Films

Biotech breakthroughs edge ever closer to making extended human lifespans a reality. This enlightening documentary surveys this thriving landscape while examining the quality of a long life through the poignant stories of a tight-knit group of Maine residents.

This energetic documentary explores the cultural impact of the iconic American Girl doll brand that shaped generations of Americans in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s. Featuring an exclusive, rare interview with founder Pleasant Rowland.

A French doctor who treats Alzheimer’s patients and a Japanese theater director form a bond that is intellectual, creative, and spiritual in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s humorous, painful, and constantly surprising drama.

When a mining project threatens her ancestral lands, Sámi reindeer herder Maia calls upon her estranged uncle for legal advice, but his return opens deep familial wounds in indigenous Sámi filmmaker Elle Sofe Sara’s inventive, visually arresting musical drama.

Academy Award®-winning director Ron Howard explores the life and legacy of photographer Richard Avedon, revealing the private artist behind the iconic images that transformed fashion, celebrity, and American culture.

A car becomes the connective tissue of director Stephanie Ahn’s absorbing, Sundance award-winning debut, as an accident brings two broken souls together, drawing them into an intimate, if fumbling, relationship.

When life becomes fiction, the boundaries begin to blur. Pedro Almodóvar turns filmmaking, memory, desire, and betrayal into a colorful, melodramatic journey fueled by singer-songwriter Chavela Vargas’s music and the director’s unmistakable cinematic flair.

Sonja, born with Down Syndrome, is a bundle of energy who dreams of dance and demands independence. This inclusively produced family-friendly film is a testament to the power of resilience, creative expression, and love.

Kona is a forest-dwelling cat who lives with her mom and grandma. When her mother disappears, Kona embarks on a quest to find her alongside Colin, an orphaned pup, and Bernard, a runaway circus bear.

Rising star Ben Wang is superb as a teenager given to self-sabotage who decides to run for senior class president in Will Robb’s SXSW breakout hit, an uproarious and heartfelt coming-of-age comedy.

In Florian Zeller’s elegant psychological drama, Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are successful professionals (architect and editor, respectively) married to their work, and to each other. Paul Dano, Stephen Graham, and Patrick Schwarzenegger co-star.

Masters of creative nonfiction with their melancholic tales on one-of-a-kind traditions and communities, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw beautifully portray the layered aromas and aftertastes of the Burgundy region with sophisticated finesse.

The fascinating documentary reveals the man behind the legend of cosmologist Carl Sagan, the man who was for many the face of space exploration, scientific inquiry, and insatiable curiosity.

Esiri brothers Arie and Chuko transposes Mrs. Dalloway’s timeless story to contemporary Nigeria in this fiery reimagining of the Virginia Woolf classic, starring a luminous, profoundly melancholic Sophie Okonedo as the eponymous Lagos society woman.

Through intimate camerawork shaped with the narrative tension of a crime thriller, Michał Marczak’s award-winning film follows a father’s relentless pursuit along Poland’s Vistula River to find his missing son.

Two soldiers fall in love amidst World War I in celebrated Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont’s (Close) latest work. Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne shared Best Actor at Cannes for this tender drama that mixes sensual sex scenes with stark combat sequences.

A group of teenagers brimming with cinephile passion plunges into a sea of adventure when they begin making films in their small Nigerian village and found a collective, The Critics, that gains international traction and support.

Julianne Moore is a suburban housewife who yearns to perform in her New Jersey hometown’s latest theater production and Paul Giamatti is the director who must coax out her inner diva in Jesse Eisenberg’s sharp, funny musical comedy.

Joanna Natasegara’s wildly entertaining documentary is essentially two films in one, the story of the Wu-Tang Clan’s notorious (and notoriously rare) 2015 album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and the man behind it, Dutch Moroccan rapper/producer Cilvaringz.

A Bulgarian archaeologist investigates the disappearance of a former lover in this absorbing Cannes prizewinner. German director Valeska Grisebach works with a nonprofessional cast to create a slow-burn thriller with the grit of a Western and the scope of Chinatown.

In the forests of southern Nepal, a mother searches for her missing daughter as wild elephants roam the night, in a haunting and tender story of chosen family, belonging, and survival.

