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, Stephen Neary's "Living with a Visionary" brings a hand-drawn adaptation of John Matthias' memoir home to Los Angeles, tracing one man's care for his wife through Parkinson's, hallucination, and the isolation of a pandemic.
At this year's HollyShorts, Ayesha Fernández's "Diana la Cazadora" follows a maquiladora worker who refuses to look away from the violence around her, transforming fear into a quiet, unshakable form of power.
At this year's HollyShorts, Marissa Velez's "Birds of Paradise" turns one woman's thirty-year feud with wild turkeys into an unexpectedly tender study of displacement, loneliness, and the universal need to feel heard.
At this year's HollyShorts, Alana Duqum's "It's Complicated" follows a friendship between a Palestinian-American screenwriter and a poet in Gaza, tracing how diaspora, sisterhood, and sudden loss test the responsibility of bearing witness.
At this year's HollyShorts, hazart's "Stay for the Q&A" takes a routine post-premiere Q&A and lets it devolve into something familiar and unhinged, a sharp, affectionate send-up of the absurdities every filmmaker knows too well.
At this year's HollyShorts, Catherine Joy White's "Swim Sistas" turns a poetic meditation on swimming into a study of belonging, following four Black British women and girls who find healing, sisterhood, and joy in the water.
At this year's HollyShorts, Jack Salvadori's "Blondi" watches history's darkest chapter through the eyes of the Führer's German Shepherd, asking whether ordinary devotion can survive proximity to unimaginable evil.
At this year's HollyShorts, Pranav Bhasin's "We Were Here" follows three retired uncles who protest automation by impersonating household appliances, turning a silly premise into a warm meditation on family, obsolescence, and why AI doesn't feel right.
At this year's HollyShorts, Yarden Lior's "Chocolate" follows a young immigrant couple selling sweets on the subway across a single day, tracing how financial hardship and homesickness press against even the most intimate love.
At this year's HollyShorts, Parker Croft's "The Liars of Black Mountain Road" watches a couple compete for the moral high ground after killing a stranger's dog, tracing how shame and fear pull thought, speech, and action apart.
At this year's HollyShorts, Jesse Smolan's "Fjallferð" follows a multigenerational group of Icelandic farmers on a centuries-old sheep roundup, trading spectacle for the intimate human weight of a tradition facing an uncertain future.
At this year's HollyShorts, Kat Butterfield's "Life Goes On" reimagines the time-loop as a story about a dying man who cannot die, turning a taboo subject into a tender case for saying the important things while there's time.
Line producers break scripts into budgets and schedules, protect production, and solve creative problems — practical advice from experienced line producers.
At the HollyShorts Film Festival, top female filmmakers discuss mentorship, advocacy, and systemic barriers in Hollywood, sharing strategies to elevate women behind the camera.
The HollyShorts Film Festival hosted a dynamic discussion panel exploring the future of film in Africa, bringing together seasoned industry professionals to shed light on the untapped potential of African audiences and how the global industry can better reach them.
