Director: Alexandria Siah
Country: United States
Project Type: Short
Overview: After watching her gallant knight die at the end of the film, it’s up to the determined Princess Hilderose to take matters into her own hands to stop her love and earn her happily ever after.
Director: James O'Donnell
Writers: James O'Donnell, John Whetstone
Producers: James O'Donnell, David O'Neill
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Long Short
Overview: Four close film obsessed friends and recently graduated film students hold a production meeting to plan their first feature film. They discuss the state of Hollywood and how are they ever going to come up with an original idea if Hollywood has struggled since 1903, when Edwin S. Porter' first film 'The Great Train Robbery ' was remade only a year later in 1904! A very nuanced film with heaps of film history buried in a laugh out loud script with great characters who you will fall in love with really quickly. We will feel and see each of their fantastical streams of consciousness ooze from every pore as they tell the others of their 'great movie ideas'. The meeting soon collapses in a moment of chaos as their college day instincts overrun the meeting and their dreams of grandeur quickly fade away with the inevitability of a trip off to the pub!
Director/Writer David C Benner
Producer: Christopher D Walters
Country: United States
Project Type: Short
Overview: This is a 15 minute documentary on Hallowell, Maine. It expresses the spirit of the quaint city and boasts of its history.
Director/Writer: Nathan Buck
Producer: Christina Mallet
Country: Germany
Project Type: Feature
Overview: After the sudden death of her husband, a reclusive artist invites life long friends to her farm in Spain and reveals a shocking plan. before the weekend ends, the friends must reveal secrets from the past that will drive her toward a devastating choice.
Director Statement: When I set out to create the world of this film, I made for myself a set of parameters that were both practical and thematic: A short time span, a single location, and characters who have known each other a long time. Films that have left a big impression on me: “La Règle du Jeu”, “Persona”, “Knife in the Water”, “The Big Chill”, and “Festen” ... are all movies that rely on great performances, the excavation of memory and a claustrophobic world that heightens sexual and dramatic tension. The story that this film is based on is true, told to me by a close friend several years ago. While all of the details of Leah’s story and character are different, the core mystery of her decision is the same paradox that fascinated me when I first heard about it. As the film has evolved, every step of the way I have had to remind myself to stay faithful to the true north of this story: a tragic choice engendered out of friendship, loyalty, and love.
Director/Writer: Mark Benmore
Producer: Gavin Saville
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Short
Overview: A lonely detectorist stumbles across a short distance teleportation device with horrifying consequences.
Director Statement: I started producing films in 2015 when I started up a group called London Short Film (londonshortfilm.com). As much as I really wanted to make films I just didn't have enough knowledge to make the visions going around in my head, so I set out to create a meet up group to find other local London filmmakers to design and create great new films together. As well as producing and writing short films I have also been in the Art Design department on many others, an area I feel is key to creating the right feel for any scene.
Director/Writer: Patricia Delso Lucas
Producers: Patricia Delso Lucas, Al Nazemian
Director Of Photography: Dominika Podczaska
Sound Design: David Ferral
Film Scoring & Composer: Tom Bourgeois
Country: Belgium
Project Type: Short
Overview: In late-1800s Europe, Oscar, a wealthy but lonely middle-aged man who has lived a decadent, extravagant life in a chateau filled with wine, courtesans and opium, confesses love to his gardener Jude before he dies of his excesses.
Director Statement: “A period piece, 18 minutes. A dark, surreal drama. A story about unrequited love, self-acceptance and the limits of the sane mind.” With the script of For I Am Dead, I wanted to show the personal and social struggle to accept the nature of who an individual is, when his/her desires or choices do not correspond to the majority. In this particular case, Oscar is fighting with his repressed homosexuality, but this is just one of many possible incarnations portraying this dilemma. I chose to set the story at this moment in time, the late 1800s, with the intention to accentuate the fact that these kinds of questions, although they have progressed, are still relevant today. Will belonging to a minority ultimately end in tragedy?
