escapism, and counterculture set against the backdrop of Iran’s ever mutable cultural identity.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director: Alexandra Tahereh Kaucher
Producer: Jonathan Olson
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Nevertheless Film Festival elevates the work of women in film, as every film in the program is required to have at least 50% of designated leadership roles filled by women. The roles include director, producer, editor, cinematographer, screenwriter, production designer, sound mixer, and music supervisor/composer.
Project type: Festival
Founder/Festival Director: Meredith Finch
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Mile-high hair. Synthesized sounds. Teenage rebellion. Elizabeth Ai was on a mission to excavate an untold story of rebellious punks in the chaotic world of 80s Vietnamese New Wave until she uncovers a hidden past.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer: Elizabeth Ai
Producer: Rachel Sine
Executive Producers: Diane Quon, Geeta Gandbhir, Robina Riccitiello, C.Y. Lee
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Weaving a tapestry of a place and a people, Nihunavea traces a history of the first CA Indian Reservations, land dispossession, and a centuries-long struggle for land and recognition for the Kitanemuk people of the Tejon Tribe. Diving into both the memories and struggles of Tejon Indian Tribal members working to reclaim tribal community and share their history, the film sets out to tell a collective story of coming home–a 21st century creation story from Native California.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Development
Director/Producer: Colin Rosemont
Director: Sandra Hernandez
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Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director/Producer/Lead: Leena Kurishingal
Producer: Timothy Farrell
Executive Producer/Editor: John H. Rogers III
Executive Producer: Marissa Jo Cerar
Cinematographer: Daniel Izui
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Disabled players and their allies are using advocacy and technology to fight stigmas and enact change to make electronic gaming accessible and level the playing field.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer: Derek Dabkoski
Producer: Ian McClellan
Producer: Paige Draney
Co-Producer/Director of Photography: Nicholas Finn Myggen
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Youth in Indonesia are poised to become the majority of their country’s population by 2020. Despite unprecedented death tolls in the wake of environmental disasters, they remain resilient. No Word for No explores the question: how are the young people of Indonesia preparing to face the challenges ahead?
Project type: Nonfiction Short
Director/Producer: Andrew Morrison
Director of Photography: Auden Bui
Editor: Colton Loftin
Master Dalang: Ki Midiyanto
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Nora's Mother and Nora's Husband follow the already-produced Nora to create a trilogy of films that weave together to consider the existential vis-a-vis the banal. These queer fever dreams are a stylized, stylish look at a pivotal moment in which three complicated characters consider a single, simple question: Who am I? Inspired by Shakespearean soliloquies and TikTok rants, Nora… explores the vulnerability and narcissism of publicly sharing a private reflection.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Writer/Producer/Actor: Neil D'Astolfo
Producer/Editor: Erika Kramer
Producer: Kevin Bender
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How a mother’s search for her son led to the defeat of a dictatorship and inspired a new generation of women to fight for their freedoms.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director: Jayson McNamara, Andrea Tortonese
Producer: Sarah Schoellkopf
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After a blow up during basketball practice, Olivia struggles to face a deeper devastating reality in rural Montana.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director: Mikaela Bruce
Writer/Producer: v.c. rhone
Executive Producer: Jen Buckley-Murphy, Luna Zhang
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A Nigerian-Italian girl secretly witnesses a white Italian boy she grew up with commit a hate crime, and wrestles with whether to speak up or not when the boy shows up to her home the next day.
Project type: Fiction Short
Producer/Co-Writer/"Renzo": Will Graziano
Director: Francesca Castelbuono
Executive Producer: Bradley Gallo
Executive Producer: Olivia Hurd
Co-Writer: Daphne Di Cinto
Co-Writer: Alanna Bennett
Script Consultant: Angelica Pesarini
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When 32-year-old father Ady Barkan is diagnosed with ALS, a terminal illness that will soon paralyze his entire body, he decides to use the time he has left to confront the politicians who threaten his health care and America’s democracy. As he loses his ability to speak, he sets out across the country with his wife, 2-year old son, and a motley crew of activists to launch the most unlikely political movement in a generation.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director: Nicholas Bruckman
Producer: Amanda Roddy
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A woman in the midst of an anxiety attack is confronted with questions about her own existence by two characters, who happen to be voices in her head.
Project type: Fiction Short
Producers: Kavi Ladnier, Rohi Mirza Pandya, Anita Hodges
Director/Screenplay: Kymberly Harris
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A thriller about a collection of confident women who begin spending time at a midcentury home with a bachelor who offers them an interesting escape and ''members only" solution to their problems, only to experience him nurturing their insecurities into an entirely different form. As they descend into an unconventional bacchanal, one innocent voyeur puts things right.
Writer/Director: Anne Marie Boidock
Producer: Jay Johnson
Music Supervisor: Alex Suskind
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An elderly woman being priced out of her family home on O'ahu, Hawai'i must decide whether to leave the islands for good, or start anew with the help of an ancient island entity.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director/Producer: Melina Kiyomi Coumas
Associate Producer: B Okabe
Cinematographer: Miles Sprietsma
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Henry, a Black man grieving the unexpected loss of his father, finds himself regretting all the conversations they never had, when an opportunity arises for them to talk one final time.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Writer: Frederick Thornton
Producer: Gia Rigoli
Producer: Sean Hackett
Executive Producer: Fanshen Cox