The 2017 DTLA Film Festival will screen more than 60 short films from filmmakers around the world in 10 distinctly different programs. Local area filmmakers will be showcased in “Only In DTLA,” exclusive to films shot in downtown Los Angeles, as well as a UCLA v. USC student film face-off. Student films from around the world will have their own dedicated program.
Other shorts programs include “Wonder Women,” which highlights female filmmakers directing leading actresses, “This Modern World,” contemporary narrative international dramas and “What the Doc Ordered,” its documentary short counterpart, “LOL WTF,” an absurdist amalgamation of some of the festival circuit’s most riotous short comedies, and finally “Unusual Objects,” boundary-pushing short cinema that is experimental in form and unique in its execution.
Among the short films of particular note are Reed Van Dyk’s harrowing SXSW-prizewinner Dekalb Elementary, inspired by a real-life 911 call placed during a school shooting, French-filmmaker Jonathan Vinel’s Berlinale-feted Martin Cries, which boldly takes gameplay graphics directly from Grand Theft Auto and mutates them into a masculine, melancholy tone-poem, and finally Janizca Bravo’s surreal black-and-white comedic mind-bender Man Rots from the Head, starring Michael Cera.
“I’m always looking for something singular, something immediate, something that from within the film you can feel the violent heartbeat of an artist needing so fervently to express something. Shorts are often a surprising, invigorating form; their so-called ‘rulebooks’ are more amorphous and mysterious than their feature-length sibling. Some projects can only work as a short form, and when all the pieces synthesize, the result can be a brutal, swift gut-punch.” said Robert John Torres, senior curator for short films.
2017 DTLA FILM FESTIVAL | SHORT FORM LINEUP
MAIN COMPETITION SHORT FILMS
DEKALB ELEMENTARY
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 20’
Director: Reed Van Dyk
Inspired by an actual 911 call placed during a school shooting incident in Atlanta, Georgia.
STUDENT UNION
Hungary | Narrative | 2016 | 9’
Director: György Mór Kárpáti
The return journey on a train from a freshman summer camp, where 18-year-old Dóra has just been sexually abused. Now the president of the students’ union wants to talk with her.
JOHNNY
USA | Narrative | 2015 | 19 min.
Director: Micah Stuart
A night with a troubled stranger forces a young male sex worker to confront a haunting moment from his past that he thought he’d left behind.
LUNCH TIME
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 15 min.
Director: Alireza Ghasemi
A 16-year-old girl deals with the responsibility and harsh bureaucracy of having to identify the body of her mother.
CONNIE
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 9 min.
Director: Joel Garber
Ambivalent about her pregnancy, Connie attempts to withstand the desert, her husband, and herself. An under-explored dive into the complex psychology of expectant motherhood.
THE MOTH
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 15 min.
Director: Sam Icklow
An insomniac writer gives in to the dark pull of a Berlin winter.
ACROSS MY LAND
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 15 min.
Director: Fiona Godivier
Arizona 2016, the portray of an american family at the Mexican border. An evening, as the mother is costly watching TV with her daughter, the father and his son get their rifle prepared for a patrol tour along the border wall. In their path, they will encounter others ‘minutemen’ but also illegal immigrants.
NIGHT SHIFT
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 16 min.
Director: Marshall Taylor
Tunde Adebimpe plays Olly Jeffries, an on-again off-again actor whose career has stagnated over the years and ends up gigging as a bathroom attendant in a LA nightclub, called “The Fix”. Quick easy, tax-free money to hold him over between jobs is what he told himself when he first tried it out one weekend at the suggestion of a friend, but quickly convinced himself it wasn’t so bad and found a strange solitude that agreed with him. It’s the joy he finds in being invisible, something he calls the art of disappearing.
MARTIN CRIES
France | Narrative | 2017 | 16 min.
Director: Jonathan Vinel
Imagine you wake up one day, all your friends have disappeared. The friends that should be there are gone. So you look. You look everywhere. Every hiding place, each inch of the city, all the marshes, all the rivers. You look, but cannot find them.
IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE EASY
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 12 min.
Director: Keith Ewell
A couple fights to save their relationship that has been surreptitiously driven by the paternalistic, cultural, and media driven expectations on love ingrained in us all.
INVISIBLE
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 4 min.
Director: William Rowe
A homeless mother’s world is turned upside down when she begins to vanish from reality. She sets out on a desperate race against time to find someone to help her before she is gone forever.
THE BASTARD
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 24 min.
