We’ve featured a lot of inspirational sports documentaries here on Short of the Week. And, really, it’s easy to see why—when it comes to short form viewing, sometimes a life-affirming, inspiring 7 minutes is exactly the pick-me-up you need to get through a dull workday.

Above All Else, is one of those sort of films—a carpe diem, “live strong,” follow-your-dreams  sort of joint. The message may be common, but it’s one that is often repeated because it’s so meaningful: when life gets tough, perseverance can get you through. Now, cue the Rocky score and go take life by the horns!

Produced by Live Unbound and directed by Yali Sharon, Above All Else tells the tale of skydiver Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld and how he managed to overcome a life-altering accident in order to pursue his stratospheric dreams. Sharon uses a combination of archival video, reenactments, and original footage to tell Brodsky-Chenfeld’s story in a slick and kinetic way (the film is based on a book of the same name). One of the more impressive technical elements of the film is the slow motion skydiving scene. These sequences were shot on the RED Dragon at 200fps by Craig O’Brien, the man behind the skydiving segments for Ironman, Godzilla, and Kingsman. The result is visually polished and mesmerizing to watch.

“This story is a reminder that when our will is strong, there is no wall that can break our drive.”

Sharon expands upon his cinematic goals: “I felt compelled to create this film because of the relatability of Dan’s story. We’ve all faced what seems to be an impenetrable wall in the pursuit of our dreams. There is a moment when we must decide if we’ll attempt to climb it or turn back. This story is a reminder that when our will is strong, there is no wall that can break our drive.”

Last year, we featured another Live Unbound film—Follow Your Fears.  Above All Else seems to continue Sharon’s trend for making extreme sports short docs that have both style and compassion. Essentially, the things we are seeing from Live Unbound feel like expertly constructed filmic adaptations of those inspirational posters you’d find hanging in a high school classroom. And, you know what? That’s totally fine with us. Keep us dreaming big, Mr. Sharon!

Whilst most coming-of-age stories see their youthful protagonists escape numerous sticky situations (like being bitten by the scrapyard dog or captured by a bank-robbing mother-and-son team) through the same childish recklessness that got them into it in the first place, the lead characters in Mees Peijnenburg’s Even Cowboys Get to Cry aren’t so lucky. Screened at numerous festivals worldwide and created as a Netherlands Film Academy grad film, Peijnenburg’s film sees a once inseparable friendship tested when life doesn’t pan out as smoothly as the pair are used to.

The story of how a relationship between two young boys changes when one is put into a coma during a street fight, according to his interview over on Dazed, Peijnenburg’s narrative was inspired after recalling a conversation with a friend when they were 12-years old. “He told me back then that if you never cry, your tears will dry and so you could never cry again. As a 12-year-old I really thought this could be true, since I didn’t cry so much”. With this dubious revelation ringing in his mind, Peijnenburg and writer Merinde Verbeek wanted to create a storyline that showed that everyone feels pain and everyone cries. Creating a narrative where we literally witness the film’s main characters transform from worry-free reckless boys to mindful adolescents in its 20-minute running time.

Described as ‘a film about losing your youth, loneliness, violence and guilt: an homage to friendship’, Even Cowboys Get to Cry isn’t exactly light Saturday afternoon viewing, but it’s exactly the kind of film I want to see scheduled in our LongShort slot we save for this day. A challenging, emotive narrative combined with assured filmmaking and compelling performances, Peijnenburg’s short feels like a scene from a larger universe, but also works perfectly as a stand-alone storyline. For a student project, this is really impressive filmmaking and can only bode well for a director so early into his chosen career path.

Inspired by Diane Arbus’ photographs of people living in nudist colonies and made entirely out of wool, Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels’ Oh Willy… is finally online for everyone to bask in its soft, strange knitted universe. Winner of the renowned Cartoon d’Or award and a huge hit on the festival circuit, where it screened and won awards all over the world, this is a short that lives long in the memory due to the contrast between its fluffy aesthetic and moving narrative.

Although the poetic nature of the storyline means that this isn’t a short that’s all style over substance, Oh Willy… is a film that’s hard to discuss without mentioning the incredible visual style created by De Swaef and Roels. Designed with the intention of working within the limitations of animating with wool, the filmmakers explained in an interview for Directors Notes how playing to the textiles advantages was key in their aesthetical decisions. “We wanted to retain the fuzzy, wiry texture of the wool”, De Swaef reveals, “so green-keying was almost immediately ruled out. We have a very low-tech approach and wanted to create a sense of wide open space on set without relying too much on post-production. Every element in every shot was a real on-set element so we had to come up with all kinds of on-set solutions to make everything look ‘real’. For example, distant objects needed to be scaled down and diffused to create a sense of distance, we strapped wool to the lenses to create foreground fog, we made huge diffusion panels using cheap plastic and created clouds by suspending bits of freshly cut sheep’s wool on chicken wire.”

The techniques used might be best described as lo-fi, but the end product is anything but! A film those on the festival scene have been talking about ever since it first screened back in 2012, Oh Willy… hasn’t lost any of its impact since it was originally created. Since completing the film, the duo have worked together on commercials, film festival trailers and even the odd awareness campaign. If you like their style, you can check out more of their work on their Vimeo account and we’ve even featured an equally odd live-action piece from Marc in the past that’s definitely worth a watch.

Considering the large number of short documentaries I watch on a daily basis, it’s rare for one to truly hit me in the “feels.” Elder, a stellar piece from director Genéa Gaudet, is that of sort of film—the kind that snatches you away from reality. The laptop screen disappears and suddenly you’re enraptured by a true-life tale of love, loss, and faith.

At the heart of this piece is a tragic love story. The protagonist, Tom Clark, patiently recounts his time in coastal Italy in the early 1970s as a Mormon missionary. As a young gay man who has been taught his entire life that homesexuality is a sin, he is essentially a lost soul, depressed and popping Thorazine to make his “problem” go away. And, so when he finally meets a kindred spirit in Gianni—a handsome Italian communist—what results is both thrilling and poignant.

This is a film about a multitude of things: the joy of first love, finding one’s self, questioning faith. It also casts a critical lens on the Mormon Church’s lack of acceptance toward same-sex attraction. This isn’t to say that Elder is some sort of “take down” of Mormonism, but the underlying message is still there. The result is incredibly compelling. It’s emotional without being sappy—a specific story that insights universal feelings (not matter if you are gay or straight).

