Shorts 1: Love is a Battlefield

Janna Watson - 'Undercurrent'

Director Bernard Mike

Runtime: 12 min

Category:  Documentary

A painter reflects on recovery, faith, and her LGBTQ journey, using art as a means of survival and a way of connecting to source. Raised within a religious framework that once conflicted with her sense of self, she now resides comfortably in the complicated terrain between belief and identity. 

DERBY

Director Aisha Amin

Runtime: 13 min.

Category: Drama

In Derby, Kansas, summer is coming to an end and 9-year old Percy is confronted with the harsh reality of his mother’s addiction.

Threadbeat Dad

Director Crystal Jin Kim

Runtime: 22 min.

Category: Comedy

An estranged hospice custodian fears dying without dignity and becomes fixated on controlling his own end, a mindset that slowly reshapes his life in unexpected ways.

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Cottonmouth

Director Cole Johnson

Runtime: 16 min. 

Category: Drama

Set in rural Alabama, this follows Chip and Fish, two drifters getting by on dreams, drugs, and dime-store philosophy. Haunted by lost love and failed fatherhood, Chip tries to reconnect with Day, the mother of his daughter, Anya. What starts as a night of underground music and hope turns into violence and hard truths under burning bonfires.

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HVAC

Director Jackson McKeehan 

Runtime: 11 min.

Category: Narrative

In a blue-collar Missouri town, a 13-year-old HVAC apprentice grappling with confusing desires becomes entangled in a surreal, dangerous encounter at the local theatre—where longing and innocence bleed together in one irreversible night.

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