At this year's HollyShorts, Lanya Nooralddin's "Beyond the Mind" makes its US Premiere with the story of an abandoned donkey's loyal return home, using silence and landscape to reflect on empathy, survival, and a land scarred by war.
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, Francesco Zenati's "Chi Mangia Solo" turns a mother's handwritten recipe into a reckoning with memory, as an estranged brother and sister cook their way back to each other on the eve of losing their childhood home.
At this year's HollyShorts, Nik Sysuev's "Creators" follows a struggling content creator who turns a stranger's darkest moment into clickbait, probing how social media distorts the way we recognize each other's humanity.
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, Keenan Gray's "Toy Gun" turns a divorced family's awkward reunion into a darkly funny reckoning with pressure, as the apocalypse rages just beyond a dusty Brooklyn window.
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, Dana Nachman's "The Second Life of Freddie Nole" follows a man who spends his days welcoming strangers home from prison, revealing why his compassion runs deeper than anyone riding beside him first realizes.
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, Kathryn Kalucki's "JÓZEFA" reconstructs her grandmother's wartime survival in a displacement camp in India, tracing how two communities, separated by war, found each other across cultural lines.
At this year's HollyShorts, Efosa Osaghae's "Phantom Carousel" follows a broke gig worker turned corporate spy through the absurdity of remote-work surveillance, asking how far a person will go to stay employable.
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, Martin Sofiedal's "Temporal Takedown" turns a single second of frozen time into a full hand-to-hand fight, proving that a sharp idea and unglamorous work can outrun a budget.
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, 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, Peter Vass's "Banshee" conjures a haunted 1880s Ireland where a mysterious comb sets a village on the path to ruin, testing an old world against a woman who refuses to bow to it.
