There’s a familiar strangeness to these short films, a jarring sense of the uncanny, whether in portraying love lost and found, animals that cuddle and kill, or the threat of imminent disaster that pervades an isolated French village, a Palestinian refugee camp, a streetcorner in Hanoi, or the Delirious New York of a first-person shooter game. While a catatonic schizophrenic describes his otherworldly state of anamnesis in voiceover, the forlorn and transmogrified subject of Lucretia Martel’s AI laments, “I am not completely like other people.” Matthew Killip's John Was Trying to Contact Aliens and Michael Arcos' Valerio's Day Out just won top shorts prizes at the Sundance Film Festival. Program 109 min.
AI. 2019. Argentina/Austria. Lucrecia Martel. North American premiere. Courtesy sixpack film. 2 min.
John Was Trying to Contact Aliens. 2019. USA. Directed by Matthew Killip. New York premiere. 16 min.
Guisado on Sunset. 2019. USA. Directed by Terence Nance. New York premiere. 4 min.
Nachts Sind Alle Katzen Grau (All Cats Are Gray in the Dark). 2019. Germany/Switzerland. Directed by Lasse Linder. In German; English subtitles. 19 min.
Valerio’s Day Out. 2019. USA. Directed by Michael Arcos. 8 min.
Excess Will Save Us. 2019. Sweden. Directed by Morgane Dziurla-Petit. Courtesy Vilda Bomben Film. New York premiere. In French; English subtitles. 14 min.
3 Logical Exits. 2019. Denmark/Great Britain/Lebanon. Directed by Mahdi Fleifel. North American premiere. In Arabic; English subtitles. 14 min.
Hãy tỉnh thức và sẵn sàng (Stay Awake, Be Ready). 2019. Vietnam/South Korea/USA. Directed by Pham Thien An. New York premiere. In Vietnamese; English subtitles. 14 min.
Operation Jane Walk. 2018. Austria . Directed by Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel. 16 min.