At this year's Not Film Fest, Aurora Ovan's "LUNA" builds a world split between City and Nature by political decree, following one rebellious young Custodian who refuses to believe the two can never speak to each other again.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Lada Kopytova's "Talismans" traces how mudlarking shapes the work of artist Klara Fokicheva, following found bone, ceramic, and driftwood from the Thames foreshore into jewellery that carries memory and spirit.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Maxwell Klaiber's "The Rattlin' Bog" makes its World Premiere as an "anti-horror" about three friends at a mountain cabin, trading jump-scares for the everyday menace of fragile egos.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Filip Nerold's "Wild Eye pub" sends the person of Death into a local watering hole for a doomed love affair and a string of absurd mistakes, a stop-motion comedy that plays reverent tribute to the fading rituals of the Czech pub.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Nicolò Ferrara's "Lighèia" follows a solitary fisherman who hides a mermaid from the world, refusing to resolve whether we are watching a rescue or a mind coming apart.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Isabella Bazoni's "Songs of Salt" gathers the untold stories of the Riviera Romagnola's beach workers and fishermen, asking what it means to safeguard memory and belonging as new EU legislation threatens their livelihoods.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Francesco Gheghi's "La Buona Condotta" traps two ordinary parents inside a single night and a single apartment, where love for a child slides quietly toward complicity.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Luka Galle's "The Catcher" follows a lonely young man tasked with catching invisible birds, using a quiet sci-fi premise to speak to anyone who has ever felt overlooked.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Gaia Antonini's "It's not like you've seen it anyway" strips away trailers, spoilers, and secondhand opinions, betting that a film hits harder when you walk in knowing almost nothing about it.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Drew van Steenbergen's "Buckets" tracks 48 hours of post-match paranoia and overthinking, asking what happens when we outsource our self-worth to strangers we've never met.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Rafael Edholm's "A-Men to That" follows three aging male models chasing a gloriously bad idea, asking what it means to be a man when the mirror stops flattering you.
At this year's Not Film Fest, Alessio Avezzano's "Behind" imagines a global butt-dial outbreak that spirals into something far darker, using a stupid premise taken seriously to poke at phone addiction and the way people refuse to back down.
At this year's HollyShorts, Simon Schneider's "Degree of Certainty" reconstructs the 1982 boardroom where an oil company buried its own climate research, asking how ordinary ambition curdles into complicity.
At this year's HollyShorts, Amir Zargara's "VITAL" follows two parents on opposite sides of the world into the shadowy economics of organ trade, asking how quickly our moral boundaries shift when someone we love is at stake.
At this year's HollyShorts, Ria Pavia's "They Haunt Him" follows a trio of clout-chasing teens who befriend a lonely ghost, and asks a sharp question about loyalty versus popularity, longevity versus the quick hit of going viral.
At this year's HollyShorts, Andrew J. Rodriguez's "El Tiguere" follows a Dominican father tending a mobile food garden under the radar in the Bronx, where the tenderness he gives his plants is the same tenderness he struggles to give his son.
