Narrative Short Competition presented by Vimeo
Narrative Short Program 3
Exceptional storytelling that captivates, surprises, and excites.
Programming descriptions are generated by participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SXSW.
Program Includes:
When Sama’s girlfriend blows off their Friday plans, the heartbroken teen mourns by raging and daydreaming to pop-punk music in her room. After her girlfriend starts posting Instagram pics with another girl, Sama accepts her dad's invitation to hang out instead. He thinks they're spending quality time together - she's using him to take pics of her "fun" evening out. Right as father and daughter begin to bond, Sama gets a pivotal text and decides whether or not to open up to him.
At their father's 3rd wedding, estranged siblings Matt & Haley struggle to connect after years apart. Haley faces relationship issues and Matt’s abrasive nature only makes things worse. Eventually Matt sincerely apologizes and supports Haley in addressing her romantic feelings. Haley, in turn supports Matt’s nature by de-escalating tension between him and their father by playing a song from Matt's band. In the end there is hope for a future between them.
Joel is a filmmaker-actor making a semi-autobiographical feature. Calvin is an actor hired to sexually assault him on screen. During rehearsals, the two form a connection they’ll be forced to reconfigure once filming begins in this meta exploration of the spaces artists create between artificial and real — and what it’s like to briefly live within them.
In 2015 during the last weekend before graduation in Mill Valley, California, Ben and his friends are hell-bent on winning the Senior Scavenger Hunt, which involves completing outrageous, sexual, and illegal tasks—all filmed and posted on Facebook. In their quest to win, Ben goes a bit overboard with his ex, and his friend’s end up roping in Emma, his freshman sister. Wanting to be cool and one of the guys, Emma gets sucked into their plan to rack up points without realizing it. Ben suddenly feels compelled to protect her, which sparks a dilemma: confront his friends at the Post-Scav Hunt party or play it cool and enjoy his final moments of high school with his bros.
"Unholy" centers on Noa, a 20-year-old living with Short Bowel Syndrome, who attends her family’s Passover Seder while using a feeding tube for nutrition. Surrounded by well-meaning but often insensitive relatives, Noa struggles to fit in with a family that no longer understands her. As her family tries to look past her illness to find "normalcy," Noa feels increasingly isolated, unable to partake in the traditional foods and rituals she once cherished. In the end, she expresses to her father her fear of losing the holiness she once found in prayer and food. Her father offers emotional support through a traditional blessing, reaffirming Noa’s place in the family.
In the middle of a quiet but restless night, Hazel and her father Mackie find themselves confined to their respective corners of their Bronx apartment months into the pandemic. Unable to settle into sleep or find respite, Mackie suggests they go on a drive. With no destination in mind the pair aimlessly roam the empty streets and highways of the Bronx and Manhattan sharing pockets of silence, adrenaline and eventually arriving upon a confrontation with Mackie's past.
"Yú Cì (Fish Bones)" follows Bowen, a nonbinary Asian-American living in Queens. Bowen’s mother, Ai, quietly disapproves of Bowen’s gender expression. While struggling with their mother’s form of “acceptance,” Bowen sees their estranged father, Yuan, with another man in a private karaoke room. After this encounter, Bowen attempts to reconnect with Yuan by helping him deal with a poisonous fish bite.