At this year's HollyShorts, Fiorella Vescovi's "Paper Pilots" traces an 18-year-old's coming of age under 1970s Uruguayan dictatorship, where small gestures of play and presence become acts of profound resistance.
At this year's HollyShorts, Junbo Qiu's "Oneiros" follows a wordless astronaut across an alien planet that seems to know him better than he knows himself, tracing how grief and distance can turn the love we long for into a projection we chase.
At this year's HollyShorts, Leonardo Cecchi's "Call It All Love" reconstructs a real Virginia killing to interrogate privilege and complicity, asking how a young man could destroy someone he loved without ever registering what he'd done.
At this year's HollyShorts, Aime Octave's "Echoes Beneath The Hill" follows a girl searching for her lost goat in the days before the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, holding childhood and catastrophe in the same frame.
At this year's HollyShorts, Hannah Shealy's "Birth is For P*ssies" follows a rookie doula through her first chaotic night on the job, upending Hollywood's clichés about labor and the people who quietly carry others through it.
At this year's HollyShorts, Lewis Rose's "Beshert" — produced by Jason Solomons and Naomi Gryn — follows a grumpy old man and a reluctant Bar Mitzvah boy whose chance meeting sparks an unlikely friendship that changes both their lives.
At this year's HollyShorts, Johnny Russell's "A Scent" follows a Scottish scrub nurse who detects disease through smell, turning a true story into a meditation on credibility, care, and the quiet miracles of NHS nurses.
At this year's HollyShorts, David Harring's "Silver Anniversary" reimagines the werewolf film as a study in complicity and class, following a housewife who suspects she may be the next meal at her own carefully curated table.
At this year's HollyShorts, Renée Marie Petropoulos's "Souvenir" traces a closeted teen's reckoning with a girlfriend who photographs her without consent, mapping the cycle of abuse through an accumulation of small, painful moments.
At this year's HollyShorts, Zichen Zhao's "The Kalgan Horse" follows a boy determined to save a Mongolian horse from castration, turning a coming-of-age story into a quiet reckoning with masculinity, tradition, and the cost of control.
At this year's HollyShorts, Luboš Vacke's "Director" traces the quiet distortion of a boy by his well-meaning father, asking whether we might all be living with a version of the same unspoken conflict.
At this year's HollyShorts, Imole Ladipo's "8:38" places audiences inside the confusion of a mind losing its footing, turning a contained thriller into a study of identity, trust, and the fragile bond between memory and self.
At this year's HollyShorts, Iris Breward's "Micro Bangs" follows a woman whose fixation on a drastic haircut spirals into a five-minute study of relationships and validation, finding the danger that lives right next to laughter.
At this year's HollyShorts, Joshua Kushner's "Braving the Night" turns a father's love into a dream-spanning rescue mission, asking whether a bond can outlast the memories that hold it.
At this year's HollyShorts, Ayesha Fernández's "Diana la Cazadora" follows a maquiladora worker who refuses to look away from the violence around her, transforming fear into a quiet, unshakable form of power.
At this year's HollyShorts, Catherine Joy White's "Swim Sistas" turns a poetic meditation on swimming into a study of belonging, following four Black British women and girls who find healing, sisterhood, and joy in the water.