After playing composer Richard Rodgers in Blue Moon and RAF meteorologist James Stagg in Pressure, Andrew Scott hits the biopic trifecta with his portrayal of Ian Charleson as the actor prepares to play his final role, Hamlet.

This thrilling documentary captures extreme sport star Jim Morrison’s 2025 risky attempt to scale Mount Everest’s rarely attempted north face and ski down from the summit with co-director Jimmy Chin along for the adventure.

When his bass player dies in a car accident, grieving jazz pianist Bill Evans stops playing and retreats to his parents’ home in this stunning drama that unreels with the rhythm of improvised music.

On the morning of Eid, the detention of two longtime residents sparks an unexpected response from a Glasgow neighborhood, setting the stage for a historic day of resistance. 
-MICHELLE SVENSON

Austrian writer/director Sandra Wollner won the Cannes Un Certain Regard Award for this unique, immersive drama that follows a family on a journey to Tenerife a year after a tragedy.

In Molly Manners’ witty and winsome debut about the pains of girlhood, quirky British boarding school besties Flic and Minna decide to become worldly Oxbridge candidates by getting some practice in romance.

An unforgettable study of identity, family, and generational remorse, the stunning Fatherland traces the relationship between renowned writer Thomas Mann and his accomplished actress-writer daughter Erika amidst the ruins of postwar Germany.

Norway’s inflexible child protection laws disrupt the lives of a devout immigrant family in Cristian Mungiu’s atmospheric Palme d’Or-winning family drama and legal thriller, starring superstars Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan.

A lonely woman, a mischievous nine-year-old, and an unexpected friendship transform an ordinary apartment into a tender, funny world of connection, beautifully captured in Fernando Eimbcke's luminous black-and-white film.

The lives of a musician and a police detective unexpectedly dovetail in Marie Kreutzer’s (Corsage, MVFF45) latest provocative drama when a search warrant for a filmmaker’s hard drives upends the life of his wife.

Fed-up communities in Louisiana and Appalachia's Rust Belt find themselves thrust into an unlikely role—that of accidental activists—as they take on factory polluters and fracking practices that have had devastating effects on the health of their friends and families.

Born in the wake of China’s controversial one-child policy, six-year-old Juan is suddenly uprooted from her family when her mom becomes pregnant in this achingly poignant coming-of-age story from first-time feature director Zou Jing.

Myrsini Aristodou’s award-winning, sensitive debut resonates with deeply felt authenticity and lasting emotional power in its story of the relationship that develops between a troubled, precocious preteen and the father she’s just getting to know.

Producers embrace journeyman actor-turned-screenwriter Sylvester Stallone’s boxing story, but no studio wants to invest in a film without a star—and Stallone wrote the part of Rocky Balboa for himself—in this behind-the-scenes drama charting the making of Rocky.

Filmed over 25 years, this prize-winning documentary casts a tender and fearless eye over the lives of two inseparable cousins, Guillermina and Belinda, as they grow up in the rural Argentine Pampas.

Some things arrive in waves: sunlight, joy, but also grief and loss. Director Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s 2019 graphic novel is an indelible story of love between two teenagers and their passion for each other and the sea.

Director Danny Boyle charts the rise and fall of Sir Albert “Larry” Lamb, infamous Rupert Murdoch acolyte and creator of the titillating bits that rocketed The Sun to British tabloid superstardom in the 1970s.

A young boy navigates life from inside an iron corset in Wall-E and Up animator Louis Clichy’s tender, funny rite-of-passage story that honestly confronts the distress that every adolescent endures.

A determined sommelier dreams of opening her own wine bar, but life has other plans. Gabe Klinger's charming São Paulo story is a witty, bittersweet toast to reinvention and second chances.

An unlikely setting for a groundswell of talent and creativity, Cameroon’s overcrowded New Bell Prison reveals incarcerated artists whose extraordinary music, dance, and performance may just offer a chance at redemption.

Jean-Michel Basquiat burned brightly in his 27 years—and still does in a legacy both artistic and personal reflected in this touching and funny documentary centered around reminiscences by the painter’s surviving sisters, Lisane and Jeanine.

