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, Lucy Gamades's "Mesopotamia, TX" gathers two strangers and a crowd of eclectic Texans to wait for a solar eclipse, turning a cosmic event into a quiet study of loneliness and the need to be seen.
At this year's HollyShorts, Mohamed Taher's "32B" turns an awkward errand — a single dad buying his teenage daughter her first bra — into a quiet study of masculinity, love, and the conversations that never quite happen.
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, 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, Edward Savio's "Don't Worry, No One's Listening" sits down with narrator Ray Porter for a candid talk about craft and creative survival, following one thought to the next until the conversation reveals more than either man expected.
At this year's HollyShorts, Hayden Mclean's "FarEye" follows a young Jamaican boy toward refuge in a community of music and faith, tracing what renewal can look like when belonging arrives before rescue.
At this year's HollyShorts, Jenny Lee-Gilmore's "With Time" follows a woman caring for the estranged, dementia-stricken mother who never showed her love, tracing how memory, duty, and forgiveness bind three generations of women together.
At this year's HollyShorts, Liam James Collins's "King of the Iron Will" stages a final war of words between a farmer-turned-king and the tyrant he overthrew, asking whether vengeance crowns a man a liberator or its opposite.
At this year's HollyShorts, Luboš Vacke's "Sync" 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, Carlos Torres's "Playground Director" transforms an ordinary playground into a stage for imaginative play, reminding filmmakers and audiences alike that the joy of creating never has to grow up.
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, 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, Timofey Pozhitkov's "Katya" follows a homesick immigrant mother weighing a return to Moscow, tracing how the pull of home persists even when home has become unrecognizable.
At this year's HollyShorts, Ava Bounds's "The Witches of Pool Bottom" turns a teenage girl's beauty-industry anxieties into a surreal poolside showdown, pushing everyday self-doubt to the point of absurdity until it becomes something honest.
At this year's HollyShorts, Eric Jackowitz's "The Seeing Eye Dog Who Saw Too Much" resurrects the 1970s Italian giallo as a blood-soaked fever dream, chasing both a mysterious killer and a reason to laugh in a cinema again.
