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After her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, a straitlaced college transfer comes of age in the wild chaos of a legendary student commune. Her identity wavers when she volunteers as “virgin sacrifice” for her co-op’s black mass party and her “Friend of Christian Camp Past” witnesses.
Project type: Fiction Short
Creator/Writer/Lead: Zoë Smurr
Director: Jocelyn Cooper
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7-year-old Swetha, the child of Indian immigrants, is harassed at school by classmate Bobby and his henchmen for using coconut oil in her hair. Swetha's mother, Supriya, watches her daughter grow increasingly withdrawn and agrees to end the oiling to help her daughter assimilate. At the cost of her heritage, Swetha, finally free to be American, makes a friend only to learn that her and her classmates might not be as different as she thought.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director/Producer: Ayesha Agarwal
Producer: Madison Stewart
Producer: Kavin Kapoor
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Coerced: How the banks failed domestic violence survivors tells the story of the economic abuse domestic violence survivors face daily and the plight to pass NYS’s first coerced debt bill.
Project type: Nonfiction Short
Director/Producer: blair doroshwalther
Animator: Kelly Gallagher
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On the Fourth of July, a rookie pyrotechnician assembles a ragtag team to transport a truckload of highly volatile, illegal fireworks down the Texas coast without getting caught or killed.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Co-Writer/Director: Drew Saplin
Co-Writer/Producer: Samantha Bennett
Producer: Morgan Pollitt, Francis Román, Via Bia
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A woman travels to a foggy coastal house to care for her estranged mother on the edge of death, and disturbing events begin to occur in her sleep.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Co-Writer: Sam Stone
Production Designer/Co-Writer: Sophie Weir
Producer: Paul Lee
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Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Producer: Kathryn Boyd Batstone
Director of Photography: Celine Layous
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The night before musician Buddy Kidd launches his comeback tour alongside his second born rockstar daughter, she slips into a diabetic coma, putting life and tour on hold, leaving the family to contend with grief, uncertainty, and the true meaning of a comeback.
Writer/Director/Producer/Actor: Kate Nowlin
Producer: Llewellyn Wells
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Companion of the Setting Sun, is a short hyperrealist documentary that explores the transformation of lake Xochimilco and survival of the Axolotl population. We are immersed into the daily lives of the chinamperos, examining the difficulties of maintaining their wetland farms while co-existing with the last remaining wild Axolotls.
Director: Isabela Zawistowska
Producer: Chamberlain Staub
Executive Producers: Amani King, Dalia Burde
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Trans and gender nonconforming performance artists reimagine the historic Compton's Cafeteria Riot based on testimonies from the legendary "Compton's queens."
Project type: Nonfiction Short
Director/Director of Photography/Editor: Drew de Pinto
Producer: Azza Cohen
Consulting Producer: Susan Stryker
Consulting Producer: Victor Silverman
Director of Photography: Jes Gallegos
Performer: Beni "Ali" Avalos
Performer: Mia Díosdado
Performer: Manny Mendoza (aka Pretty Plz)
Performer: Tory Teasley
Performer: Matta Zheng (aka Oblong Oriental)
A sheltered teenage girl begins cheating on her app-arranged boyfriend with her family’s robot. After they're caught, she must decide between running away with her new love or erasing his memory.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Producer/Writer: Joseph Picozzi
Producer: Beidi Wang
Producer: Connor Williams
Science Advisor: Seth Neel
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Connected is a multimedia experience comprised of a feature documentary film and an exhibition of large-scale photographic prints that reflect on peaceful protests: the documentary is a poetic documentation of various protests held in Pittsburgh intertwined with a participatory coming-of-age portrait of a Pittsburgh teen who has never participated in a protest; the exhibition consists of 40 framed images from peaceful protests held in Pittsburgh that are approximately 68 x 98” in size.
Writer/Producer/Director/Cinematographer/Photographer/Editor: Gregory Scott Williams, Jr.
Executive Producer: Germaine Shaw Williams, PhD, Seith Mann
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Exposing a painful, quintessentially American geography, Conscience Point unearths a deep clash of values between the Native American Shinnecock and their elite Hamptons neighbors, who have made sacred land their playground.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer: Treva Wurmfeld
Producer: Julianna Brannum
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Set in a rapidly evolving city of Trinidad where everyone aims to leave for somewhere else, lonely Trinidadian-Chinese girl Lisa encounters a Chinese exchange student Xialin who invites Lisa to participate in her research of creating a "behavioral clone". A platonic romance seeps into Lisa but their friendship is challenged by yet another long goodbye.
Director: Elenie Chung
Producer: Yi Meng
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Jack, a gay farm boy from Nebraska, finds anything but the promised land he envisioned when he visits a San Francisco gay club for the first time.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director/Producer: Eric Delehoy
Director of Photography: Jamie Goodwick
Script Supervisor: Bryan Tranel
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A Palestinian doctor’s nightly commute from Jericho to her home in Ramallah turns treacherous when her tire blows. Surrounded by wild animals on the desolate road, a stranger comes to her rescue but she soon realizes that he’s not the Good Samaritan he seems to be.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director: Said Zagha
Producer: Myriam Sassine
Co-Producer: Laura Jumel
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A nurse hits her bottom in a traumatic profession and an abusive alcoholic marriage. This low point quickly puts her in collision with a side of herself--she would never dare to meet.
Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Pre-Production
Director/Writer/Producer: James McNinch
Creative Producer: John Henry Davis
Executive Producer: Jeffrey Lindsay Relf
Executive Producer: Mark Durkop
Executive Producer: Kittie Fahey
Director of Photography: Jason Lehel
Public crying is a crime. Evelyn must transform her grief into gluttony to evade her father’s fate.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Writer: Katerina Hung
Executive Producer: Thomas Bang
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When a divorced middle-aged city bus driver crosses paths with a beautiful young trans wouldbe starlet, their attraction for each other becomes an unexpected lesson in rediscovery.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Writer: Jeffrey L Relf
Producer: James McNinch
Cinematographer: Andrés Garzas
Cast: Arisce Wanzer as Crystal
Cast: Trymaine Alfred as John Max
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In an on-going game of “Dare,” a Beverly Hills rich kid finds himself on the mean streets of LA with no i.d., no money and no memory. His lifeline - a homeless teenage girl masquerading as a boy for her own safety, her eight-year-old brother and a transvestite former Marine Medic, now a hooker. Dare is a first love, coming of age story about accepting responsibility and the meaning of family, friendship, love and tolerance.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Writer/Director/Producer: Shea E. Butler
Editor: Susan Demskey-Horiuchi
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A young black woman navigates everything from f*ckboys to ghosting to thirst traps on her misadventures through the dating world of 2017.
Project type: Fiction Episodic
Writer/Producer: Tasha Henderson
Producer: Brett Takeshita