When eight-year-old Josephine witnesses an attack in Golden Gate Park, it shatters her sense of safety. Driven by terrific performances, what ensues is riveting storytelling as she and her parents navigate the unfathomable.

Three eras, one buried story. La bola negra is a mesmerizing cinematic journey through love, memory, persecution, and the quiet wounds passed from one generation to the next, told with haunting beauty.

French teenagers take a summer class trip to Naples, Italy, in this marvelous coming-of-age film that is subtle, mysterious, and intelligent. Marine Atlan’s feature debut garnered the Cannes Critics Week Best Picture award.

In this striking neo-noir debut, a fiercely independent Lagos taxi driver’s careful life is upended when she becomes the driver for a group of glamorous, reckless sex workers—including her long-lost childhood friend.

Deep in the breathtaking rainforests of Indonesia, an existential battle rages: vegetable oil production versus the planet’s future. This visually stunning, emotionally unsettling documentary captures the passion and purpose of native people battling multinational corporations to save their home.

A young woman’s beauty and charm enchant a trio of men—including the detective investigating her murder in Otto Preminger’s sleek and suspenseful classic noir.

When their overburdened mother abandons her family to join an all-female commune, her teenage daughters try to break the leader’s iron grip in Guy Nattiv’s heart-wrenching slow-burn psychological thriller, inspired by his own family history.

A prison volunteer and an inmate form an unexpected connection, but neither is what they appear to be in writer/director Tim Blake Nelson’s powerful drama starring Amanda Seyfried and Scoot McNairy.

Andrew Haigh tells an intimate, tenderly heartbreaking tale of personal awakening and familial reckoning set in the gorgeously snow-clad Mountain West of the 1950s, starring Fred Hechinger in a stunning turn.

Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with this drama charting the unlikely friendship of two middle-school girls, complete opposites, who bond over a shared love for drawing manga.

Finding the love of your life can be exhilarating and a little crazy. Margaret Qualley creates a nuanced portrait of a young woman on the verge as a nurse whose life is upturned by the pandemic.

In AIDS-era New York, an artist throws himself into work, love, music, and desire, surrounded by people who challenge the boundaries of intimacy, loyalty, and the life he wants to live.

Against the backdrop of Chile’s transition to democracy, a disappearance at a ski resort pulls a nine-year-old girl into the adults’ pact of silence in director Manuela Martelli’s unnerving political allegory.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s first feature in a decade, this chilling reimagining of La femme infidèle and Unfaithful masterfully explores the depths of corruption in Putin’s Russia through a story of crime and infidelity.

Fifteen years after her landmark documentary Miss Representation, Jennifer Siebel Newsom returns to confront the ways social media, AI, and online misogyny are weaponized against girls, threatening the future of the next generation of female leaders.

Slow Horses’ Rosalind Eleazar delivers a sexy, funny, anguished performance as the one-time star of a hit TV show urgently striving for a single piece of career good luck in Chris Rock’s strikingly truthful showbiz tale.

With their third collaboration, Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson continue to caress our humanity through a tender coming-of-age tale. Attuned to the mysterious ebbs and flows of grief with humor and heartbreak, Mouse is a gentle stunner.

Veteran documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney presents a dispassionate, mesmerizingly complex, and terrifying portrait of Elon Musk, taking as inspiration the billionaire’s musing that contemporary reality might be a computer simulation and video game.

Forced to flee their own country, independent Russian journalists continue to chronicle Putin’s war on free speech—and Ukraine—in this equally vivid follow-up to Julie Loktev’s acclaimed 2024 documentary.

In this ‘spoke-binding’ documentary, Daniel Clarke explores the rise of the popular bicycle brand and the iconic American brand’s subsequent, baffling collapse.

A stellar thriller built entirely from restored archival footage, Odyssey plunges us into the fateful Apollo 13 mission through the perspective of astronaut Jim Lovell—offering a moving reflection on the first Space Race just as a new one begins.

After losing her son in a tragic accident, a mother travels from one family to another carrying an apology that may be impossible to accept, in Gabriel Martins' delicate, deeply human meditation on grief and forgiveness.

Five decades after director William Greaves invited the surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance to Duke Ellington’s apartment to debate their movement’s legacy, Greaves’ son David completes his father’s passion project documenting a wealth of brilliant personality and bracing ideas.

