20 Shorts We’re Eager to Watch at HollyShorts

The HollyShorts Film Festival is quickly approaching. With 400 official selections for this year’s festival, it’s nearly impossible to narrow down the films that you would most want to see. But, we tried anyway. While this list is in no way complete, it does highlight some of the films that Hue Watched It is eager to view and may bring some titles to your attention. 

Here are 20 shorts we’re looking forward to at this year’s HollyShorts Film Festival.

4th Dementia

Nellie’s dementia has an unlikely side effect. Despite her determination to locate her husband, Lou, she keeps involuntarily dimension-hopping! Forced to deal with eccentric families she’s convinced she doesn’t know, Nellie must think fast, act natural, and keep calm, no matter what version of her life she’s dropped into. 4th Dementia is an absurd and heartfelt story about finding your way back home, even if you can’t remember where that is.

Golden Child

GOLDEN CHILD is a dark comedy that follows twenty-something Lulu navigating her father’s birthday pool party. If wearing a swimsuit in front of your “6 almonds is a meal” mother all day wasn’t anxiety-inducing enough, Lulu’s also reunited with her childhood friend who used to pee on her when they were kids. As tensions build, Lulu resorts to surprising methods to reclaim her space amongst the chaos.

Burn Out

Produced by Academy Award Winner Jamie Lee Curtis, this film follows Virgil, a former linebacker turned assistant at a sports management company. Despite still experiencing post-concussive syndrome from his football days, we meet Virgil pushing himself physically and mentally to keep pleasing his enigmatic boss Gower… to the point where one day, after a surreal office mishap, Virgil is willing to prove his devotion to Gower by setting himself on fire.

Fish Out of Water

Directed by Francesca Scorcese, Fish Out of Water is about Lexi, a struggling young mom, has an opportunity to reconnect with her estranged family after she’s approached by her now-sober father with news of her mother’s failing health.

Alok

Filmmaker Alex Hedison delivers a compelling portrait of her friend, Alok Vaid-Menon, the internationally acclaimed, non-binary author, poet, comedian, and public speaker. Executive Produced by Jodie Foster.

Super Real, Super Grounded

The life of an actor is one of indignity, pain, and constant rejection. And we think that’s pretty funny. This comedic short reveals the lengths to which an out-of-work actor will go in hopes of booking a precious non-union commercial for grapes.

Good Grief

In this darkly comedic whirlwind, set in Salt Lake City at a Mormon Mortuary, we follow Avery, the estranged daughter of the deceased, who is slowly suffocated by her dysfunctional family at the viewing of her father’s body. Her patience wears thin as her family members continue to make the day about themselves. Eroded with guilt over her father’s last attempt at connection before his suicide, Avery reaches a breaking point which blows the lid off the family’s repressed grief. Good Grief is a fast-paced, overwhelming, emotional portrait of collective grief and the bizarre ways in which we cope

Spaceman

Spaceman uses mime, stop motion, classic animation, and theatrical elements, to explore one artist’s loss of creative passion and his journey to get it back. Allied with his passion (voiced by Mena Massoud), Spaceman (Trevor Copp) has to travel through the looking glass and battle his imposter syndrome (voiced by J.K. Simmons), in order to truly see himself once more.

How to Sue the Klan

This is the story of how five Black women from Chattanooga used legal ingenuity to take on the Ku Klux Klan in a historic 1982 civil case, fighting to hold them accountable for their crimes and bring justice to their community. Their victory set a legal precedent that continues to inspire the ongoing fight against organized hate.

Fall Risk

A young woman, Dylan (Victoria Pedretti) is in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation centers with the life-changing diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. However, as Dylan navigates her new reality, she begins to suspect something is amiss with her partner, Emily (Caitlin Stasey), and if her body is the biggest deception in her life.

The Dog

Over the course of one night at a 24-hour clinic, struggling veterinarian Claire (Kate Walsh, Grey’s Anatomy) contends with the pressures of her shift and a persistent inner turmoil when a sick dog mysteriously appears in her clinic and tries to negotiate their own death.

Self

A wooden doll who desperately wants to fit in makes an ill-fated wish upon a star, sparking a journey of self-discovery. Her desire to blend in with her peers leads her down a harmful path, challenging her perspective of both who she is and where she belongs. Directed by Searit Huluf and produced by Eric Rosales, Self is the latest from Pixar’s acclaimed SparkShorts program.

What You Left in the Ditch

This film is a dark comedy about a woman facing a lack of attraction to her husband after he comes back from a future war without any lips. This causes her to explore an affair with a much-to-young, plump-lipped grocery clerk. It’s a film about guilt, redemption, culturally unspoken vanity, and the selfish struggles with empathy.

Audrey

When Meredith’s troubled brother, Connor, brings his new girlfriend, Audrey, over for family dinner, Meredith and her wife, Rex, struggle to push past their initial reactions and accept Audrey, despite Audrey’s overt strangeness. But as Meredith’s judgment begins to overcome her capacity for acceptance, tensions ratchet higher, pushing long simmering family conflicts to the point of explosion. Heartbreaking and hilarious, Audrey is an exploration of the impact of loneliness, intolerance, and the nature of love, in all its beauty and strangeness.

Dammi

A man travels back to Paris while navigating his past experiences and weird glimpses of the present in an effort to reconnect with his estranged father. He is forced to face his fears and guilt while also reclaiming his lost Arab identity.

Bat Boy

Andre, a young man on the autism spectrum, finds solace in visiting the bats that live under the bridge near house. One day his world is turned upside down when the bats disappear. At the behest of his concerned grandmother, he seeks out the help of a lauded bat scientist to help him find out what happened. Rather than helping Andre, the bat scientist projects her own environmental cynicism onto his quest and spurns his plea for help. When she finally cracks and agrees to help, she uncovers a crushing secret about the bats’ disappearance that tests Andre’s resilience.

Play Again

Javier’s not ready to process the loss of his father. But, when he turns on his dad’s old X-box, he must compete against his father’s “ghost car” in their favorite racing game, while navigating the loss he holds within.

Atomic Chicken

The idyllic daily life of a rural chicken coop is turned upside down overnight when the neighboring nuclear power plant starts spewing its toxic fumes over the surrounding area. The chickens will have to cope with a myriad of mutations and find a way to defeat the power plant at the root of their misfortunes in a cartoonishly comic adventure.

Will I See You Again?

In the midst of a divorce and grappling with questions about his sexuality, Max Palmer (Hosea Chanchez)—a pastor and prominent community leader in Lexington, Kentucky—faces a crossroads. His past comes rushing back when Paul (Nick Wechsler), his estranged, secret ex-lover from college, arrives in town. The catalyst for their reunion is the estate hearing of their late friend, Jim (Robert Okumu). To claim their inheritance, the two former lovers must confront and address their past relationship while connected to polygraph machines.

Jellyfish and Lobster

Brought together serendipitously in a moment of mischief, Grace and Mido form an unlikely relationship when they make an enchanted discovery in their residential care home. But as they grapple with their inevitable mortality, they resort to radical methods of preserving their youthful past in an attempt to obtain the ultimate gift of immortality.

Watch these films and more at the 20th annual HollyShorts Film Festival in person at the TLC Chinese Theater from August 8 to August 18th or online via their virtual pass.
Buy tickets now on hollyshorts.com.