Gaudet is clearly a very talented filmmaker, but with this film she is also blessed with two elements that make Elder stand out in the crowded short documentary field. Tom Clark, who serves as both the narrator and central character, is a gifted storyteller. His voice is harmonious, his delivery arresting. These talking-head sections are then interspersed with Super 8 film clips documenting the relationship, providing the viewer with a wonderful, grain-infused picture of a romance that could never be. It’s no surprise it was selected to be a part of the New York Times Op-Doc series.  

Superbly paced with a precise editorial sensibility, Elder is a captivating documentary—one that depicts how a short epoch in someone’s life can ultimately define the person that he/she becomes.

Director Genéa Gaudet is currently in pre-production on a feature length documentary about men’s child custody battles in the U.S. courts. Keep up to date with the project on her production company’s website.

At the risk of damaging my credibility as a curator, admittedly, some of the more abstract animated content that comes through the site goes right over my head. As such, I tend to leave the reviews of those less tangible films to folks much smarter than myself. But, Eggplant—a UCLA thesis film from animator Yangzi She —is the rare sort of abstract narrative that bridges the gap for me. Telling the tale of a boy whose facial expressions display the opposite of what he he’s feeling (i.e. he looks sad when he’s happy), this is a short that is really about not fitting in and not being understood. It takes a high-concept pitch and uses it to center on a specific theme.

Yangzi She elaborates upon her inspiration: “It started from a language barrier. When I was trying to translate my script from Chinese to English, so many subtle emotion and messages were lost in translation. I didn’t what my story to be too specific about two certain languages and then I thought about expressions, the universal language we all speak.” 

She’s resulting film is aesthetically gorgeous and emotionally resonant. Stylistically, the short is incredible—featuring various monochromatic color patterns and stunning illustrative work. Yangzi first caught our eye last year with her impressive Vimeo staff-picked animation, Pulse. But, while that film was technically gorgeous, it was missing a stronger storytelling hook for us. Eggplant manages to fill in the gaps, showing both an evolution in skill and storytelling chops. In Durian’s journey, we watch a boy come to acceptance with who he is. The film seems to be saying that similar intentions can be expressed in different ways, culminating in a conclusion that is a flow of color, music, and motion.

Eggplant consists of mostly hand-drawn animation in TVPaint with some supplementary work in Maya. All in, it took She about a year to finish it.  The result is worth the effort—a stylstic, beautiful animation that is touching without ever being overly-sentimental. Now that She is moving towards graduation from UCLA, we are very excited to see her work continue to flourish .

Curation is Broken.

We need to start by getting one thing straight—most of the curation we talk about today in our everyday digital lives isn’t true curation at all. Curation (with a capital C) is doing the hard work of searching through mounds of mediocrity, discovering work that has something new and interesting to say, and propping up it up for the world to see. Algorithmic curation has, so far, only been capable of telling us what’s already popular and social curation is simply reblogging, repinning, or rehashing what again is already popular. This is “curation” driven by a desire for scale, not for great content.

The reality is that great curation, the kind that shapes our collective culture, is hard work. Who’s up for the challenge?

How to Fix it

Today we see more and more companies beginning to embrace human curation. Whether it’s Apple’s Beats radio, Twitter’s Moments, or Snapchat’s Live Stories, companies are beginning to build teams dedicated to curating great work.

Short of the Week has been dedicated to the practice of Curation from the beginning. What goes into finding a great film? There are no shortcuts. The only way to consistently find great films week after week is having a great curatorial team and submission process. All too often, these processes are kept secret at the expense of creators, so we thought we’d pull a George Costanza by doing the opposite and let you in on what happens behind the scenes.

We take Curation seriously, because we recognize that our value and the Short of the Week brand is built upon our taste. In the same way that Apple is built upon great products, we are built upon great Curation.

Build a great team. Do submissions right. Build a great process.

Build a Great Team

Great curation, undoubtedly begins and ends with a great team. The SOTW curation team is made up of 12 amazing individuals who come from a variety of film outlets. Some are festival programmers (Sundance, Tribeca, Chicago, Palm Springs), some are online programmers (Vimeo Staff Picks), and others are practicing filmmakers.

Our secret sauce, the taste of SOTW, comes from the unique combination of curators on the team finding great work, challenging each other, and pushing each other to improve.

Do Submissions Right

As filmmakers ourselves who’ve submitted our films to hundreds of film festivals, we knew there was a better way to do submissions.

Yes, we wanted to do what we considered basic things of making sure our submissions were simple (all handled online) and affordable ($30). But the biggest frustration a filmmaker faces when submitting their film is uncertainty. Not knowing if your film was ever actually seen (Did they lose my DVD?). Not knowing who watched it (Was it seen by a volunteer film student or an experienced curator?). Not knowing when you’ll hear back. And above all—not knowing why your film has been rejected. Even great filmmakers get rejected many times over.

From this, we set out to make three big promises to all our submitters that every curator should consider:

First, give work the consideration it deserves. We watch every film from start to finish. For short, 5-minute films, it’s no big deal, but for 30 or 40-minute films, it’s a commitment.

Second, get back to people quickly. We promise a 7-day turnaround and most often filmmakers get a response in just 2 or 3 days.

Most importantly, offer feedback. We give real thoughts on what worked and what didn’t from the industry’s top curators from Vimeo, Sundance, and other major festivals. This takes time, but it’s how creators get better. Some of our most heartfelt thank yous from filmmakers have come not from those who are accepted but those who are rejected yet feel incredible relief to finally get real, honest feedback on their work.

Build a Great Process

We have a 2-step process for accepting films. First a submission is viewed by a Screener. If it passes, it moves on to an Editor for final approval. Why two steps? This ensures that a film speaks to an individual yet has a broader appeal.

We look across 5 attributes when we judge every film—Concept, Emotion, Craft, Innovation, and Memorability. Our scale is simple—Mediocre, Good, Great. Mediocre docks you 1 point, Good stays even, and Great gives you 1 point. We look for greatness, so if you come out in the positive, that’s a thumbs up from the team.

The Tools

To manage our submissions we use Submittable—an unusually powerful submission platform that we rely on every day. There’s really nothing out there like it. We use Zapier to pipe notifications of new submissions, status changes, and new notes from Submittable into our communication channels on Slack so the team can track every step of the process.