Director: Jeoff Hanser
A man has sex with a sex doll; a year later a plastic baby shows up on his doorstep.
MAN ROTS FROM THE HEAD
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 16 min.
Director: Janicza Bravo
A door-to-door salesman (Michael Cera) runs into an odd lot on a bum route.
BLUA
Colombia | Documentary | 2015 | 21 min.
Director: Carolina Charry Quintero
Humanity and animality are enigmatically confronted and entwined. Combining rich high-contrast 16mm images with crisp digital color scenes, BLUA composes an uncanny entry into the relationship between human and animal existence. Unfolding like a tapestry, its montage complicates the relationship between observation and fiction. Reaching for equal beauty and strangeness, BLUA is an assertion of the uncanny, a cine-poetic philosophical speculation.
I MADE YOU, I KILL YOU
France, Romania | Documentary | 2016 | 14 min.
Director: Alexandru Petru Badelita
“I have always been ashamed to talk about my childhood and I think that this caused me a lot of sadness.”
THE POINT SYSTEM
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 9 min.
Director: Conner Bell
In a candid interview on raising her two young sons, a mother reveals the system by which every aspect of her children’s lives is monetized, including affection.
XYLOPHONE
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 9 min.
Director: Jennifer Levonian
When a woman impulsively steals a goat from a petting zoo, her morning routine turns into a madcap romp through her neighborhood.
NYO VWETA NAFTA
Portugal, Mozambique | Documentary | 2017 | 21 min.
Director: Ico Costa
Inhambane. Mozambique. King-Best. Samsung Galaxy. Versace. Babes. White rooster. There are no toothpicks in Norway. Coconut trees. Baobab fruits. Superfruits. Vitamine C. Passiflorine. Alpha-linolenic acid. SMS in Chinese. Megabytes. Hotel Cardoso. Coffee is a white man’s addiction. Ngadzango. My woman. Nafta.
A MEDITATION
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 15 min.
Director: Joe Petricca
A man who is a little lost finds himself connecting with a surprising woman who shows up to buy the DVR he is selling on Craigslist.
LAPS
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 6 min.
Director: Charlotte Wells
On a routine morning, a woman on a crowded New York City subway is sexually assaulted in plain sight.
HOLD ON (HOUVAST)
Netherlands | Narrative | 2016 | 22 min.
Director: Charlotte Scott-Wilson
During an important concert one of the strings of Kyra’s cello comes loose. She gets a panic attack and gets stage fright for the first time. Kyra tries everything to lose the panic attacks and be able to play again in front of an audience.
FERTILE MYRTLE
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 4 min.
Director: Julie Orser
One woman’s absurdist struggle through the uncertain and frustrating path of infertility told in cutout animation.
(OUT)CASTE
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 21 min.
Director: Shilpi Shikha Agrawal
When a manual scavenger cannot continue her work, her 11-year-old daughter picks up where the mother left off.
LUCIA, BEFORE AND AFTER
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 12 min.
Director: Anu Valia
After traveling hundreds of miles, a woman must wait another twenty-four hours before she can get an abortion.
dont f with me
Australia | Narrative | 2016 | 11 min.
Director: Fiona Percival
This film was made with over 1000 teenage girls via Facebook who shared stories about sexual assault.
LETTING GO
Sweden | Narrative | 2016 | 4 min.
Director: Nathalie Alvarez
Sanna is forced to take care of her little brother when their mother is emotionally unavailable.
BEAUTIFUL FIGURE (SZEP ALAK)
Hungary | Narrative | 2016 | 16 min.
Director: Hajni Kis
A high-school cleaning lady falls in love with one of the female students in the school. Her love is impossible from the beginning, but she still decides to show her feelings.
AMERICAN PARADISE
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 19 min.
Director: Joe Talbot
A forgotten man in Trump’s America attempts to shift his fate with the perfect crime. Inspired by true events.
SHIT KIDS
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 18 min.
Director: Kyle Dunnigan
What happens when the most self-obsessed generation in history meets boundary-less parenting? Children who feel entitled to murder their parents. It’s a Romeo and Juliet tale, if Romeo and Juliet were total assholes.
VICTOR & ISOLINA
USA | Documentary | 2016 | 6 min.
Director: William D. Caballero
In the Unique style of Hybrid animation…Living apart, Victor and Isolina (now in their 80’s) answer questions about their life-long, complex and arduous relationship, posed from behind the lens of their documentary filmmaking Grandson. An adorable, touching, poignant love story in a funny he said/she said account.