Director/Producer: John Calder
Writer: Bronwyn Calder
Music: Georges Bizet
Sound Designer: John Calder
Country: New Zealand
Project Type: Short
Overview: An animated mock horror movie partly based on "Carmen". When the equinox lines up with a lunar eclipse, there is magic empowering ghosts to cross to the opposite side of the Earth. The Ghost of Carmen leaves her usual haunt of Seville, Spain to descend on Henderson, New Zealand for a night of grandly operatic horror and mayhem as she manipulates the people there into reenacting her own dramatic violent death. Logical and sensible businesswoman Victoria drives through Henderson playing "Carmen" on her car stereo and runs out of petrol. Her cellphone is out of credit. Boutique shopping center "The House of Seville" has its lights ablaze and looks welcoming. Don't go there, Victoria!
Director Statement: Independent Alternative Film-making as co-operative passion projects is a pathway to mainstream film-making for some of our people. While on the indie journey we also enjoy freedom from chasing mainstream funding. That means freedom of expression to take on areas like satire and experimentation where the risk-adverse and sequel-obsessed mainstream is under performing.
Director: Jun Kitamikado
Country: Japan
Project Type: Short
Overview: Shinjoe, Newly Rich from Selling an Inherited Asteroid. And Raw, the Owner of a Meat Skewer Shop at the End of Space. The Story of Two Men Meeting, One Day, Somewhere, Sometime
Writers: David Crennell, Raymond Biddle
Country: Ireland
Project Type: Short Script
Overview: An adolescent boy comes to terms with his father’s passing when he is forced to go trick or treating with his imaginary friend Bela Lugosi after his friends ditch him. This is a coming-of-age comedy-drama short based on Halloween Night 1993. The tone of this short is similar to that of Jojo Rabbit.
Director/Writer: M C Young
Producers: M C Young, Tony Estese, Andre Strong
Country: United States
Project Type: Long Short
Overview: An Asian American in search of redemption with his family and society; trying to escape a past that keeps resurfacing in an unforgiving world.
Director: James Lau
Writers: James Lau, Jason Njoroge
Producer: Steven Jeram
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Short, Student
Overview: Following eviction, three friends down on their luck decide to rob their greedy landlord's house whilst he's away... but there's somebody home.
Director/Writer/Producer: Ned Daly
Country: United States
Project Type: Short
Overview: Long days and nights at the ocean’s edge can lead one to deep reflection. The film encourages the viewer to see this portion of the natural world in new ways and to imagine themselves as they might be now, in the past, and in the future.
Director Statement: I have always loved the beach. The act of taking your clothes off, shedding the signals they represent, can lead to a kind of personal and social freedom found in few other circumstances. Where I live, beaches are relatively accessible to all. All of the five locations in this film can be reached by public transport. None are restricted to local residents. Only one has significant parking fees. I owe a huge debt to the Department of Conservation and Recreation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and to the City of Gloucester for preserving and maintaining these precious slices of nature. I owe an even bigger debt to my family who introduced me to these magical places at a very young age.
Director/Writer: Joe Dearman
Producer: Joe Dearman
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Animation, Short
Overview: In this haunting stop motion animated black comedy a man attends a séance but is sceptical about such nonsense. Will they really contact spirits from the other side? Or will they find other skeletons in the closet in this harrowing tale of terror and mystery?
Director/Writer/Producer: Wayne Diu
Country: Canada
Project Type: Feature
Overview: An unexpected patient takes a dentist and his assistant hostage, revealing uncomfortable truths about society and -- most of all -- those trapped in the office with him.
Director/Writer/Producer: Peter Maughan
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Short
Overview: Three Idiots go on a journey of enlightenment by using social media as a guide to life. Everything starts out badly, and only seems to get worse.
Director Biography: Peter graduated from Bournemouth Film School with a degree in Film Production; Editing, and has spent the last few years working as a Colourist and Editor in the film industry, working on Short Films, Music Videos and Documentaries. Having written a number of shorts during his time at university, "The Idiot's Guide" is his first outing as director, having shot, edited and sound designed the film as well.