The Metrics

We receive about 250 submissions every month or 3000 a year. Every one of these is watched in full by one of our team curators. Of those, the top 17% make it to a second round and are passed up to our editors. Finally, the top 4% of the total receive the blessing of the team and the honor of Short of the Week.

Compare those numbers to Sundance—the most competitive film festival—and you begin to see what level of quality we look for. Last year, Sundance took in a total of 8021 submissions. Of which, 300 (4%) made it to a second round with 61 (1%) finally accepted.

Put It To Work

To get a even better sense of what happens with a submission, let’s walk through a couple from start to finish including the gritty back-and-forth between the curators on the team.

The Tough Call

“Profile Documentary” 10 minutes

Better known by his pseudonym, J.G. set the Guardian cryptic crossword for 55 years. In December 2012, crossword number 25,842 appeared in the paper with a series of clues that, once solved, revealed a personal message from J.G. to his puzzle-solving followers.

A puzzle in itself, this short film unpicks crossword number 25,842 to journey into J.G.’s world of clue-making: the memories that he draws upon, the themes that inspire him and the faceless solvers he imagines as he writes.

Winner: Sheffield Doc/Fest Audience Award
Official Selection: HotDocs, AFI Docs

The Debate

Paul Hunter—I wish it wasn’t quite so polished, but it is an interesting tale, with touching detail, and a wider context (assuming Americans know what a cryptic crossword is…)

Ivan Kander—Ha. It is almost too polished, isn’t it? We should probably feature this, but it left me a bit cold, to be honest. Rob? Jason?

Rob Munday—I thought I was going to love this (I like a good crossword). But in all honesty, I found it a little tedious. The production is slick, but it came across as a bit cheesy to me. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t help but think of the old J.R. Hartley Yellow Pages ad whilst watching it! I’m a def no on this one. For me, I was expecting a bit more humour and personality in the film, but it felt very flat.

Concept: Good (0)
Emotion: Mediocre (-1)
Craft: Great (+1)
Innovative: Good (0)
Memorable: Mediocre (-1)
Overall: -1

Ivan—I think the issue is that the way it’s structured is that it’s voiceover sort of just blends together after awhile. It’s an easy film to tune out. Paul, do you feel strongly about it? You can always ping Jason and double check his thoughts.

Jason Sondhi—Ivan, your thoughts are my own, and why i didn’t put the film forward as “discovered”. If Rob is a definite “no” even though he’s a Brit, then let’s decline.

Concept: Good (0)
Emotion: Good (0)
Craft: Great (+1)
Innovative: Good (0)
Memorable: Mediocre (-1)
Overall: 0

Paul—I think it is just too “respectful” of its subject… a bad choice of words I know, but I wish there was more life to it.

The Decline Letter

Dear Matt,

Thanks for submitting Dear Araucaria, and congratulations on its award up in Sheffield, and its Staff Pick over on Vimeo. We viewed your film with members of the team since you’ve submitted. The outcome of those viewings and discussions was that we felt this film was not one that we would look to run as a feature on Short of the Week.

Yours was a film we appreciated greatly on a technical level; it was very well-filmed, very professional throughout, with use of recreations, and generally a gentle sense of movement. Our challenge with it was that we did all find ourselves watching with a certain air of respectfulness, which was probably the goal, but that the solemn tone did rather take some of the personality and emotion out of it. As a tribute to the man himself, the film gave good time and pace to make that, and in this regard the film is effective. However, for the audience we have at Short of the Week, we felt it was perhaps too solemn to play well. We do have many character-focused documentary shorts, and we do look for those that not only tell a story but also draw the viewer in quickly and relate to common themes and bigger pictures.

It was not an easy decision for us to make since the quality of the film and the worthiness of the subject is evident. But it just didn’t feel like that tone would play well to a very diverse online audience who use a site where the vast majority of content is narrative-driven.

We do thank you for submitting, and for the even-handedness of your tribute piece. We do hope you will give us the opportunity to see more work from you in the future.

Sincerely, Paul

The Easy Call

Offline Dating by Samuel Abrahams

BAFTA-nominated director Samuel Abrahams, questions the status quo of online dating by challenging his newly single friend Tom, to find his next date—OFFLINE.

Watch the Film

The Debate

Rob Munday—Friends, SOTWers, countrymen, lend me your eyes! This submission came in and I need another opinion/opinions. The cynic in me feels it’s all a little too perfect to be “real” and I’m not sure if it’s even really a SOTW film, but there’s an underlying charm to that combined with some viral potentiality meant I felt obliged to share.

Paul Hunter—If it is a staged drama, then it is very well-acted and delivered to be super-natural and engaging.

If it is a documentary, then it stands out not only for discussing the new online dating world in an interesting way, but also for how well it captures the subjects and constructs the film.

Personally, I think it is a really well-done documentary (and the story behind how they got it so unobtrusive will be interesting), and if I saw it on SOTW, I would totally understand why.

Rob—Good points Bob.

Jason Sondhi—This is ace. Agree w/ Paul 100%

Jason—Yeah, I love this both for its polish and virality. The ontological issues don’t bother me—very sharable, very conducive to conversation. It’s a film that will make people think about themselves and their friends and their lovers, and ultimately that kind of engagement with a film is a great thing!

Rob—Cool. We have a space in the calendar tomorrow, might try to get it live asap.

Rob—Thanks for the feedback folks—it helped a lot in the write-up.

The Acceptance Letter

Hi Samuel,

Congratulations! Your film “OFFLINE DATING” has been selected for Short of the Week!

This was probably one of the easiest decisions we’ve had to make here at Short of the Week—your film feels innovative, engaging and emotive—basically everything we look for on Short of the Week. Obviously, as the film is live, we’d like to cover it as soon as possible, but we’d also like to get some background info on the film—please review our Filmmaker Launch Guide and fill in all of the required information.

I’ll likely have more specific questions, but for now, let’s start with these. Truly awesome work, we’re all very excited to be featuring this on Short of the Week.

Congrats again!

Sincerely, Rob Munday

Finding Greatness

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Offline Dating has since gone on to connect with a massive online audience of 600,000!

Even a film that can seem obviously great in hindsight, is never that way at first. This is the art of great curation—to see greatness in something that no one else has seen or articulated yet.

It’s not until you’ve had to do this that you realize how much of your everyday taste in music, movies, and politics are shaped by the opinions of popular media, critics, and friends around you. When you strip those away, it can be a bit frightening—as if you are out at sea in the middle of a cloudy night with no compass.