I KNOW JAKE GYLLENHAAL IS GOING TO F*#@K MY GIRLFRIEND
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 15 min.
Director: Nino Mancuso
After Sean and his girlfriend see a Jake Gyllenhaal movie and suspecting his girlfriend has a crush on the film star, Sean’s paranoia actually seems to manifest the fateful encounter with the actor.
LOST DOGS (잃어버린 개)
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 15 min.
Director: Cullan Bruce
A woman ridiculed by her family longs to escape. Striking a deal with her brother to clear his illegal debt, she delves deeper into darkness
HOT WINTER: A FILM BY DICK PIERRE
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 18 min.
Director: Jack Henry Robbins
Dr. Manly, the world’s leading Climate Scientist and Bodybuilding Champion, gets to the bottom of global warming. VHS, 1982.
THE ROBBERY
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 10 min.
Director: Jim Cummings
Crystal robs a liquor store. It goes pretty ok.
GREETINGS FROM ALEPPO
Netherlands | Documentary | 2017 | 17 min.
Directors: Issa Touma, Floor van der Meulen and Thomas Vroege
‘Greetings From Aleppo’ reveals how little the news about Syria corresponds with the experiences of everyday life. Photographer Issa Touma keeps away from bold declarations; he films life, the inconsistencies and perseverance as they reveal themselves in front of his camera. War is tragic and absurd. Surviving is often highly surreal and touching in this war-torn city.
SLEEPING WITH THE DEVIL
USA | Documentary | 2016 | 23 min.
Director: Alisa Yang
A documentary short of based on a recorded Skype exorcism.
PERFECTLY NORMAL
USA | Documentary | 2016 | 12 min.
Director: Joris Debeij
A man who often seems lost in an imaginary world, but works hard to keep his feet on the ground, proving that one can make deliberate choices to maintain stability.
GOODS
Brazil | Documentary | 2017 | 15 min.
Director: Carla Villa-Lobos
Upon the arrival of a newcomer, six women share their experiences, desires and fears as sex workers.
PEHELWANI
USA, India | Documentary | 2017 | 10 min.
Director: Joao Canziani
The fascinating story of a group of young men that practice the ancient art of ‘pehelwan,’ or mud wrestling, at the Bhuteshwar Akhara in the town of Mathura, India. We get to witness the strict yet ultimately joyous way these men live, the tight bond they have with each other, and the reverence for the soil they wrestle upon.
“THE TALK” TRUE STORIES ABOUT THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
Canada | Documentary | 2016 | 9 min.
Director: Alain Delannoy
There are things in life you never forget. One of them, like it or not, is “The Talk”.
IN THE WAKE OF GHOST SHIP
USA | Documentary | 2017 | 21 min.
Director: Jason Blalock
Last December, Oakland’s Ghost Ship warehouse fire claimed 36 lives, the nation’s deadliest fire in over a decade. It also set off a wave of scrutiny of live/work spaces across the country. Seven miles from Ghost Ship, a legendary punk collective called Burnt Ramen is fighting back against sudden eviction.
STUDENT FILMS SERIES
REST IN PEACE
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 18 min.
Director: Salma Amer
A girl gets possessed by her father’s spirit.
NOBLE CREATURES
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 20 min.
Director: Daniel Lafrentz
Two adversarial escaped convicts – with different ideas about how to hold onto their freedom – are hunted through the Louisiana swamp by a tortured, but resolute, female corrections officer.
MOTHER OF THE YEAR
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 15 min.
Director: Makena Costlow
Sam, loving mother of two, is a hot mess. She can’t seem to handle the chaos of her daughter’s teenage rebellion and her son’s over-involved schedule. When she disappoints those who matter most to her, her mother comes to the rescue. Sliding a clear bag across the table, she introduces Sam to a drug that might solve everything. It’s powers convince Sam to volunteer herself to host the neighborhood block party. Thanks to her newly found addiction, Sam has no problem balancing her kids and her party planning.
LIGHT SIGHT
Iran | Narrative | 2016 | 8 min.
Director: Seyed M. Tabatabaei
M.E., the imprisoned character in a room is attracted to a hanging light and tries to catch it. But the room itself becomes an obstacle on his way.
OPHELIA
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 4 min.
Director: Julia Balayan
Inspired by true events, ‘Ophelia’, tells a story of a girl, whose young love meets a tragic end. Embodied by a trio of cellist, pianist and a ballerina, the video is an ode to her undying love and a tribute to her eternal memory.
