Short Film & Documentary Review by Indie Shorts Mag

While being pursued by a police officer, a young boy struggles with his decisions for the baby in his care and how to help his sick mother.

An indecisive actress must decide between staying with her long-distance boyfriend or committing herself to a new flame.

When his photographer fiancé is hired for a new gig by an ex-flame, an insecure writer descends into chaos.

On his 30th birthday, Em is confronted by his expectations of life and finds a moment of gratitude.

In a parent-teacher meeting at an orderly girls’ school in Singapore, a teacher empathises with a parent’s account of her stress-filled domestic existence as a long-suffering mother to a troubled teenager. But in a system where the roles of parent and child, teacher and student, have to be upheld, and upon which generalised projections easily occur, how true to character is a person when they inhabit the role they’re made to play?

Tasked with promoting a tech company’s VR innovations, a young scientist risks her job when she decides to use her creations to faithfully serve a grief-stricken family - rather than follow the company’s wish to stage a publicity stunt.

When a disenchanted mermaid-for-hire is mistaken for a real mermaid, she plays along to disastrous consequences.

A virgin in his twenties makes a pact with his platonic girlfriend for her to take his virginity if he doesn't lose it by his next birthday. Things get more complicated when he "gets lucky" but has a hard time telling her.

Nearly 15 years after his last featured performance, Mark Anthony Thomas revisits his poetic past with the documentary short film “Folded Whispers” at the historic Kelly Strayhorn Theater in Pittsburgh's East Liberty neighborhood.

Thomas performs 17 new original poems on issues of identity, urbanism, love, loss, race and the pandemic. The film is produced by Built Different and described as deeply personal, reflective, and "a love letter to the Kelly Strayhorn Theater," which is a home for Black and queer artists.

A dark domestic horror drama about the ties that bind and the ties that really bind.

A woman's evening turns upside down when she sees a reminder on her boyfriend's phone to breakup.

After giving birth to their child on a beach during the dead of night Sine runs into the darkness leaving her husband Magnus in a state of anguish. Journeying into the past we discover the answers behind Sine’s behaviour and witness the harrowing events that brought her into the realm of the selkie, mythological creatures that take the form of seals known to shed their skin to reveal a human form.

Nhung Nguyen’s 25-minute Love, Laugh, Doom, Tears is a reenacted documentary that chronicles the events leading up to and after a traumatic experience. Nguyen has created the narrative using a form of emotional realism, where her internal world is brought out and made the lens through which her experience is depicted and understood. 

A poignant visual meditation that focuses on the relationship between opposing universal forces and why they are nothing without the other. In this, we explore how struggle begets beauty as well as how change is the only true constant. As soon as you have life figured out, the proverbial rug is pulled from under you. Change crashes upon you without pause like waves on the bay. Bright and shining examples of human kindness are found sparkling within the warzone. Love and hate are children of the same mother. Where do torment and forgiveness meet? The universal push and pull of our day-to-day realities are magnified and ruminated upon in this cerebral animated work that plays with the very medium it’s drawn on. At Moti, we believe our perceptions shape our existence. So then what is existence? What is this primordial canvas we are layering all of our perceptions upon? How do we find out What’s There?

Director: Pak Hou Chau

A woman suffering from severe agoraphobia must venture out in search of her lost therapy dog.

Director: Usher Morgan

Old-school Francis and his new-school accomplice Danny have it all planned out: a heist to make them rich, thanks to inside information that their friend Stevie B has provided. Only plans are apt to change, along with Francis and Danny’s relationship, when homophobic attitudes and murderous tendencies meet in a head-on collision.

Director: Cory DeMeyers

A dark satire from director Richard Corso. A court jester, a town fool, and a traveling plague doctor have a picnic under the corpse of the dead king.

Director: Richard Corso

Paranormal investigator, JJ, crashes the interview of his brother, Nicky, when he suspects the interviewee is a vampire.

Director: George A. Velez

In 1979, a woman takes refuge from an abusive relationship in a secluded cabin. She can run from her relationship, but in isolation, the stories she deludes herself with won't keep her safe.

Director: Simon O'Keefe & Tara Lynn Rye

A reluctant Daisy attends an engagement party where she must confront a forbidden love. Will she say goodnight or goodbye?

Director: Revell Carpenter

Alfred, a middle-aged party clown leads a somewhat artistic life in New York City, but it's not quite what he imagined in his youth. As he gets older, Alfred begins to question whether he has failed to achieve his dreams, and compare himself to a former college friend who seems to have it all.  

Writer/Director: Natalia Curea

A struggling music producer starts a side hustle as a breakup mediator for quarantined couples.

Sarah receives a message that her beloved will be late home tonight. What will she do to pass the time? Whatever she wants.

A relationship is tested when one friend, Ezra, asks the other, Gavin, to help him commit his suicide.

A woman obsessed with her next door neighbour discovers a peculiar approach to quench her insatiable fantasies. Listen to review of short film Blueberry Trap by Ali Matlock.

Set during the late 90s in Southern California, 16-year-old introverted Elle finds herself in love with her best friend who is about to move away. Listen to Indie Shorts Mag's review of Elle, a short film by Nicole Vanden Broeck.

What is Indie Shorts Mag Short Film & Documentary Review Podcast and what to expect from it?