Finding great work comes back to having great curators with great taste ready to put it all on the line to find something genuinely new and exciting.

“But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”
—Anton Ego (Ratatouille)

One look through the back catalogue of my articles on Short of the Week and it will quickly become clear that love stories don’t play a huge role in my curatorial process. Usually leaving these films for others to cover on our site, I felt it was about time I branched out in something a little more saccharine and what better choice than Lucette Braune’s abstract animation Through You.

“I hope the love-story somehow gives people enough structure to also enjoy the film in a more ‘dramatic’ way”

A dance-like journey through a world of colourful silhouettes, Through You is a dialogue-free story that follows a girl as she weaves a path through the constant traffic of fellow humans on her way to the grocery story. A further exploration of the techniques and aesthetic the artist put to use on a 15-metre videowall at the City Theatre of Utrecht, the director spoke to Short of the Week about the objectives of her project. “This film is about how a person can be affected by other people without noticing it, says Braune, “we all leave a mark on each other, even the small encounters matter. If you look carefully, you can see people ‘touching’ each other…I often find it hard to really tell ‘structured dramatic stories’. I always need a way to add a story to my more ‘graphic’ observations. I hope the love-story somehow gives people enough structure to also enjoy the film in a more ‘dramatic’ way”.

A musical/visual experiment, featuring choreography that really immerses you in its charming universe, Through You is certainly a film that resides in the more abstract regions of storytelling. Feeling more like a piece of performance art than an out-and-out narrative short, whilst the storyline for Braune’s film may not live with you long after watching, we certainly hope the innovative storytelling and emotive tone strikes a chord.

Director Lucette Braune is now working on developing new short film ideas, whilst production company Il Luster, who were also involved with previous Short of the Week picks Pivot, Little Quentin, Fallin’ Floyd, Junkyard and Oh Willy… (that’s an impressive list!), have also just released Michiel Wesselius’ impressive 8-minute animation Jorka.

It is rather extraordinary that this film still survives, even in its degraded condition. It’s been over 28 years since Todd Haynes announced his presence to the world of cinephiles with what is still one of the strangest, most daring short films imaginable, and 25 years since a court order removed it from circulation. In the interim, beaten-up VHS copies were passed around keeping the legend alive as its creator rose to greater and greater prominence. When video on the internet arose it was no surprise that this little film that refused to be forgotten re-emerged in a mainstream way. 

Created shortly after Haynes graduated from college, the film is a soapy docu-drama imagining scenarios in the life of beloved singer Karen Carpenter, from her rise to fame in the 60’s to the tragedy that befalls her in the 80’s. Melodramatic to its core, the film utilizes a now-familiar narrative structure reminiscent of numerous music bios. Throughout it all the story is enormously compelling and sympathetic to Karen, even as it is damning in regards to the people in her life. Utilizing the music of The Carpenters without permission, Haynes did not let the fact that he was dealing with true-life figures affect his storytelling, as he takes numerous artistic liberties that would eventually draw the wrath of the Carpenter family and doom the film’s commercial prospects. 

One of the most notable elements of the film is of course the Barbies. It’s hard to tell in this degraded web version of the film, but the approach works really well. Haynes dedicated months to meticulously creating diorama sets for the characters to populate, and the implicit metaphor of Barbie connects to Karen’s story in interesting ways— from the constructed “wholesome” All-American image she projected publicly, to the immensely unrealistic body image that Barbie represents. Haynes dramatically whittles down Karen’s Barbie throughout the film to depict her worsening struggle with anorexia. 

Despite the lawsuits that ended the exhibition and distribution of this film, Haynes broke out in a big way just a few short years later when Poison made a splash at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival.  In the midst of what is now recognized as the golden age of American indie film amongst contemporaries like Steven Soderburgh and Quentin Tarantino, Haynes came to be seen as the leading light in a new movement known as New Queer Cinema. While worthy in it’s own right as a film, it is especially interesting to look at Superstar in light of Haynes later career, to track how the preoccupations of the film filter through his later career via music films like Velvet Goldmine and the experimental Bob Dylan film I’m Not There, or subversions of American archetypes like in Far From Heaven, or in his central preoccupation with the body—it’s manipulations and fluidity, seen his character’s frequent gender-bending natures or in the form of body-horror as seen in Poison and Safe.

One of the implicit points of short film that we are not shy to acknowledge is its role as an incubator of ideas and talent. We watch shorts often to see the glimpse of greatness that will herald the arrival of a truly important artist in film. With today’s release of Carol in the United States and the attention Haynes will garner over the coming months as it goes for Oscar, it is a treat to go back and see how a weird, daring short launched the recognition of a seminal director, and how so many of its preoccupations still resonate throughout his career. 

There’s something profound about the intimacy two strangers share, and the conversations that unfold, when circumstances bring them together in a desolate place and they have only each other to keep company through the lonely night. We can be uncommonly open in such settings, more so than even with friends or family. Is this a consequence of simple shared loneliness, and the feeling that these experiences are ephemeral? Or can these encounters eventually lead to a meaningful exchange and make for a life-altering change?

Director Brett Ferster’s One Night in Aberdeen revolves around such a meeting, when a traveling man and a local woman make a chance encounter at the bar of a Super 8 set in Aberdeen, South Dakota. The motel chain is on the brink of a massive change, and yet they find themselves in a long conversation that evolves from small talk and snappy dialogue into a deeper exploration of their own selves. With terrific acting from David Trimble and Julie Orton, the core of One Night in Aberdeen‘s lasting impression lies in it’s depiction of relatable characters and the film’s strong writing from Charles E. Netto & Mark Hopkins. Trimble’s Traveling business man character especially, oscillating somewhere between desperate enthusiasm and loneliness, feels like a mixture of a poor man’s version of the George Clooney character in Up in the Air and Death of a Salesman‘s Willy Loman.

The film was adapted from a feature length stage play, which is occasionally apparent, but the depth of the characters and the writing successfully transfer to this adaptation, and likewise, the pace of the film is excellent. As a dialogue-heavy short that runs almost 25 minutes, that might be a surprise, but the conversational approach to storytelling services the film’s themes well, inviting the viewer into the intimate relationship between the two protagonists. While One Night in Aberdeen never really raises the stakes to a grandiose level, maintaining a low-key tone throughout, the film will stick with viewers for a while whom, like the characters themselves, are open to an investment with strangers. 

