Shorts Programs

This shorts program showcases a striking lineup of black-and-white films that bend perspective, blur boundaries, and reimagine the world in shades of shadow and light.

Two People Exchanging Saliva

Directed by Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata
USA, 35 min.

An absurdist tragedy set in a repressive society where kissing is punishable by death and people pay for things by receiving slaps to the face. Angine, an unhappy woman, shops compulsively in a department store, where she becomes fascinated by an ingenuous salesgirl.

Collectors

Directed by Susan O’Brien (B.F.A., film and television, 2014)
USA, 15 min.
Southeast premiere

When an unexpected visitor arrives at a blind man’s doorstep posing as a vacuum saleswoman, the night takes a fatal turn as he soon discovers her true intentions — she’s here to collect his soul.

Producers: Keren Minto, Asligul Armagan, Lyndsi Austin
Director of Photography: Michael Tanji
Editor: Kallie Billadeau

Cineál Fiáin (WildKind)

Directed by John McDaid
UK, 8 min.
North American premiere

Voiced by three generations of one family, WildKind is a poem painted to awaken the senses, a fluid journey of hope and healing across our shared watercolor motherland, a universal bedtime story, and a call to nurture a life wild and kind.

Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting

Directed by Alexander Thompson
USA, 15 min.
Georgia premiere

In the countryside of an alternate, depression-plagued 1930s America, precocious adolescent Em questions the senseless violence of an arcane ritual in which they hunt and slay a mythical beast of her mother Selma’s choosing — causing a schism between mother and daughter.

Cast: Milly Shapiro, Pollyanna McIntosh

Without Heaven (Cennetsiz)

Directed by Merve Bozcu
Turkey, 15 min.

When Deniz confronts her mother about the abuse that has haunted her since adolescence, she comes to understand that her mother carries a similar burden.

Hurikán

Directed by Jan Saska
Czech Republic, 14 min.

Hurikán rushes to save his favorite beer stand from closure by fetching a new keg to impress the bartender he has a crush on. In a wild Prague district, he faces robbers, cops, and his own thirst.