Noah Segan delivers an elegant love letter to one of cinema’s favorite towns through the five-borough odyssey of an old-world pickpocket trying to make it right with a crime family he accidentally antagonized.

Mining the country’s past through a personal New York story of derailed ambitions, James Gray dismantles the notion of the American Dream with a harrowing, ‘80s-set crime-thriller. His finest film to date feels like a new classic.

Songwriter/guitarist Pete Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey add valuable insights to this energetic documentary that relates the history of The Who and Lifehouse, the ambitious, Townshend-penned rock opera that was supposed to follow Tommy.

A woman facing an early Alzheimer’s diagnosis and the possibility of her teenage son’s imprisonment, joins a poetry class and works on a single poem in Lee Chang-dong’s exquisite drama.

A hesitant, complex relationship develops between two married couples when a wealthy, well-meaning pair befriends working-class partners, victims of brutal economic injustice.

Johnny Flynn and John C. Reilly star as community leaders confronting wildfire and other threats in a small Western town in 1870. Dara Van Dusen’s feature debut is both familiar and eerily apocalyptic—a notable accomplishment.

A family faces an impossible question when love and responsibility collide, as three generations of women navigate aging, desire, independence, and the unexpected ways we care for one another.

A mother’s grief becomes a fight for justice when Lorena Gutiérrez takes her daughter’s story to Mexico’s highest halls of power, refusing to let Fátima’s memory disappear.

Nearly a half-century of Iranian political repression and resistance unfolds through one family’s experience, illustrated by home movies and other archival materials in this highly personal documentary from expatriate Pegah Ahangarani.

Blending spectacular action with the grit of a wartime adventure, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story reveals the untold tale of the Rebel heroes who stole the Death Star plans in a stirring tale of sacrifice, rebellion, and hope.

Sandra Hüller delivers a performance of searing psychological intensity as a 17th-century war veteran who conceals many secrets in Markus Schleinzer’s stark, formally stunning drama.

While preparing for an upcoming swimming trip to Brazil, best friends La Maestra and Paula see their bright futures upended one fateful night. First-time feature director Fernanda Tovar crafts a moving coming-of-age drama in this Berlinale award winner.

“All the young Punks, Laugh your life 'Cause there ain't much to cry for.” Explore grief, community, and coming of age in stories both personal and universal with these dynamic youth-produced shorts.

You won’t find another shorts collection this full of laughs, surprises, and human connection than these shorts that orbit around a very grave subject.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, California College of the Arts, and CSU Long Beach for a stellar showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. This selection features films reflecting family, friendship, life, death, and cultural identity.

MVFF partners with CalArts, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA and CSU Long Beach for a second showcase of animated work directed by female and nonbinary filmmakers. Films include kid-friendly topics like animals, family, friendship, big dreams, and outer space.

"If music could talk, which means whatever your mind can bring.” This collection of documentary short films invite a sense of curiosity and quest, seeking to grasp human thought, motive, and expression.

“A great meeting of rhythm and face, a humming of values and a children’s place.”  Gather round with these shorts centered on girls who uncover something new about the world and their social circles.

Protagonists assert their power and try to rewrite the narrative against powerful forces they face in these short films that include documentaries about the environment and civil rights, as well as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s revisionist history of Marilyn Monroe.

“But go easy Step lightly Stay free.” As we grow older, we tend to abandon all inherent free spirit and audacity. These short documentaries bring those feelings flooding back, allowing us to live vicariously through these bold and intrepid characters.

“What the hell is wrong with me? I'm not who I want to be.”  Life and sense of self are never exactly how they appear in these provocative and moving stories from around the world.

When the local pool closes, pre-teen Pola leads the charge to save it in this upbeat and inspiring story of activism, kid-style, and the enduring power of friendship, awash in wildly creative costumes, musical dance numbers, and fabulous young talent.

Witty, erudite documentary filmmaker Mark Cousins offers a monumental history of the genre, from cinema’s earliest day through to our own era, a lyrical journey that also acts as an epic memory poem about the modern world.

Desperate to escape her volatile home life, Ali takes a leap of faith and hops on a bus to Venice Beach where a vivacious band of unhoused young adults take her under their wing.