Director/Writer: Fabian Siebecke
Producers: Fabian Siebecke, Daniel Navarro Perez
Country: Germany
Project Type: Short
Overview: "Succeed To Escape" is a story about five young adults locked into a basement room and have to face trials to be freed. During these trials, they face their conflicts within themselves and with each other.
Director Biography: Fabian Lionel Siebecke was born in Berlin on January 18, 2001 and attended school from 2007 to 2019, where he graduated from a german high school with the "Abitur" (german equivalent to the SAT test). During his time in school, he produced and directed his web-series "The Good Evil" with friends. In 2019, he made a few short movies in the computer game "Grand Theft Auto V". In early 2021, he founded a new streaming platform for machinima movies called Baker+. Machinimas are movies made with game engines and/or with tools such as Blender, Unreal Engine 5. He was involved as a Producer in two Original Movies and is involved as Executive Producer in new Baker+ Originals in development or production.
Director: Jody Cleaver
Music: Natalie Trayling
Country: Australia
Project Type: Experimental, Short
Overview: Synesthesia and music medicine, in watercolours. A visualisation of the original piano composition by Natalie Trayling.
Director Statement: The piano composition by Natalie Trayling is amazingly, improvised: as is the film. Or, as close as possible to improvisation, working frame by frame.
Director/Writer: George Louridas
Producer: Aluxal Karachalios
Original Music: Christos Danakas
Country: Greece
Project Type: Short
Overview: Pavlos and Maria, a young married couple, face the recent loss of their daughter. Pavlos, being a sculptor, decides to create a statue in her loving memory. He finds the model who triggers his inspiration but things go unexpectedly wrong. Maria watches his affection for the young model growing and rings the bell for their marriage that is about to break.
Director Statement: "The Clay and the Girl" is the first professional film that was ever shot in Agrinio, Greece and it is a Greek - Mexican co-operation. The film showcases statues by the renown Greek sculptors Christos Kapralos and Vasilis Papasaikas.
Director/Writer/Producer: Bob Eckhard
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Teaser
Overview: A young solicitor is targeted by assassins who believe she knows about their plan to kill world leaders on route to the G12 summit
Writer: Bob Eckhard
Country: United Kingdom
Project Type: Short Script
Overview: A casualty doctor sedates a trouble young woman, unaware of what she is about to unleash on the world.
Writer Biography: Not quite sure what to write here without coming across as pretentious? I kind of lean to the idea that a writer's best statement comes from what he/she creates/produces. That said, one thing I will add is that being creative is the pinnacle of human existence and something we all should aspire to in some way - re:Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. As such, I am grateful for the opportunity to be creative and count it a real blessing.
Director/Writer/Producer: DC Brandon
Country: Canada
Project Type: Short
Overview: After being stood up for a date, a woman runs into an old college classmate who gives her an unforgettable night under the stars.
Director Statement: We all die but true love never does. Setting this story against the backdrop of an ancient Chinese poem allowed me to position the love story in a more eternal way, one that extends beyond our horizon into the stars above. In this small, low-budget indie drama, perhaps one can find some hope for love in troubled times.
Director/Writer: Maya Miller
Producer: Jason Allen
Country: United States
Project Type: Short
Overview: A high school debater has extreme anxiety over an upcoming tournament.
Directors/Writers: Erik Herrera, Danny Hayden
Producer: Danny Hayden
"Key Cast": Danny Hayden
Country: United States
Project Type: Short
Overview: Charlie calls Damon by mistake, and the calls keep coming...
Director Statement: This is Danny Hayden's first Directing project! I co-wrote The Dark Caller with Erik. I have been writing for many years. Acting for 18 years. This project allowed Me the opportunity to use my own views on how best to show my Acting talent. Filmmakers I admire are George Lucas, Peter Jackson, and JJ Abrams. Danny Hayden entertains to bring people out of their minds for a while, so nothing else exists. This is the first of many to come!
