Age Range: 12

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SWOP

Based on the beloved, Emmy and NYICFF award-winning short Heads Together, this new series follows three wacky friends Sef, Wesley, and Marjory. One day, they discover an abandoned washing machine with mysterious powers: it lets you swap heads with someone else! This presents the three BFFs with a range of amazing possibilities…and side-splitting challenges. As they take turns trying on each other’s heads, they literally see the world through new eyes. Will their new perspectives help them discover a whole new world of possibilities, or get them into a mess? Well, the sayings tell us there are many sides to every story and two heads are better than one. Run, don’t walk (but please hold onto your head) to the slapstick silliness of SWOP.
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Opening Night: Oink

Fabulously bespectacled nine-year-old Babs has the perfect life in the Netherlands, with parents who see to it that she has a lovely home and only the healthiest vegetarian meals on her plate. But what she really, really wants is a dog to call her own. So when Babs’ grandfather, an American with a curiously rootin tootin’ cowboy accent, suddenly appears on the scene, he just may be the key to her perfect pet. Instead, he finds Oink, a lovable if constantly, er, digesting, pig, whom he gifts to Babs. Yet Babs’ mother is less than thrilled and insists that Oink stays only on the condition he passes a rigorous puppy training program. Add to that her grandfather’s secret nefarious connection to the Sausage King competition organized by The Society for Meat Products from Fresh Pigs, and OINK is full of cheeky humor, porcines behaving badly, and people behaving even worse. It’s an uncannily realistic and genius stop-motion charmer that will have you snorting and cheering.
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NYICFF Friends & Neighbors: Canada

Conversation-starting films from up north
These thought-provoking Canadian films take a deep dive into identity: what it means, and how it shapes our past, present, and future.
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NYICFF Kid Flicks Two

Kid Flicks Two brings plenty of fun, plus deeper themes and multilingual films with English subtitles.
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Vivo

From Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation—the studio that brought you Oscar® winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and this year’s critically acclaimed blockbuster The Mitchells vs. The Machines—comesVivo, an animated musical adventure featuring all-new songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony, Grammy, and Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of Hamilton and In the Heights. Vivo follows a one-of-kind kinkajou (aka a rainforest “honey bear,” voiced by Miranda), who spends his days playing music to the crowds in a lively square with his beloved owner Andrés (Buena Vista Social Club’s Juan de Marcos). Though they may not speak the same language, Vivo and Andrés are the perfect duo through their common love of music. But when tragedy strikes shortly after Andrés receives a letter from the famous Marta Sandoval (three-time Grammy-winning Latin pop legend Gloria Estefan), inviting her old partner to her farewell concert with the hope of reconnecting, it’s up to Vivo to deliver a message that Andrés never could: A love letter to Marta, written long ago, in the form of a song. Yet in order to get to Marta, who lives a world apart, Vivo will need the help of Gabi (newcomer Ynairaly Simo) – an energetic tween who bounces to the beat of her own offbeat drum to fulfill his owner’s wishes. – Netflix
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Vivo Q&A

Join us for a free Q&A featuring Oscar®-nominated director Kirk DeMicco and voice star Ynairaly Simo of Vivo! We’ll discuss the inspiration behind the film, animating different locations, making a musical, and answer your questions!
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My Octopus Teacher

After years spent filming some of the planet’s most dangerous animals, Craig Foster was burned out. He decided to put a halt to his career to reconnect with his own roots – the magical underwater world of the kelp forest off the coast of his hometown of Cape Town, South Africa. For nearly a decade, Craig went diving daily in the icy cold waters, ditching wetsuit and scuba rig in one of the most predator dense places on earth. The octopus he met and tracked became first his subject, then his teacher, showing him things no human had ever witnessed. Shot over eight years, with 3,000 hours of footage, My Octopus Teacher documents a unique friendship, interaction, and animal intelligence never seen before. Now streaming on Netflix.
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Best of the Fest 2021

We’ve tallied the votes, and the results are in. These are the shorts with the highest votes, according to YOU. Watch these Festival favorites before we announce the winners on Monday, March 22.
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Flora and Ulysses Special Event Q&A

Join us for a live Q&A with author Kate DiCamillo and director Lena Khan on 3/11 @ 1pm ET This is a Q&A event. Stream Flora & Ulysses now on Disney+. Disney’s Flora & Ulysses is a comedy-adventure based on the Newberry Award-winning book about 10-year-old Flora, an avid comic book fan and a self-avowed cynic, whose parents have recently separated. After rescuing a squirrel she names Ulysses, Flora is amazed to discover he possesses unique superhero powers which take them on an adventure of humorous complications that ultimately change Flora’s life—and her outlook—forever.

Teachers, sign your class up here.