Written and directed by Upstream Color producer Casey Gooden and featuring its leading-lady and director – Amy Seimetz and Shane Carruth – We’ll Find Something is a playful tale revolving around one of the most common day-to-day discussions in a relationship. Taking its audience on a tour of New York as its on-screen couple debate over where to eat (yep – the concept really is that simple), Gooden’s film provides an amusing, but relatable commentary on a situation we’ve all probably found ourselves in.

I saw a meme on Facebook recently that claimed ‘90% of a relationship is deciding where to eat’ and whilst this is obviously a humorous exaggeration, it’s also something we can all probably easily to relate to. Although relatability is something we look for in a large majority of the films we select to showcase on Short of the Week, that doesn’t mean just because a subject is identifiable, it will make a great film. However, with regards to We’ll Find Something, that’s exactly what happened.

“I wanted to make a film that peeled back the layers of a relationship”

Taking the simple premise of a tired couple struggling to decide where to eat in New York City, Gooden has taken what at first seemed like a synopsis too slight for even a 12-minute story and expanded it into a complex, charming and comedic short film. Inspired to create his narrative after experiencing similar situations himself, the director admits his storyline offered the perfect opportunity to explore a couple’s bond. “I wanted to make a film that peeled back the layers of a relationship”, says Gooden, “I also wanted it set on the streets of New York because I needed to physically wear my characters down, walking street after street, and also have them exposed out in the open”.

Shot in one night with a tight crew of just five (including Gooden) moving quickly and travelling light, We’ll Find Something does a great job of really making you feel like you’re walking the streets alongside its indecisive couple – almost like the third-wheel in their conversation. Flitting from location-to-location as the pair struggle to agree on a dining venue, Gooden credits good planning for being able to shoot the film in such a tight timescale.

With Gooden and Carruth once again working together on the latter’s latest directorial project The Modern Ocean and Seimetz involved with TV adaptation of Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, this is a trio we’ll be seeing a lot more from in years to come – lets just hope they revisit the short film format every once in a while.

If you’re looking for a short film that will give you all of the holiday-inspired sentimentality and warm fuzzies… Jason Kupfer’s Invaders is definitely not going to do it. However, if you are a fan of gratuitous amounts of blood with a dose of holiday horror, this dark comedy will certainly tickle (or rather slice) your fancy.

“We invented about 4 or 5 different methods of completely flooding some very lovely couples’ yard with well over 300 gallons of blood”

The appeal of many horror films comes down to the mysteriousness of the antagonist, which is why Invaders has caught our attention. The writer and director, Jason Kupfer, elaborates on the characters behind the super creepy masks and the awkward thought process that went into selecting their disguises: “That could just never be a cool conversation,” says Kupfer, “and would obviously strip these characters of the ominous mystique they’re attempting to achieve from frame-one. Once you start from that perspective, there’s just no way you can take them seriously in a grueling home invasion-type scenario.”

The film opens with a car outside of the house of a family enjoying what appears to be their Thanksgiving Dinner. We then get to see the awkward would-be burglars in the car decide what masks they should wear, complete with a little kitchen knife mishap. Strategic foreshadowing at its finest.

DING DONG.

Cue the blood, please! All 300 gallons of it on some “lovely (and unsuspecting) couples’ yard”. It is a sight to behold and so is the get-what’s-coming ending. The comedic timing of this couldn’t be better. And in many ways, it all ironically comes down to the masks they chose. 

Invaders has screened and picked up recognition from many major film festivals including Fantastic Fest, Slamdance, Toronto After Dark, and Fanataspoa Fantastic Film Festival. Since completing the film, director Kupfer has recently released a two-part music video for Matt Pond (you can view parts I and parts II on Vimeo) and continues to work on a couple of features film scripts which he describes as being “the perfect amount of pages in height to keep the wobbly chair in our kitchen from tipping back and forth.”

The proliferation of documentaries in the world of short films confirms what most of us know – that the real world is full of great stories. We see many of these that are good at informing viewers about situations, but the best are those that we can all relate to, that make an emotional connection in a way that cuts across cultural and language barriers to speak to us all. This film from Sweden is one of the latter, documenting a touching family relationship between a bedridden man coming to the end of his life and his young grandson, centering around the sharing of a final secret regarding wild-growing Chanterelle mushrooms.

Like the Chanterelle mushrooms, this relationship stands out. It is something we all want and hold to be of great value.

The focus on this moment is not incidental. Chaterelle mushrooms are quite rare, with a golden color that makes them stand out in the drab greens of the forest. Although they take work to prepare, and need careful cultivation to ensure they continue to grow each year, they are valuable, much sought after, and well worth all the effort put in. Although it helps to know this, it is not a film about horticulture, but rather how these same characteristics apply to the relationship between grandfather and grandson.

We spend the majority of the film in the latter days of the grandfather’s life, however home movie footage reveals the roots of this relationship, from baby through to boy. We also see the influence and connection outside of his shared time with his grandfather, and the takeaway is apparent – this is the type of relationship all of us would want across the generations of our family. Having recently become a parent for the first time and longing for this same connection with my own child, the callbacks to the length and consistency of this relationship show that this is not something that happened overnight. Like the Chanterelle mushrooms, this relationship stands out, it is something we all want and hold to be of great value, but it requires the same work, the same effort to make it happen, and make it happen consistently over a lifetime.

The title Grandpa and Me and a Helicopter to Heaven suggests a film of Hallmark sentimentality, but the reality is far from this: it delivers the relationship in a very straight fashion, showing us its roots, and the golden results that have grown over years to make for a moving story that all generations can connect to.

Inspired by Japanese urban legend Aka Manto – the tale of a ghost that roams public restrooms and offers red or blue toilet-paper to its visitors – Arrêt Pipi is a 6-minute short horror from the team that brought you Rotor. Created for Dutch broadcasters VPRO and sporting a stunning aesthetic influenced by Seventies slasher movies, Maarten Groen’s short is an atmospheric, slickly-produced film designed to thrill and chill throughout its tight run-time.

“I wanted to do something without too much pretense but embrace the genre and just have fun with it”

Despite having a storyline based around the aforementioned TP ghost, narratively Arrêt Pipi isn’t the most groundbreaking (it essentially the tale of two youngsters finding themselves in trouble when travelling through the backwoods at night) but writer Nils Vleugels was well aware of the film he was creating when penning the piece. “Five minutes is a very short time to tell a story”, Vleugels reveals when discussing the aims of the film, “so i decided to keep it simple and limit the film to one long scene. Maybe have it feel like the prologue to a longer film. I also wanted to do something without too much pretense but embrace the genre and just have fun with it”.

