Short Films and Mid-Lengths

Short Films and Mid-Lengths

For the cinephile on a time budget.

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Short Films and Mid-Lengths
  • 31

    Directed by Miguel Gomes | 27 mins | 2003
    What does Portugal’s 1974 Carnation Revolution have to do with "The Wizard of Oz" (1939)? This is a riddle set up but not exactly answered by this endearingly lo-fi parable about two rich kids who, after getting mugged during a tennis lesson, forge a wind...

  • Actress

    Leaving January 1

    Directed by Sebastian Pardo | 11 mins | 2015
    An aspiring actress moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream, and finds herself orbiting the periphery of show business, while everyday life muddies what exactly her path might be. Ana Coto, star of horror blockbuster "OUIJA", leads ...

  • An Open Window

    Leaving December 15

    Directed by Khady Sylla | 52 mins | 2005
    After an unsatisfactory attempt to make a film about the numerous mentally ill people who filled the streets of Dakar back in 1994, Sylla, in her own words “fell ill and crossed to the other side, seeing what others don’t see.” Now “li...

  • A Single Word

    Leaving December 15

    Directed by Khady Sylla and Mariama Sylla | 63 mins | 2014
    Begun by Sylla and completed by her sister, Mariama, after Khady’s death in 2013, "A Single Word" connects the essay film to the oral historical tradition of the griots—West African storytellers, musicians, and poets ...

  • Canticle of All Creatures

    Directed by Miguel Gomes | 21 mins | 2006
    This playful but sincere tribute to St. Francis takes the form of a cinematic triptych. From the present day, in which a guitar-wielding bard ambles through the historic center of Assisi, Gomes jumps back 800 years, reviving the saint himself in a lusciou...

  • Colobane Express

    Leaving December 15

    Directed by Khady Sylla | 52 mins | 1999
    Losing ground to more modern forms of transit today, the colorfully painted “car rapide” minibuses that criss-cross the crowded streets and avenues of Dakar at breakneck speed carrying passengers and merchandise have been icons of the ...

  • David

    Directed by Dean Fleischer-Camp | 26 mins | 2016
    In this short, directed Dean Fleischer-Camp, a woman tells David (Nathan Fielder) he has five weeks to live.

  • Hannahs

    Directed by India Donaldson | 14 mins | 2019
    Amy Zimmer and Brenna Palughi give finely calibrated, increasingly squirm-inducing performances in Donaldson’s beguiling, darkly funny two-hander about a woman named Hannah who returns to her apartment one day to discover another woman, also named Hann...

  • If Found

    Directed by India Donaldson | 8 mins | 2021
    Set in an off-season beach town emptied out for the winter, Donaldson’s by turns unsettling and comic short is a deft character study done in small, precise strokes, following a troubled, lonesome, dog-obsessed woman who decides to take extralegal measu...

  • Kalkitos

    Directed by Miguel Gomes | 19 mins | 2002
    A short as puckish as the kids it depicts, in which a soccer game is rendered absurd by the fact that these self-proclaimed ten-year-olds are played by adults. In place of speech, they just mash their mouths together, with the translation supplied by sile...

  • Meanwhile

    Directed by Miguel Gomes | 23 mins | 1999
    Two decades before "The Tsugua Diaries" (2021), Gomes would make his assured debut with another film that fused summer languor and simmering tensions with expertly deployed pop music cues. The teen love triangle of Meanwhile drifts from rugby training to ...

  • Pre Evolution Soccer's One-Minute Dance After a Golden Goal in the Master League

    Directed by Miguel Gomes | 1 min | 2004
    “Cinema is a game,” Gomes has said—a statement especially true of this briefest of shorts, a machinima that delights in the glitchy rhythms of the celebratory motions made by players in the Playstation game Pro Evolution Soccer.

  • The Silent Monologue

    Leaving December 15

    Directed by Khady Sylla | 45 mins | 2008
    Khady Sylla’s docudrama inquiry into the lives—inner and exterior—of Dakar’s female domestics, which employs scenes of improvised street theater, direct-address freestyle screeds, candid interviews, and inner monologue musings with the...

  • Buffalo Juggalos

    Directed by Scott Cummings | 30 mins | 2014
    Smeared in gaudy face-paint and dedicated as much to the hip-hop duo Insane Clown Posse as they are to generalized debauchery and destruction, the Juggalo remains one of fan culture’s most enduring—and most derided—outsider figures. In his experimental ...

  • Christmas Inventory

    Directed by Miguel Gomes | 22 mins | 2000
    In this early work by the beloved and formally daring Portuguese auteur, the portrayal of a multi-generational Yuletide family gathering gives way to documentation of the season’s chintzy and charming accouterments: tinsel twinkles, baubles bob, and a Spi...

  • Christmas Cracker

    Directed by Jeff Hale, Norman McLaren, Grant Munro, and Gerald Potterton | 9 mins | 1963
    A kinetic, cut-out rendition of “Jingle Bells,” a stop-motion face-off between a gaggle of tin wind-up toys, and a hand-drawn quest for the perfect Christmas tree topper: collectively, an upbeat and utterly c...

  • The Days Before Christmas

    Directed by Terence Macartney-Filgate, Stanley Jackson and Wolf Koenig | 30 mins | 1958
    Montreal’s malls, churches, and clubs alike are abuzz with the Yuletide spirit in this beautifully observed short documentary—the inaugural episode of pioneering vérité series “The Candid Eye,” which aired on ...

  • The Story of Christmas

    Directed by Evelyn Lambart | 8 mins | 1973
    Evelyn Lambart, considered the “First Lady of Canadian animation,” illustrates the familiar tale of Jesus’s conception and birth in the luminous and symbol-rich fashion of a medieval manuscript.

  • It's Snow

    Directed by Gayle Thomas | 5 mins | 1974
    A rainbow of delicately cut-out snowflakes flash, dance, and subdivide to shimmering steel drum in this delightfully geometrical interlude by Ottawa animator Gayle Thomas.

  • Christmas at Moose Factory

    Directed by Alanis Obomsawin | 13 mins | 1971
    A legendary figure in First Nations filmmaking, Alanis Obomsawin made her documentary debut with this charming, crayon-drawn portrait of a Cree community at Christmastime, as illustrated and narrated by a number of the local children.

  • Ragamuffin

    Directed by Kaitlyn Mikayla | 15 mins | 2025
    Photographer and first-time director Kaitlyn Mikayla shoots off the starting line with this vérité-inflected tale of a weekend down at the motocross track, during which an adolescent racer questions her sexuality as well as her relationship to both her...

  • Video Barn

    Directed by Bianca Poletti | 14 mins | 2025
    “Just press play!” The mysterious tape found by two best friends at the one remaining rental store in town turns out to be a real video nasty in this stylishly sinister short by Bianca Poletti, channeling David Cronenberg and Wes Craven.

  • A Bright Summer Day for the Lady Avengers

    Directed by Birdy Hung | 12 mins | 2024
    Giallo meets Edward Yang in Birdy Wei-Ting Hung’s oneiric, gorgeously photographed short, which filters a schoolgirl’s sexual awakening in 1980s Taiwan through a series of potent, cinema-induced daydreams.

  • WassupKaylee

    Directed by Pepi Ginsberg | 20 mins | 2025
    Set in a house of budding TikTok content creators where 17-year-old would-be prankster Kaylee (Devin France) is the newest recruit, Pepi Ginsberg’s extremely online coming-of-age tale is tender but spiked with tension.