DEVIL WEARS A SUIT
Australia | Narrative | 2017 | 20 min.
Director: Eli Mak
A high-concept drama/sci-fi about a Jewish boy who must decide whether to ‘cure’ his homosexuality with an injection or be ostracised from his community forever.
CAMERA OBSCURA
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 10 min.
Director: Ashley Kroon
Tessa and Vera are best friends with the shared dream of creating a final film for their high school art class that’s so sensational, it goes down in history. There’s only one problem: they don’t have a subject. Then, they meet Strange Boy.
UCLA VS. USC STUDENT FILMS
BECOMING LUCY
UCLAx | 10 min.
Director: Luisa Novo
Lucy, 15, blames her mother for her father leaving them for a 24 year-old blonde. When she finds out her crush at school likes blondes, she dyes her hair to get the attention of both men.
CHANGES
UCLAx | 10 min.
Director: Roberto Escamilla Garduno
Changes is a coming of age dramedy following the story of Mitchell, a 16 year old boy, who is taken by his friends to a shady motel to have his first sexual encounter. There she will meet Destiny, who will show him new horizons in an unexpected way.
DEAD FLOWERS
UCLAx | 15 min.
Directors: Pablo Riquelme & Stephen R. Scott
Alex is the only living son of two. He takes care of his memory damaged mother until one day their past becomes their present.
SEARCHING SKIES
UCLAx | 9 min.
Director: Vivian Hua
When a Syrian refugee family is invited to a Christian family’s house for Christmas, they are caught between opposing viewpoints — until an unexpected event occurs.
STRINGS OF HOPE
UCLAx | 11 min.
Director: Eva Merz
In 1945, a German ex-soldier has to overcome his reservations about the American troops, playing a puppet show in exchange for food for his family.
FUCK
USC | 6 min.
Director: Nicole Danser
Fuck is a bittersweet comedy that looks at the rise and fall of a couple through charting the word “Fuck” in their relationship.
GEETA
USC | 16 min.
Director: Sohil Vaidya
16 year old Geeta has been brought to the United states as domestic worker by an Indian couple with the promises of giving her the American Dream. It is not long until Geeta slowly realizes that her financial, personal and social freedoms are slowly being stricken away from her.
GOOD GIRL
USC | 6 min.
Director: Sade Joseph
Good Girl follows Marci-Lee McKinley, an American high school student who must navigate life between her dysfunctional Jamaican Immigrant family and her predominantly-white private school.
MORGAN IN MAYWOOD
USC | 7 min.
Director: Kevin Alexander Gallo
In 1982 New Jersey, a teen boy, Morgan, has an love affair with his older manager at his part-time roller rink job. However when he discovers his manager has been keeping a secret from him, Morgan is faced with a tough decision.
TECATO
USC | 6 min.
Director: Ronald Trejo
After a run in with his AA counselor, Dom must make a decision to tell someone or not.
7 ENEMY NATIONS SHORTS
SING FOR ME
Iraq | Documentary | 2015 | 38 min.
Director: Sama Waham
‘Sing For Me’ is a poetic documentary that contemplates the notion of belonging and inherited nostalgia, while investigating the viewpoint of fractured diasporic identities and ethnic solidarity, and meditating on Mandaeanism; a fading ancient practice that goes back to Babylonian history.
A LIFE STORY
Libya | Narrative | 2016 | 14 min.
Director: Muhannad Lamin
The story of Amen, a young man who left home and across the Sahara in order to provide for his family in militia controlled Libya.
THE AUDITION
Somalia | Narrative | 2015 | 4 min.
Director: Zak Salad
The Audition portrays the narrative of two Black Actors who go on an audition for a tv series, they are subjected to numerous negative stereotypes and various versions of racial profiling.
ONE WEEK AND TWO DAYS
Sudan | Narrative | 2017 | 20 min.
Director: Marwa Zein
The relationship of a loving couple is challenged when they were trying to conceive a baby. Big decision should be made by both in such critical times.
NOT COVERED
Yemen | Narrative | 2017 | 7 min.
Director: Ezat Wagdi
When the camera becomes a passion, a curse, and at the same time a tool for disclosing the antinomies between Yemen and the rest of the world.
WEBSERIES
555
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 40 min.
Director: Andrew DeYoung
An anthology of eerie, luscious fables set in the cinematic underbelly of Hollywood. Watch as Kate Berlant and John Early morph into different characters that trace the border of comedy and hell.
THE GAY AND WONDROUS LIFE OF CALEB GALLO
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 40 min.
