At this year's HollyShorts, Hazel McKibbin's "Last Man Up" compresses a single night of male friendship into twelve pressurized minutes, tracing how one withheld truth can dismantle the fragile family three men have built.
At this year's HollyShorts, Natalie Schwan's "Last Stand at Butte City" reframes the Western around an aging woman's grief, trading gunfights for the quieter, harder battle of learning when to let go.
At this year's HollyShorts, Emily Frances Kaplan's "In the Flesh" transforms a housewife's obsession with expensive meat into a study of repressed desire, mapping the distance between what we crave and what we allow ourselves to want.
At this year's HollyShorts, Logan Fields's "Fennel" sits us down at a tense lunch between a father and son, turning the quiet distance between them into a study of the things we leave unsaid.
At this year's HollyShorts, Kristian Mercado's "Mataron a Pedro" traces the collision between Pedro Albizu Campos and U.S. police chief E. Francis Riggs, turning a suppressed history of colonial repression into an intimate portrait of resistance.
At this year's HollyShorts, Chelsea Collazo Garcia's "Why Do You Hate Me?" mines the manic search for validation for its funniest and most honest material, following a young woman whose reckless ambition turns every opportunity into self-inflicted catastrophe.
At this year's HollyShorts, Alejandro Ruax and Saskia d'Altena's "If You Really Love Me, Outlive Me" traces honky-tonk hero Dale Watson and his wife Celine Lee across Texas dancehalls and Memphis landmarks, finding in their unapologetic love story a portrait of what makes life worth living.
At this year's HollyShorts, Henrique Gonçalves's "The Going Rate" compresses an estranged father and son into a four-minute parking lot exchange, where a negotiation quietly stands in for the harder work of admitting we need each other.
At this year's HollyShorts, Zane Pais's "Lightning Bug" turns a tense family meal into something stranger and more dangerous, probing the thin borders between admiration, performance, and manipulation.
At this year's HollyShorts, Jerah Milligan's "The Ticket" chases a winning lottery stub through a neighborhood full of rivals and chaos, casting actors with visible and invisible disabilities in lead and stunt roles without ever making that the point.
At this year's HollyShorts, Brendan Beachman's "It's All Fine" detonates a dad's existential spiral mid parent-teacher conference, using absurd comedy to hold a mirror to the impotent rage so many of us are quietly carrying.
At this year's HollyShorts, Yoo Lee's "A Man Who Takes Pictures of Flowers" traces one photographer's forty-year devotion to Korea's wildflowers, finding in his passion a quiet argument for what makes a life well lived.
At this year's HollyShorts, Paige Morrow Kimball's "Wait" confronts the silence that follows sexual assault, asking whether accountability, hope, and healing are still possible seven years after the harm.
At this year's HollyShorts, Laura New's "America" traces the ordinary days before a school tragedy, following a single mother whose fight for a better life is quietly racing a clock she cannot see.
At this year's HollyShorts, Jon Boogz's "Remedy in the Rhythm" follows a young man haunted by his best friend's suicide, using dance to reach the pain that words can't, and to argue that movement can carry a story with real depth.
At this year's HollyShorts, Alana Duqum's "It's Complicated" follows a friendship between a Palestinian-American screenwriter and a poet in Gaza, tracing how diaspora, sisterhood, and sudden loss test the responsibility of bearing witness.
