Narrative Competition (Shorts)

Edith locks herself in after discovering her husband viewing pornography and teases him from behind closed doors.

A young man wonders if his father’s psychological unraveling has anything to do with the infestation of bugs in his backyard.

After breaking free of a venomous friendship, Jenny begins to harness her newfound superpower, as impractical it may be.

Rain is a 12 year old girl who must take it upon herself to investigate her sexuality while her parents are distracted by divorce.

15 minutes is all inmate Akhi has to speak with his family each week. During one of these phone calls, we find out why.

In the near future, when all labor works are replaced by humanoids, a Chinese chef, Pu (60s) is ordered to pass on his cooking skill to a humanoid robot William and to teach him Chinese cooking. Designed to satisfy his owner, William tries to follow Pu’s every instruction, but his robotic demand for precision and perfection is essentially contradictory to Chinese cooking. At the same time, the protests against AI replacing the human labor are more and more intense. Qiang, Pu’s apprentice is also one of the protestors. Since Qiang disappoints Pu time and time again in cooking, Pu starts to get closer with William, which pushes him to the opposite of human beings. Pu becomes at a loss in this dilemma.

Based on real events, real people, and real things they actually said, MY DINNER WITH WERNER is a wildly bizarre and wacky farce about a 1987 dinner date with a murder plot as the main dish.

After the loss of their brother two estranged sisters show up to collect his belongings. What they find is his inspirational last instructions for them.

Exploring gender through the lens of the superhero myth, BALLOON questions how we raise boys when our concept of masculinity has become narrow.

For fourteen-year-old Sam, surviving junior high means staying below radar. But that becomes impossible after he becomes the target of the school’s next viral video. He’s pressured to “hit back,” but Sam isn’t so sure—even if he does have super powers.

Wendy is one of thousands of Chinese “parachute kids” seeking a new kind of American Dream: her parents saved up for years to earn her a one-way ticket to the US and a coveted spot at an American high school.

But upon arrival, she found that the “school” is clearly not what the brochures promised. Over time, her Dream has morphed into disdain. She’s alone, an ocean away from home, and invisible in the looming shadow of Silicon Valley.

Everything changes when a new Chinese student moves in with Wendy’s host family. Mei Ling is kind and caring… but is she friend or foe?