Baby
First-born Nina feels like second in line for her father’s attention once her little sister comes around. Who’s the real baby in this dance of love, jealousy, mistakes, forgiveness, when everyone could use a little growing up?
Festival Year: 2023
Architect A
Architect A constructs every house to resemble a person’s life, using their memories to build a thriving, living, and breathing structure beyond all imagination.
An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It
2023 Academy Award Nominee for Best Animated Short Film! Stop motion animation is turned on its head when a young telemarketer starts to realize his world is not what it seems…
The Smeds and the Smoos
Smeds vs Smoos, Reds vs Blues: the age old story of competing tribes and star-crossed matches gets a hilarious and charming new spin in this latest interplanetary delight by Magic Light Pictures.
One Summer Story
Home is Somewhere Else
Titina
Panda! Go Panda!
Goodbye Don Glees!
Totem
Okthanksbye
¡Hola Cine!
You’ve asked if we could screen more Spanish-language films. Our answer? ¡Sí, claro! Our annual program delivers the best Latinx stories from around the world, and not just in Spanish, but also English, and even Portuguese, celebrating the many Latinx cultures, histories, identities and languages.
Note: In a moment of frustration, a character uses a harsh word.
Celebrating Black Stories
Celebrating Black Stories spotlights shorts from throughout the Festival and around the world that embrace the joy, resilience, and complexity of being young and Black.
Heebie Jeebies Shorts
Spooky, freaky, and bizarre…
Girls’ POV Shorts
Not just for girls! These shorts feature stories of girls breaking the mold.
Short Films Three
Shorts for our older crowd: teens and grown-ups only.
Short Films Two
Dig a little deeper, and explore a littler further, with Short Films Two.
Short Films One
Level up! Shorts in this program are for Tots graduates—and everyone else.
Shorts for Tots
Created for our youngest and first-ever moviegoers, but beloved by grown-ups, Shorts for Tots is sure to delight all audiences.
Dounia & The Princess of Aleppo
Blue Thermal
Totem
Eleven-year-old Ama loves the water, and not only because she’s surrounded by the Rotterdam waterfront. She’s also a passionate swimmer, spending every spare minute in the pool training for the upcoming championships with her best friend, Thijs. Though she’s the daughter of Senegalese asylum-seekers, Ama feels Dutch, through and through. So it’s all the more unthinkable when her family members are unexpectedly detained, leaving Ama to find a solution. Harnessing the focus she learned in swim training and armed with the wisdom of her mother’s tales of their homeland, she must forge a path of her own. Fortunately, a gigantic spirit animal rooted in Senegalese tradition might just be of service.
Titina
“More or less based on true events.” So begins the mostly true-to-life story of Titina, an intrepid fox terrier, and her companions on their aerial expedition to the North Pole. When Italian engineer Umberto Nobile is invited to build and airship for Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, he knows he’s embarking on the adventure of a lifetime. And who better to accompany him on his dirigible to the top of the world than the trusty street pup he rescued in Rome? Just as their airship, the Norge, is poised to reach a milestone as the first to make the Polar flyover, a petty power struggle turns the journey sour. With colorful animation mixed with live action documentary footage, Titina captures all of the real, high-altitude antics that made history—all from the vantage point of one lucky dog.
One Summer Story
Between competitive swim team practice and cramming for classes the anime Buffalo Kotek is Minami’s only respit from her hectic life. So it feels a lot like kismet when she discovers that her classmate Shohei, and aspiring manga artist, shares her obsession—and that his brother is an amateur detective. It seems as though Minami’s finally formed the perfect team to help her unravel a big mystery of her own, following a recent trail of clues that just might lead to her long lost father. The timing couldn’t be better when an out-of-town swim competition presents itself as the perfect alibi, and she sneaks off to the Japanese coast to discover a whole new side of herself in this bold and charming story of anime, friendship, family, and the life aquatic.
Okthanksbye
Jamie is only just starting to get settled at her new boarding school for the deaf when she learns that her dear grandmother, the only other non-hearing member of her family, has landed in the hospital. When her family tells her there’s not enough time to pick her up in the Netherlands before heading to the hospital in Paris, Jamie is left feeling helpless. Imane, Jamie’s very new friend and classmate, sees her upset and suggests they secretly make the journey on their own. Together they face a scary clown, an abandoned mansion, a gibberish band, and much more on their trek from school through the French countryside. This charming film gracefully explores the way the two girls—one with a cochlear implant and one without—navigate friendship, the deaf community, and the hearing world. Joining the ranks of films like CODA and Sound of Metal, Okthanksbye takes care to represent the deaf community with graciousness and accuracy. But unlike those films, Okthanksbye is an unabashedly fun coming-of-age road movie. Co-produced by BNNVARA.
Little Nicholas – Happy as Can Be
Simultaneously mixing the story of a mischievous cartoon boy and his friends with the true tale of his creators, Little Nicholas is a visual delight with wit to match. When illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé first drew little imp Nicholas, he knew he had to get his good friend René Goscinny (of Asterix fame) to write the story. As the two artists bring the boy to life, Nicholas himself escapes the page to ask them about their own childhoods. Through these conversations, the friends share stories of early artistic ambition, immigrating to the United States, and family lost to World War II. More solemn moments are balanced expertly with Nicholas’s own adventures with his best friend Alceste (who simply loves toast!) in splashy watercolor, to deliver moments of utter joy. The first feature-length Little Nicholas film to maintain the essence of the text’s original artwork, this story of the creators and their created will delight fans of the books (who might know him better as Le Petit Nicolas) and send newcomers to their local libraries to discover what they’ve been missing.
Home is Somewhere Else
The brilliance of animated documentary is that it can provide an imaginative space to envision someone else’s story. Home is Somewhere Else tells three poignant tales of life on either side of the Mexico/US border. Our guide, Lalo, is a young Mexican artist raised in Utah who presents each story with his slamming Spanglish poetry. There are best friends and sisters Evelyn and Elizabeth, one studying to become the sole doctor in her small Mexican village, the other making the pan of her sueños to sell in her very own LA bakery. We also meet Jasmine as she sets off to become an activist to protect families like her own. Finally, Lalo shares the story of his own childhood, deportation experience, and finding a way back and transforming his challenges through his work as an artist and activist.
Note: Film includes references to a dangerous border crossing and memories of domestic violence.
Note: Film includes references to a dangerous border crossing and memories of domestic violence.