Famed author Patricia Highsmith (Helen Mirren) and Alden Ehrenreich's ambitious publishing rep face off during a fiendishly playful (and completely imaginary) mystery as sharp and witty as a murderous Tom Ripley novel.

Leah Nelson’s beautifully animated film, based on Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir, stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Abbi Jacobson, and Bryan Cranston as a family struggling to support each other through a mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

Legendary auteur Mike Leigh turns his trademark humanist lens on the lives of best friends Rosie and Amy, social workers dealing with demanding clients and Amy’s aging parents. It’s a precarious work-life balance…but nothing a glass of wine can’t fix.

Often presented as secondary to his climbing partner Edmund Hillary in the story of the first successful summit of Mount Everest, Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay’s life amidst the Himalayas comes into sharp relief in this stirring biopic.

The promising life of an Olympic-bound gymnast is cut short, but her presence lives on through an enduring mother-daughter bond reaching beyond the physical world—exploring the mysteries of cellular memory, spirit, and our connections across life and death.

MVFF tributee Sam Rockwell won an Oscar® for his role as a hotheaded, dimwitted cop battling Frances McDormand’s raging, inconsolable mother in Martin McDonagh’s black comic, renegade masterpiece.

Sean Ono Lennon’s intimate doc follows the co-founders of the NYC fashion collective threeASFOUR as they pursue unity, collaboration, and creative freedom through avant-garde couture designs worn by icons like Björk, Chloë Sevigny, and Meredith Monk.

Legendary documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple completes the workers’ trilogy she began 50 years ago with this vivid, on-the-ground look at often rancorous labor struggles in the era of delivery apps and the gig economy.

Bay Area poet, educator, and community activist Amber Allen-Peirson turns the camera on her own life in this deeply moving quest for belonging that blends personal archival footage and vérité moments with a bold poetic narration.

What begins with an unexpected connection between two families becomes a tender, quietly funny portrait of love, loss, and belonging, reminding us that sometimes the family we find is the one we never imagined.

Former lawyer and veteran documentarian Dawn Porter revisits the case of the Harlem Park Three, whose wrongful convictions as teenagers led to 36 years behind bars and exposed profound failures within the American justice system.

When filmmaker Gabriela Pena returns to Valparaíso, Chile, to renovate the house her family left behind decades earlier, she unearths how silences, unspoken fears, and absences have shaped their relationships and approaches to love.

A fisherwoman mocked for her spinsterish ways beseeches a basket maker to weave her a husband in this altogether unique and fantastical folk romance starring Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, and Peter Dinklage.

A pair of CIA agents, Easter Island, and a mysterious assignment: Martin McDonagh delivers a darkly funny, visually stunning thriller fueled by the irresistible chemistry of John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell.

Academy Award® winner Mahershala Ali's turn as a devout Muslim who quietly makes his living as a professional killer headlines this stunning, elevated blend of exemplary action, taut thriller, and moving drama.

A candid look at how artificial intelligence is reshaping filmmaking, from the editing room to the boardroom.

A conversation with leading animators on why animation deserves its place at the heart of cinema.

Two of film criticism's sharpest minds trade ideas on the state and soul of cinema.

Three acclaimed documentarians sit down over brunch to dig into the craft and urgency of nonfiction storytelling today.

Bay Area filmmakers get real about building careers and telling stories rooted in their own backyard.

Sam Rockwell will be honored with a special MVFF Tribute Program, featuring clips from his career and an in-depth conversation, followed by a screening of Wild Horse Nine. The evening will also include an earlier screening of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, another Martin McDonagh film starring Rockwell, whose performance earned him an Academy Award.

Flowing water and memories, the mind's journey to find home in the unfamiliar.

Director Kit Steinkellner devises a surprise development for a young couple which forces them to wonder Are We Still Married?

Intimate and observational, At the Stage When follows a young urban couple experiencing societal pressure around parenthood.

Across the San Francisco Bay, subsistence fishers below the poverty line depend on their catch to feed their families, even as decades of pollution poison the waters.

In Claire Harris Matson and Drew Brandon Jones’s very funny Being Dead Should Be Easy, a shiva is the perfect place to discuss planning one’s own mortal passing.

