Texas Shorts Competition presented by IMDbPro
Texas Shorts Program at Rollins Theatre at The Long Center
Check out the Conference Session with the team behind the Documentary Short Film, Breaking Silence: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2023/events/PP1143306 At the heart of "Breaking Silence" is the ever-evolving relationship between Walker, a deaf father, and his hearing daughter, Leslie, as they build new bonds through their experiences in the criminal justice system. Through personal interviews and father-daughter conversations, the film explores their joint memories of Leslie’s childhood, Leslie’s experience of being a hearing-abled child with deaf parents, the regrets that fuel Walker’s activism, and the traumas Leslie experienced in adolescence triggering her cycle of incarceration. Throughout the film, Walker and Leslie share how imprisonment and re-entry have reshaped their relationship and created new pathways toward advocacy.
An out-of-work actor named Annie responds to a personal ad looking for someone highly skilled in improvisation. The client is Inga, a very pregnant woman who is very tightly wound. In an effort to “optimize” her approach to motherhood, Inga hires Annie to roleplay as her daughter-to-be.
A former bride-to-be attempts to sell her wedding dress.
Each year, the early weeks of fall bring a natural phenomenon to the Capital Plaza shopping center in Austin, Texas. Shoppers, employees, passersby, young families and avid birdwatchers, alike, all gather to marvel at the communal migratory roosting of tens of thousands of Purple Martins as they journey along their migratory path to Brazil.
Veronica has a mysterious string growing out of her eye and a cryptic message from a hotline service. As the string grows, strange signs related to the hotline message appear everywhere. Each clue she finds only further complicates the question. She must find a way to free herself.
Director Jude Hope Harris recreates the time her brother and girlfriend first met in this autobiographical dramedy where her family plays versions of themselves. Sophie arrives home from 10 hours of facial feminization surgery in a haze of pain and anesthesia. Waiting for her are Morgan, her queer actor girlfriend, and Randy, her country singer brother – both just starting to get to know each other. As Sophie recovers, Morgan and Randy unite against a tragically unhelpful home nurse Donna, their common enemy on a difficult night made bearable with humor, love, music, and weed.
Nolvia Castillo immigrated to the United States from a small village in Chiriqui, Guatemala, where she remembers eating fresh fruits and vegetables. In her new home of Austin, Texas, Nolvia finds her independence through learning how to drive and delivering produce to her neighbors as part of a food distribution program by local nonprofits Go Austin/Vamos Austin and Urban Roots Farm. As filmmaker, Ai Vuong rides along with Nolvia, she also reflects on the significance of past meals with her parents. Together through food, they navigate the roads of their shared immigrant experience: that which we had, and thus hold on to, and that of what we create for the future.
Teenager Ly and her cousins get high before a boisterous family Thanksgiving at their auntie’s house in southeast San Diego in 2006. Stoned and harboring a romance with her maybe-boyfriend, Ly moves through her family's gossip, nosiness, and loudness until the day ends.
Bennett, a nonbinary new parent, arrives late to their postpartum “Mamas Group” at a Scandinavian-chic space called "Wüm" with 3-month-old daughter, Edie. After fighting with an impossibly frustrating baby harness and battling a poop explosion, they’re officially at their wits end, already feeling lost in the center of the new parenthood cyclone: sleep deprivation, never ending diaper changes, and an overall loss of self. What is supposed to be a space of support turns into a vortex of micro-aggressions from Instagram-ready hipster Moms.