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, Mekhai Lee's "Them That's Not" turns a grandmother's repass into a fragile reunion between an estranged father and his daughter, asking who counts as "our own" when isolation runs deepest.
At this year's HollyShorts, Rana Roy's "Night Feeds" collapses the wall between a new mother's private paranoia and the violence flooding her screens, asking whether the madness lives in her mind or the world around her.
At this year's HollyShorts, Chelsea Collazo Garcia's "Why Do You Hate Me?" mines the manic search for validation for its funniest and most honest material, following a young woman whose reckless ambition turns every opportunity into self-inflicted catastrophe.
At this year's HollyShorts, Jeremy Max's "Bleeder" follows a man who earns a living by taking beatings, using brutal violence to trace the emotional wounds he can no longer outrun.
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, 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.