Shot on an Alexa Studio equipped with Anamorphic lenses, the production is sharp and the visuals lend the film the atmosphere needed for it to be a success. When creating the aesthetic, director Maarten Groen and DP Mick van Dantzig were influenced by the cinematography of Tarantino’s Death Proof and the work of photographer Gregory Crewdson – looking at some of the images from the latter, it’s certainly easy to see how his work inspired the film.

Now close to completing one short (Vliegen (Flying) – A magical-realist film about a seven-year-old girl who witnesses a man jump from an apartment building without comprehending she’s just witnessed a suicide) and having just wrapped production on another (Hellingproef (Clutch Control) – a dark comedy about the dwindling love affair between a driving instructor and his pupil) it doesn’t sound like we’ll have to wait too long to see more of Groen and Vleugels’ work.

In case the title didn’t make it evidently clear – this IS a film about small people with hats. Created as her graduation film from the Royal College of Art in London, Sarina Nihei’s surreal short Small People with Hats transports you to a strange and often hilarious universe where little folks in headgear find themselves in very odd situations.

Picking up awards in 2015 at the Ottawa International Animation Film Festival and Holland Animation Film Festival Nihei’s puzzling, yet intriguing 7-minute creation is based on themes of despair and absurdity in a society. Speaking to Vice, the director explained how she took some serious subjects and injected them with her own brand of humour. “People are killed for irrational reasons, which always makes me feel despair”, says Nihei, “but when it comes to filmmaking, I make much of it entertaining and don’t want to make it too serious”.

I’m unsure whether Small People with Hats is a film that is expected to be analysed at some deeper or more profound level, but there’s something about the absurdity of the humour in Nihei’s storytelling that really appeals to me. Raised on the likes of Spike Milligan, Monty Python and Vic & Bob (that may be a reference only UK residents get!) surreal, farcical humour always hits the spot for me and there’s just the right amount here to make a somewhat experimental filmmaking approach accessible.

If you enjoyed Small People with Hats be sure to check out more of Sarina’s work on her Vimeo channel or through her website (listed below)

Good Boy, an expertly performed drama written and directed by Oran Franco, isn’t an exactly an easy film to write-about. For one, revealing the premise essentially ruins the film. Granted, we live in a spoiler culture and I’m assuming if you’re reading this you might have already watched the short, but still, it’s something that I’m especially cognizant of in regards to this particular piece. Keeping things general, Franco’s film, at its core, is about how far one will go for someone he/she loves. In this case, those limits are explored in the relationship between a mother and her son.

Franco elaborates upon his reasons for making the film: “I suppose the idea for the film came to me quite gradually, as a culmination of thoughts and ideas around the subject of freedom of choice and I felt that there were questions I wanted to explore. It’s interesting how the act of filmmaking can really be a form of therapy—an inward journey and exploration of the self.”

*SPOILERS* 

But, let’s get into it, shall we? This is a film about voluntary euthanasia—a charged issue that has been politicized and discussed quite a bit in the mainstream media. However, very rarely is the issue approached with compassion. The exact opposite is true with Good Boy. The film is subtle and incredibly human in its exploration of the topic. It’s also surprisingly tense as things develop. The scene in the veterinarian’s office is masterfully executed. As viewers, we wonder how far the protagonist is willing to go to give his mother what she wants? And, in effect, we are forced to ask ourselves a similar question: how far would we be willing to go if put in the same situation?

Franco elaborates further: “I was very careful not to push an agenda as I know how deeply divisive this subject is. This does not mean that I do not have an opinion on the matter, but I became increasingly aware that the discussion around euthanasia, especially in the political arena seemed to exist as some elevated philosophical construct and that people were losing touch with the humanity of it all.”

Coming in at a patiently constructed 18-minutes, we realize this isn’t a short that is tailor-made for the internet. But, overall, we found Franco’s sense of directorial craft too hard to deny. The film is also bolstered by an incredibly strong central performance from actor Simon King. He says so much without physically saying much at all—his expressions and body language all convey his eternal struggle.

Good Boy was Franco’s graduating film at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Australia. Franco has since moved to the United States, where he is working on a variety of projects, including a feature screenplay that explores masculinity and the nature of being a man in modern society. It’s another “hot-button” issue, but if Good Boy is a representative example, it’s one that we know Franco can explore with nuance and compassion.

With epic science fiction short THE SHAMAN recently released online, Short of the Week sat down with director/producer Marco Kalantari to talk about how he achieved his blockbuster-styled production, managing finances and the appeal of the sci-fi genre.

There’s a fascinating blend of futuristic and bygone worlds at the heart of your story, how did this premise first originate?

We’re all asking ourselves big questions about our future, and I am thrilled by the idea of finding the answers in the past. I wanted to create a science fiction film that has an archaic quality, a cinematic piece that deserves to be seen on the big screen, and goes very deep in terms of the characters and their individual motivations.

What is that appeals to you about the Science Fiction genre?

I am fascinated by the visionary aspect of Science Fiction, the concept of creating worlds, setting the rules in it, forming and shaping characters. This means a lot of work. Before I get into the plot, I will clarify the nature of this world, the lives of the individuals populating it, family structures, law, science, culture, crime. I’ll sit down and write endless pages of character profiles, their background, education, how they grew up in this strange environment and how they found their individual place in it. A narrative world that I build up from scratch demands that I am clear about every detail, every motivation. I care a lot about keeping a logic and emotional connection to our present lives in my utopian stories. I believe good Sci-Fi must have a relatable aspect and a strong high-concept. At the same time I enjoy to bend reality and distort real elements in a way that they turn into a bold, futuristic vision.

“The more fantastic a topic is, the more important is the connection between the heart of the story and the heart of the viewer”

To me a history book, a talk with an old couple about life or visit in a museum is thousand times more inspiring than watching another Sci-Fi movie. In this industry a lot of people base a great part of their creativity on reproduction. Of course I also constantly collect references and inspirational material, and get permanently influenced by the work of other artists. But that influence mainly relates to the surface of the cinematic realities I am working on, the look and style of things. The content, the heart of the story should, to my opinion, be inspired by life, by the troubles, hopes, fears and dreams of the people next door. The more fantastic a topic is, the more important is the connection between the heart of the story and the heart of the viewer.