Director: Brian Jordan Alvarez
A fast-paced, fringe-meets-mainstream miniseries examining a group of young friends desperate for love.
VERY ANIMATED PEOPLE
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 4 min.
Director: Joseph Bennet
An animated series featuring comedians telling stories from their lives set to animation.
OUR HAPPY APOCALYPSE
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 15 min.
Director: Tyler Manzo
In a post-apocalyptic bay area, a group of drifters are all looking for an object of great power known only as ‘The Chest’.
THE DRUNK LONELY WIVES BOOK CLUB
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 19 min.
Director: Mary Lou Belli
When four neighbors found a ladies-only book club in 1963, friendships are formed and broken, secrets are revealed, social conventions are challenged, and juicy discussions are had — few of which have anything to do with the monthly book!
THREE TREMBLING CITIES
Iran | Narrative | 2016 | 8 min.
Director: Arthur Vincie
An intimate portrait of the inner lives and daily struggles of the immigrants that make NYC’s heart tremble with hope.
FRANKIE + EMMA
UK | Narrative | 2017 | 3 min.
Director: Emily Seale-Jones
Scatty, passionate, permanently broke, impulsive and accident-prone, the two girls lead each other in and out of a series of tight holes in which sometimes friendship and mutual support cause more problems than they solve.
LIFE COACHED
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 16 min.
Director: Chloe Lenihan
A renowned NYC Life Coach struggles to follow the advice she gives her clients on a daily basis.
GOD’S 17
Australia | Narrative | 2017 | 10 min.
Director: Nir Shelter
God’s 17 is a web series about a community of well-meaning religious people and revolves around the group’s founders; Brother Aaron and Sister Tammy.
IN ABSENTIA
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 12 min.
Directors: Jessica Silvetti, Ethan Kogan
The series focuses on characters confronted with the absence of both the material and intangible.The series focuses on characters confronted with the absence of both the material and intangible.
CTRL ALT DEL
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 3 min.
Directors: Margaret Katch & Roni Geva
Character anthology web series set in an abortion clinic. It’s a comedy! Based on real interviews, created by women, shot by women, with an all-woman crew.
CRYSTAL
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 4 min.
Director: Crystal Correa
Crystal, newly-single workaholic, decides to avoid dealing with her breakup which ends with a sticky result.
FAKERS
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 7 min.
Director: Ryan Mitchel
Fakers is an indie web series that highlights and celebrates the absurdity of New York City.
BECCA ON CALL
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 15 min.
Director: Jenness Rouse, Matt Draper
Aspiring authoress, Becca C. Johnson, dreams of becoming the next Jane Austen of the 21st century.
OHNI CASE FILES
USA | Documentary | 2017 | 18 min.
Director: Aimee Galicia Torres
Ohni Case Files is a medical docuseries about the surgical team at Osborne Head and Neck Institute. Each episode tells a unique story about the doctors and the patients they treat.
MY FRIEND D-RONE
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 9 min.
Director: Jack Martin
A socially awkward techie’s perfectly mundane life gets flipped upside down when a sentient, sassy drone arrives in the mail.
NEW MOMMIES
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 9 min.
Director: Matthew Mullen, Boris Undorf
New Mommies explores the lives of a freshly cuckolded odd couple as they begin their quest to find “new mommies” for their beloved pets.
THE FEMINIST COOKING SHOW
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 1 min.
Director: Lauren Keating
A Food Network frame on Broad City living.
POT LUCK
Australia | Narrative | 2016 | 8 min.
Director: Ness Simmons
Three friends make a pact which turns their weekly Pot Luck dinners into a search for love. Or not.
OCEAN PARKWAY
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 5 min.
Director: Nicole Haran
Fresh from a major tragedy, a downwardly mobile family of four—five if you count New Guy, the cat—is starting over in a borrowed, temporary home.
UNDERGRADS
USA | Narrative | 2016 | 8 min.
Director: Zoe Robyn
After a summer under the thumb of their parents two best friends are ready to catch up on all the TV that they missed; however, after moving in with their least favorite people in the world they find out their goal is further away than they thought. They decide to go on a journey to get the free television they feel they deserve.
DROPPING THE SOAP
USA | Narrative | 2017 | 12 min.
Director: Ellie Kanner
Shit’s about to get real for the cast and crew of the long-running (awful) soap-opera “Collided Lives” when new Executive Producer Olivia Vanderstein (Jane Lynch) shows up to shake things up.