Reviews and exclusive coverage from the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival. Dive into filmmaker interviews, red carpet highlights, and behind-the-scenes stories that celebrate short-form cinema at its best.
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.
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.