Many science fiction shorts are made nowadays with the aim of developing it from this bytesize format to something grander, but your was slightly different in this aspect, being transformed from a longer piece into something briefer. What prompted this move?

When working on the original concept of THE SHAMAN many years ago, I had written it as a complete length feature film script. I had to realize that at that point in my directing career it was unrealistic to make such a big movie and tell such an epic story, so I had put it aside for a while and worked on other stuff. When producer Josh Weinstock encouraged me to shoot a short film during a meeting in LA in 2013, I decided to take part of that shaman story, and develop it into a compact, intensive short film. It was clear for me that this must not be a mere proof-of-concept, but a stand-alone narrative piece that can entertain and inspire its audience.

THE SHAMAN showcases one of the most impressive aesthetics you’re likely to see in the short film world, was the aim always to go for something so ambitious? And what can you tell us about the production?

THE SHAMAN started off as a small yet visionary project, and ultimately took over one and a half years to complete. I did have a very clear vision from the very beginning and wanted to turn it into reality with as little compromise as possible. If you make a small film, keep it small. But when you decide to tell a big story, you have to get it right and go for it.

On THE SHAMAN I was working as the director as well as the producer, which means every day I had to calibrate the balance between my artistic vision and my financial and logistic possibilities. I generally believe that in low-budget film the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The trick is to see it that way.

This gave me maximum control over the creative process, but it also meant that I had to carry the entire production risk myself, and finance the film out of my own pocket. It’s a question of taking responsibility. If I have people working on a low budget on my project, then I have to at least give them a great film back in return, no matter what.

“In total we had 7 separate post-production crews working on the film.”

One of the unique aspects of this project is the fact that artists and talents from so many different countries were involved – Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Ukraine, France, Serbia, Malaysia, UK, Iceland, Germany and Austria. This meant a lot of communication and coordination, but it also gave the production of the film a very special energy.

The film was shot on Arri Alexa, on Prores 4444. This format gave us more flexibility. The offline was done on Final Cut 7, grading and final online on DaVinci Resolve. For the VFX part we worked on all kinds of platforms, 3dmax, Cinema 4d, Nuke, After Effects. In total we had 7 separate post-production crews working on the film.

For a short, the film had a sizeable budget ($100,000), how did you go about raising those finances and what did that mean for your production?

I did have a very clear vision from the very beginning, and wanted to turn it into reality with as little compromise as possible. This meant I needed to give this project the production resources it requires. We got some small funding from the Austrian government. The major part of the budget came out of my own pocket. The last 2 years were tough.

“No budget number can truly represent the ‘actual’ cost of this film”

Although the budget looks big for a short film at first sight, it still meant that we were under huge pressure during production. As a producer I need to ask myself what are the assets and possibilities I have? Which talents do I have access to? How far can I take my team? How can I maximize the production value on the screen, even if my means are extremely limited? This requires a very creative and flexible way of producing. We got so much support from talents and crew, sponsors and supporters. Without all those fine people the film would have never been possible. So no budget number can truly represent the ‘actual’ cost of this film.

Although the budget you had available will seem huge to many short filmmakers, the scale of production is probably more comparable to that of a Blockbuster feature. How much importance did you give the special fx when it came to creating your aesthetic and what can you tell us about how they were created?

I am actually a rather conservative filmmaker and I believe in the philosophy to create as much as possible in-camera. I also believe that a good location can give the performances of the cast enormous energy. This has always been an essential aspect of my work. To feel the freezing wind in your face, to stand knee-deep in dirt and mud, to brave the harsh environment on an outdoor shoot is an exhausting exercise, but the adventurous factor inspires the entire crew. For some of our scenes we went all the way to Iceland with a micro-team. It was absolutely worth it.

Having that said, THE SHAMAN ultimately required a fair amount of visual effects in order to bring this world to the screen. The tricky thing was the fact that we had 7 different post production crews from different countries working on those shots. Our VFX artists did this in their free time, on the weekends, in lunch breaks. Take the shots of the run-towards-the-colossus scene as an example: The colossus was designed and modelled in Singapore and Malaysia, comped in Berlin and Prague, some of the 3d tracking was done in Ukraine, color-grading in Shanghai, final touch-ups in Tokyo. My VFX supervisor Lau Kia Hau – who is the mastermind behind the complex post-production of THE SHAMAN – and I have never met face to face during the entire 1 1/2 years of production. It’s insane. We have perfected the art of virtual communication.

The crux with every visionary work is, it needs to be 100% consistent throughout in order to fully captivate the audience. Each shot of this world you are creating must be on par with the rest of the film. Those guys did a magnificent job. I’m very proud of the things we managed to achieve.

“I love to create worlds and place characters with strong emotional conflicts inside them”

What are you working on next?

I am at the moment developing several projects together with UTA and my management Zerogravity. A lot of the stuff I have my hands on at the moment is Sci-Fi- and action-oriented, but I won’t limit myself to any genre. I love to create worlds and place characters with strong emotional conflicts inside them. That was always my strength.

With a trailer amassing over 4-million views on YouTube and a premiere at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival in New York, epic science-fiction short THE SHAMAN lands on our site having already generated a great deal of hype. The tale of a mystical warrior battling giant intelligent machines in a futuristic war, with this ambitious 17-minute film director Marco Kalantari has created a world and aesthetic that feels as if it could challenge those seen in some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters.

“It was clear for me that this must not be a mere proof-of-concept”

Shot in Austria and Iceland and created by a team of international artists, THE SHAMAN is a film of outstanding production values. Impressive craft has become somewhat of the norm in science-fiction short films, but it’s the sheer scale of Kalantari’s production that makes it difficult to ignore. Boasting a gaggle of extras ten-times the size of the average short film cast, THE SHAMAN was initially imagined (and written) as a feature-length film and Kalantari and his team obviously didn’t want to compromise on their original vision by scaling it down for the shorter format. Despite the aesthetic obviously hogging most of the attention lavished on the film, the director was keen for his short not to become another teaser for a larger project that was all style over content. “It was clear for me that this must not be a mere proof-of-concept”, says Kalantari, “but a stand-alone narrative piece that can entertain and inspire its audience”.

