The Final Day
Yadira, a creative young Cuban girl, struggles packing on her final day home. Her suitcase feels too small to carry everything her heart holds.
Age Range: 12
Impossible Maladies
Traveling by cart, Doctor Rabarbaro and his assistant Tosse travel from house to house to cure absurd illnesses with their ingenious remedies.
Amplified
When Karate star Hind has her world distorted, she sways between tenderness and pain, silence and noise, the hidden and the manifest.
Just Little Imps
A little girl struggles to fall asleep. Every time she closes her eyes, small impish creatures appear from the darkness.
Just One
Struggling musician Amaru meets mischievous ball of energy Shai while performing at his local community center. When Shai’s parents don’t pick him up, Amaru is tasked with taking him home. If only Shai remembered where he lives.
Scrap Fabric
Fearing disapproval, a teenage trans girl secretly sews a prom dress from her mother’s scrap fabric.
Cartagène
Paul relives the memories of his childhood spent with his grandfather.
Directed by Léa Berbach, Fabien Bernard, Lou Buisson, Paola Couturier, Marine La Villa, Théo Nouare, Marie Pacreau, & Abla Saigh
Directed by Léa Berbach, Fabien Bernard, Lou Buisson, Paola Couturier, Marine La Villa, Théo Nouare, Marie Pacreau, & Abla Saigh
Dragfox
Sam’s search for identity gets interrupted by a mysterious neighborhood fox.
Have I Swallowed Your Dreams?
A poetic conversation between an immigrant daughter and her mother about sacrifices and dreams.
Nube
A puffy white cloud realizes that her daughter, a dark stormy cloud, is in danger of raining prematurely.
Underground
The last shovelful plunges the shot into darkness.
Spotlight: Maya, Give Me a Title
Maya, Give Me a Title
Because Maya’s dad is always traveling, they keep in touch via nightly calls, creating stories in which she is the star. Because Maya’s dad is also renowned filmmaker Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), we get these stories in all their inventive, stop-motion glory. Her assignment is simple: all Maya has to do is provide a concept and a title, and her Papa will do the rest. The result is a collection of inventive and enchanting animated fantasies that remind us of the great distances our imaginations can take us. Paper cutouts bring their shared stories to life in a series of vignettes, many with a wink and nod to the fourth wall or a behind-the-scenes look at the stop-motion process. Maya’s dad uses his trademark wit, whimsy, and mixed media to tell tales about mermaids, volcanoes, and anything else the two dream up.
Clearly crafted with great care, Maya, Give Me a Title serves as a love letter to animation, filmmaking, parenting, and storytelling.
¡Salta!
Living Large
Savages
Winners
Short Films Two
Spending the week at a new house? Traveling the land with your ties and guitar? Waiting for the bus? Let Short Films Two take you away.
Short Films Three
Shorts for our older crowd: teens and grown-ups only.
Celebrating Black Stories
Shorts from around the world that embrace the joy, resilience, and complexity of being young and Black.
Followed by Science on Screen® Chat: Urban Ecologies
What makes for healthy and happy homes and habitats for the many members of a community? How do we decide who, or what, makes up the community; what obstacles or questions need to be considered for a healthy urban ecology, and who gets a say? Bat Boy filmmaker Aaron Lemle will discuss his neuroscience background and how he rolled important issues around healthy urban environments into his short film. Aaron will walk young audiences through the film’s themes and ideas around how to create positive social, environmental, and cultural connections for inhabitants of all backgrounds, ages, and even species!
Science on Screen® is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Followed by Science on Screen® Chat: Urban Ecologies
What makes for healthy and happy homes and habitats for the many members of a community? How do we decide who, or what, makes up the community; what obstacles or questions need to be considered for a healthy urban ecology, and who gets a say? Bat Boy filmmaker Aaron Lemle will discuss his neuroscience background and how he rolled important issues around healthy urban environments into his short film. Aaron will walk young audiences through the film’s themes and ideas around how to create positive social, environmental, and cultural connections for inhabitants of all backgrounds, ages, and even species!