Director/Writer/Producer: Clara Denise West
Country: United States
Project Type: Animation, Short
Overview: As Koko and Kookie walk towards the gym to practice, they observe Too Cool and his cohorts bullying and belittling a small bug because of her broken antennae. They attempt to walk past the group without being noticed, by Trouble calls them out. Faced with no option but to engage with Too Cool, Kookie decides to speak up for the little bug. They learn that speaking up for someone being bullied is the right thing to do.
Director/Writer/Producer: Leonard Martin
Country: Ireland
Project Type: Feature
Overview: A crazy couple,NOEL and MARIA ,40s,lose a baby in a late miscarriage and soon after ,SARAH and ROB ,a younger professional couple,move into the apartment below them expecting a baby soon. Noel’s wants to steal the baby when it’s born,while Maria thinks it’s crazy but eventually comes around. Noel is a gangland thug. He’s trying to change his chaotic lifestyle by his relationship with Maria who he met on the Internet. She’s a mental illness and since her miscarriage is becoming unstable. Noel plants a camera in Sarah and Rob’s apartment when returning a wine opener to spy on them. Noel’s plan is to be friends with Sarah and Rob and gain their trust. He keeps trying to get them over for dinner but while Rob agrees Sarah keeps putting him off. She doesn’t trust them.
Director/Writer: Scott Kelston
Country: United States
Project Type: Short
Overview: Someone has committed a grievous misdeed against a community college film school building, can three film student detectives bring the culprit to justice?
Director Biography: Scott Kelston is an award-winning, Phoenix-based visual artist with more than ten years of professional experience. His work has screened internationally and has garnered him awards for his Direction and Cinematography.
Writer: Kevin L. Schewe, MD, FACRO
Country: United States
Genres: Sci-Fi, Historical fiction, Young Adult, Adventure, Time Travel, Aliens, Area 51
Overview: It is New Year’s Eve, 1974, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the fun-loving and adventurous teens of the Bad Love Gang are ambushed by a Russian KGB agent. This propels them to use the White Hole Project Time Machine to time travel back to World War II. The gang meets with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who guides them on their mission to protect a mysterious alien spaceship and America’s top-secret Area 51. On their perilous mission, the gang must deal with Russian, Chinese, and Indian espionage forces who stand in their path. Along the way, the gang encounters danger, intrigue, betrayal, and a little romance. Ultimately, the intrepid Bad Love Gang triumphs over their adversaries to protect the alien spaceship and maintain the security of Area 51. It's Stand by Me Meets Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Writer Statement: I read the true WWII story of “The Phantom Fortress” in early December 2018 and became inspired (felt like I was “struck by lightning”) to write Bad Love Strikes, the first book in the series, based on time travel and my boyhood memories of our childhood “Bad Love Gang”. Our childhood neighborhood gang was always on an adventure and these memories formed the basis for the story. Nine of the Bad Love Gang characters are based on real people, two of those have people have died and seven (six-plus me) know they are referenced in the book. We all had nicknames growing up. My nickname was “Bubble Butt” or “BB” and I am the narrator of the story. I have always loved time-travel stories and the science of physics (that is what attracted me to become a radiation oncologist). Connecting all these dots, brought the book together in an organic way!
Writer: Craig Stewart
Country: United States
Genres: Drama, History, Romance, Thriller
Overview: In 1936, on the eve of the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, an American doctor, aided by a beautiful courtesan, searches for his missing brother. Their quest takes them on an idyllic river journey of ancient Buddhist temples, and a befriended Buddhist monk gives his blessings to their endeavor. But for their mission to succeed they must escape the deadly underworld of Shanghai, and a poignant conclusion awaits their affair.
Writer: Javier Navarrete
Country: United States
Genres: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Overview: Recent film school graduate is having trouble finding his voice. When a chance encounter with a beautiful woman finds him stuck between inspiration for what he loves to do and love for his inspiration, he must eventually choose between his two burning passions.
Writers: Tina Gandhi, Sarah Weale
Country: United States
Ganre: Drama
Overview: A spiritual hedonist with a glamorous past and a mysterious connection to a charismatic Indian guru freewheels through life with the blessing of her trusty ouija board. “Wait, you slept with the father AND the son? … And their guru!”