There a popular debate that often resonates through the virtual walls of Short of the Week HQ – one that surrounds the balance between story and craft. We’ve made it pretty clear that in our search for the next generation of innovative storytellers narrative is key, but when does craft get too impressive to ignore? There’s no denying that the standout element of THE SHAMAN is its grand aesthetic, but don’t write-off Kalantari’s talents (and efforts) in building original worlds full of unique characters – I get the feeling we may well see more of his work on a bigger screen sometime soon.

You can read more about THE SHAMAN and how its impressive aesthetic was achieved in our in-depth interview with director Marco Kalantari.

A chain of childish whispers and willful disobedience explodes into horrific violence in this disturbing and unforgettable exploration of the power of youthful memory. White Morning is a work of visual and acoustic layers, evoking the interplay of recollection and distortion, repression and exaggeration that occurs when we relive painful or traumatic events from the past.

Boggis tells Bellis tells Wilkins tells Johnston tells Blisset tells Downey …

Animated with a combination of pen and pencil, mixed media, paper cut-outs and After Effects, Paul Barritt achieves a look both intricately detailed and intentionally crude, bringing to mind the aesthetic of outsider or folk art (his out-of-scale renderings of the countryside where his characters wreck havoc have a touch of Henry Darger about them.)

He creates a world which is beautiful and brutal, where malevolent youngsters roam without supervision, and where seemingly harmless misbehavior escalates like a deranged version of the childhood game “Telephone”. His layering of whimsical, bucolic illustrations and cutouts over children’s handwriting, scrawled, corrections and all, across the pages of exercise books, gives a dense, murky feel to each frame.

Barritt told us his intention with his shockingly violent ending was to invoke a strong visceral reaction in his audience, and in this he undoubtedly succeeds. As White Morning builds relentlessly to its chaotic crescendo, our responses are surely colored by our own childhood memories of misbehavior and transgression.

Soundtrack and spoken word are as integral here as visuals, so it comes as no surprise that Barritt is continuing to explore these juxtapositions with projects combining animation and live theater. You can read more about his innovative work with his theater company, 1927 here.

There are animation houses around the world producing stunning work, and one of the exciting things about the enduring sci-fi teaser trend, and the democracy of access it is providing to industry gatekeepers, is seeing these unusual visions proliferate from unexpected places. 

The biggest sci-fi piece of 2015, Sundays, comes from a Dutch-based company. Today’s work, Uncanny Valley, comes from Argentina, and continues a tradition of interesting sci-fi from that continent that goes back to Panic Attack, one of the keys works in the development of the current boom. 

3DAR is the creative studio behind today’s film, and while not a household name, they are not strangers. In fact the studio was fêted by this very site when their delightful CG film Shave It received a 2014 Short of the Week Award. Uncanny Valley is a big departure from that film’s bright colors and silly-fun storyline, but the same creative DNA runs through the project. Shave It’s directors Jorge Tereso and Fernando Maldonado are credited as Animation Director and VFX Production Designer here respectively, and the writer/director of Uncanny Valley executive produced Shave It. 

While it’s difficult to claim that the company’s Argentinian roots are evidenced in the film, Uncanny Valley is one of the most polished and narratively interesting sci-fi shorts that we’ve encountered this year. None of the elements in the film are “original”, but the pieces are well thought out and fit together in surprising ways. The film begins as a faux-documentary laying out an interesting, but heavy-handed, drug abuse metaphor. In the speculative future of this cinematic world, virtual reality addiction is so severe that gamers live in flop houses and resemble crack addicts. This real-world element combines with fantastical (and stunning) animation of the characters within the virtual world, playing a post-apocalyptic first-person shooter with environments and colors that look like a psychedelic imagining of Halo. This juxtaposition would be enough for most creative teams, but 3DAR layer on another twist that complicates both worlds. I won’t spoil, but again, while we’ve seen this twist before, it was obfuscated enough by what came before to totally catch me by surprise, and sets up a very pleasing cliffhanger to the short. 

While we have not confirmed 3DAR’s plans for this work, they are not hard to guess. They are represented by the familiar figure of Scott Glassgold, who has developed a reputation for specializing in unknown sci-fi creators who make their names with these types of short online calling cards. Deadline has a story on the pitch being made behind the scenes currently, which includes the possibility of tie-in VR segments as part of a transmedia strategy. Glassgold recently inked a first-look deal with Sony for his new management company Ground Control, so announcement of a feature development deal for Uncanny Valley in the coming weeks is a very real possibility. 

If you’ve ever fantasized about famous actors playing out your crazy revenge plots, you should give this dark comedy a watch.

Ticky Tacky is more stage play than short film, taking place over the course of “3 days” in a one-room set. It’s hard to keep your audience captivated while watching a chamber piece, but the standout performances will get you hooked. The major hollywood talent in this short is what makes it so impressive. The film stars none other than Oscar Isaac who has starred in major films like Inside Llewn Davis, Ex Machina, and will appear in the very anticipated Star Wars sequel coming out this month.

Writer-director Brian Petsos conjures a pseudo Wes Anderson film that follows a powerful and wealthy man (Isaac) who discovers his girlfriend’s infidelity with his cousin. What ensues is a spectacle of all the stages of grief performed with gusto worthy of an Oscar. There’s a combination of emerging psycho and adorable immaturity regarding the entire situation.

The comedic dynamic of Isaac’s character and his prepubescent, mobster sidekick ‘Gabriel’ (Julian Shatkin) pull off Petsos’s film with ease. While it’s absurd to think that a grown man would confide in such a young boy, it becomes very clear who the muscle truly is in their relationship. In other words, don’t let Gabriel’s Yoo-hoo juice box fool you.  Throughout, the comedic play between who the “real” adult and child are drives the humor. All around, the performances are over the top, but that adds to the fun of it. Petsos’s actors put a serious spin on a tongue-in-cheek revenge plot. This isn’t a film that Petsos wants his audience to take seriously and he craftily reminds us at every turn with his punchy one-liners.

When we asked Petsos what inspired the film, he stated: “It was a combination of various personal experiences in conjunction with one of those typical dreams where I’m a much younger version of myself plagued with a tremendous, insatiable desire to Kill Santa.”

The moral of the story? Santa deserves what’s coming to him, men cry, and little kids are callus, soulless beings.

Ticky Tacky has shown at the Palm Springs International ShortFest, the Denver Film Festival, and the Florida Film Festival to name a few. We asked Petsos what he is working on and he let us know that he is currently trying to write more, especially with his right hand since he’s a lefty.