Science on Screen® is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Girls’ POV
Not just for girls! These shorts feature stories of girls breaking the mold.
Heebie Jeebies Shorts
Wild, spooky, freaky, and bizarre…prepare to have your mind blown.
¡Hola Cine!
Latinx stories from around the world, and not just in Spanish, celebrating the many Latinx cultures, histories, identities and languages.
Best of the Fest
Drumroll, please…these are the highest-rated shorts of NYICFF 2025! Even we don’t know what’s going to be in this program—but we do know it’s going to be great! Join us for a special program of this year’s audience favorite and award-winning shorts!
Winners
After arriving with her Kurdish family in Berlin, Mona is struggling to find her footing. Her hair is wrong, her accent’s wrong, and she misses home. Home is Syria, or at least it was before she was forced to flee. They’re safe now, but busy Berlin offers a different kind of chaos. Kids challenge teachers, mean girls pick fights, and Mona barely knows any German. What she does know is soccer, even if she vowed never to play after leaving her Syrian team and her cherished aunt Helin. Things don’t get any better when her new teacher and coach convinces her to join the team. Mona and her mates know that teamwork doesn’t come easy, but there’s only one way to win. Winners, a coming-of-age story with a fresh, 2025 perspective, comes to NYICFF after a world premiere at Berlinale and taking home the German Film Award for Best Children’s Film.
Note: As mean girls are wont to do, they use some harsh language in this film.
Home Court
The Legend of Ochi
See it before it hits theaters! In a remote northern village, Yuri is raised to never go outside and to fear the reclusive forest creatures known as the ochi. When a baby ochi is left behind by its pack, she embarks on the adventure of a lifetime to reunite it with its family. The latest feature from A24 (NYICFF favorite Marcel the Shell with Shoes On) and the producers of Everything Everywhere All at Once is written and directed by Isaiah Saxon and features Finn Wolfhard, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson, and Helena Zengel.
¡Salta!
Based on the NYICFF 2017 short film Einstein-Rosen! Óscar and Teo get along, but they have their share of little arguments: who’s messing with the other’s stuff, how to spend the holiday, whether or not their mother got lost in time after finding a hidden wormhole—typical brotherly subjects. Their differences are only more pronounced among the other neighborhood kids. Teo’s out playing soccer, going to dances, and hanging out at the cinema, while Óscar’s more content sorting through their scientist mother’s notes looking for clues. Things reach a boiling point when a fight leads Teo to sneak out in 1989, only to return to their shared bedroom…in 2022. Once they both settle from the shock of reuniting (Óscar finally understanding Teo’s disappearance, Teo in awe of his Óscar’s smartphone), they can focus on getting Teo back home. The problem? They’ll need to find a completely different wormhole to get him there. Luckily, Óscar is now a physicist. The brothers, together with some familiar faces from their (sometimes distant) past, must find their way to each other across timelines in order to set things right.
Science on Screen® is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Science on Screen® is an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Jippie No More!
Jippie’s sister is getting married, and the whole family is helping with the celebration. The good dishes are out, decorations are set, and Jippie is ready for the performance of a lifetime. Unfortunately, Jippie’s parents insist he sit this one out and leave the attention for the bride. No matter—there’s plenty to do on Grandpa’s rural estate. Plus, love is in the air, and it’s not just the bride and groom who are feeling it. When Lily arrives to help train Grandpa’s horse, it’s butterflies immediately for Jippie. And what better way to win her over than a song-and-dance show-stopper? If only Lily could stop staring at Jippie’s little sister long enough to look his way…Jippie No More! captures the chaos of one big family, where each member is so deeply entrenched in their own beliefs. But a genuine warmth and admiration for each other ensures that there’s no issue they can’t overcome.
This program is supported by the Dutch Culture USA’s Future 400 program of the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York.