Presented in partnership with

    
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Devenir

What if becoming doesn’t lead to an end, but instead is a process of being?
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Mother Didn’t Know

Told through exquisitely rendered stop motion, this poetic fable illuminates a path to reconnection for one young girl. 
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Red Rover

Mars rovers of a different kind challenge the local order in this quirky, stop motion sci-fi adventure that spins the term “alien” on its head. 
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How I Overcame My Fear of Humans

Dédalia the spider dreams of the big city—New York—home to 8 million people. There’s just one little problem: she’s afraid of them! 
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Louis’s Shoes

Louis, 8-and-a-half-years-old and autistic, arrives in his new school prepared to introduce himself.
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Colza

Clarence, a precocious young lizard, schemes to steal a plane and take flight while the whole village is distracted by the greatest concert it has ever seen.
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Joychild

Soft-spoken yet resolute, a young child remembers the joys and fears that go hand-in-hand with coming out, shot in beautifully evocative black and white 16mm film. 
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The Alien Nightmare

Mike, Bob, and Frank land on Earth for a routine scientific exploration, but when strange occurrences pop up, will these creatures from another planet chicken out?
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Self Story

The inspiration for Becoming Ourselves: Breaking the Binary and screened at NYICFF 2020, Lou is back navigating the-ever challenging terrain of gender. But with inspiration from acclaimed filmmaker Céline Sciamma, they come into their own.
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Nestor

Out at sea, Nestor is rattled by a lack of stability in this shifting, animated puzzle for the eyes and ears.
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Tape

The balancing act of competitive sports, group dynamics, and budding attraction to another teammate challenge 16 year-old Rooney to rethink the rules of the game. 
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Chips

What feeds your spirit? one girl asks in this gentle, otherworldly tale. 
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In the Shadow of the Pines

Pining replaces embarrassment as one girl looks back on her experiences as a self-conscious student at the school where her Japanese immigrant father served as a janitor.
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Purpleboy

When Oscar pops up out of the ground in a strange yet parallel world, he must remain steadfast to his budding identity as others try to tear him down.
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Lazare’s Doing it Right

Lazare is an awkward soccer player. To tell the truth, he doesn’t know how to play at all, but maybe the beauty’s in the improv.
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Zara and the Others: Miss Miss

Zara and her family are not like the others and when they remake the pageant-like Miss Competition, it’s a much more wacky “hit” than “miss”!
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Sisters: The Summer we Found our Superpowers

Vega, 9, and her wild sister Billie, 5, are going on an overnight outdoor hike in the lush Norwegian woods. The trip is full of exciting climbs, silly jokes, and happy trekking until Dad pulls one acrobatic stunt too many, falling into a cave and injuring his leg badly. Unable to move, he asks Vega and Billie to get help. Anxiously retracing their steps, they know that everything depends on them now, as Vega tries to keep them focused on the goal despite setbacks, surprises, and Billie’s many distractions. They bravely face their fears, discover their superpowers, and find strength in their sisterhood.
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Jackie & Oopjen

Twelve-year-old Jackie has made Amsterdam’s world famous Rijksmuseum her second home since her mother is always busy at her job there. As Jackie wanders the museum after hours, Oopjen Coppit, the woman depicted in Rembrandt’s famous 1634 painting, suddenly steps out of the canvas and into the middle of the gallery. Used to keeping her cool and problem solving, Jackie instantly decides to take Oopjen under her wing and help her search for her missing sister. Oopjen, a woman from the Golden Age, finds the 21st century to be a big adventure while Jackie finally finds a true friend.

Presented with support from:

     
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Celebrating Black Stories

Black stories rightfully take the spotlight at NYICFF, as we highlight films that share the joy, determination, resilience and complexity of Black youth in a range of genres and styles. The films in this program are featured throughout our shorts programs and here in this curated program, underscoring the vibrancy of Black storytelling and allowing audiences to consider these works together in dialogue. In Ice Breakers, Josh Crooks is a young, gifted African-Canadian hockey player in an overwhelmingly white sport. But as he hones his talents he also discovers his passion is tied to a remarkable, though buried, heritage of Black athletes who helped pioneer modern hockey. Glowing in warm light and an attentive camera, Black Boy Joy is a beautifully filmed story of father and grandfather as they raise their young son with autism. Finally, in Broken Bird, we follow Birdie, a biracial girl raised by her Jewish mom, who spends a rare day with her father while preparing for both her Bat Mitzvah and stepping into adulthood on her own terms.
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Becoming Ourselves: Breaking the Binary

These films explore identity beyond gender binaries, as queer kids shape their own ideas of who they are, finding possibilities of joy and community along the way. Discover powerful connections to the past when long-hidden histories are revealed in the Oscar-shortlisted Kapaemahu. Or break through distance and discomfort in The Name of the Son to find unexpected closeness to family. Create new relationships to yourself, your body, and others through sports in the short doc Joy Run.
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Broken Bird

Birdie, a biracial girl raised by her Jewish mom, spends a rare day with her father while preparing for both her Bat Mitzvah and to step into adulthood on her own terms.
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