Two friends, Simon and Teddy, discover the marvels and mishaps of a little magic that tests their friendship.

A breakup from the point of view of a young woman hoping to glue the pieces together but discovering that some broken things cannot be fixed.

A jazzy, sassy musical tale of Mouse Detective Quill on the trail of his longtime nemesis and secret crush, Cat Burglar Juliette.

After 40 years running his grocery store, 72-year-old Chuck reflects on his South Korean childhood and his lifelong devotion to Philadelphia's Caribbean community.

Delighted by the birds chattering on her balcony, Audrey invents a bird-language translator to unlock their secret, playful conversations.

For 17 years, Cicada has worked faithfully and flawlessly in a gray office, yet remains ignored and bullied, his entire life bound to a strict schedule.

A 17-year-old filmmaker joins a Maldives research team documenting the fight to protect endangered whale sharks amid a global tourism industry.

A Korean expatriate doctor must confront his mixed feelings about his former home when he meets a very special patient.

Neglected by the boy who made her, a stitched doll injures herself again and again for his attention until the thread runs out and she's discarded.

In Enjoy Your Visit, an African American actress cosplays as a slave at a tourist-based historical site.

Dinner conversation at the table of a most imaginative family who definitely do not subscribe to the old saying, “Never play with your food!”

A teenager preparing for a “purity ball” faces some harsh realities about religious expectation, self-worth, and personal expression.

Director Maggie Gyllenhaal tells a revisionist history of Marilyn Monroe (Dakota Johnson), who faces down studio pressure to assert her voice and influence, in a speculation on a career that might have been.

Award-winning filmmaker Yoruba Richen excavates a groundbreaking true-life 1975 case that galvanized Black Power activists, feminists, and prison reformers around one young Black woman’s historic fight for justice and the right to defend herself against sexual violence.

Adorable little Goddamn is ready for love but where is that obscure object of desire

Twelve-year old Deniz finds that being a girl changes dynamics among her boy schoolmates in her small rural town.

When 12-year-old Kai realizes his older brother has outgrown their childhood games, he decides it's time to grow up too, though he's unsure if he's ready.

Free-spirited and expressive, Charlie Eguia’s Happiness for a Herder follows a group of nomadic herder families in Mongolia.

On her 18th birthday, a girl sits before her cake surrounded by celebration while something beneath the surface isn't right.

In this fun musical homage to the toons of the 1940s, a struggling artist can’t seem to get his self-portrait on canvas until his paints and brushes come to the rescue.

It is 1980 in Yuba City, California in Reaa Puri’s Harvest Party At Camp Two, and a group of Young Punjabi Sikh farmworkers throw the biggest party their small town has ever seen.

In Joël Gibbs’s animated lush period romance, social class evokes something tender and mythic.

A snow monkey bathing in a natural hot spring has an out-of-body experience and requires some well-trained snowflakes to revive him with their magical powers.

After being dumped, a teenage girl literally spills her guts, dragging her entrails through school and family dinners in search of someone who cares.

The humorous story of a man working as a teddy bear mascot who gets transported to a land of plush animals where the humans live in cages and stuffies rule the world.

Sibling creatures snuggle and struggle to find their own place and space from—and with—each other.

Memories of one man’s literal and figurative trip to Chiapas accompanied by his brother and a bag of magic mushrooms soaked in honey.

Two young nuns embark on a holier-than-thou competition that evokes some heavy emotions.

John and Dan Bell’s It’s a Wonderful Night of the Living Dead  is an irresistible mashup of Frank Capra and George Romero.

A 14-year-old boy collects stones on an ordinary day, one from his drunken mother and another from a street fight he was too scared to stop.

A gay couple reevaluates their relationship to their repressive Persian culture when the prospect of leaving their homeland arises.

When the Empress transports herself to a spa planet for some much-needed R&R, her assistant Quip takes charge for the day and has some ambitious plans.

The lovely journey of a coin rolling and bouncing from one edge of San Francisco to the other.

Azorel, a dog-like urban dweller, navigates a fantastical reimagined city that explores how we reshape spaces to reflect our communities.

Watch out, LA—the badass mamalonacitas are coming to a mall near you and they’re taking no prisoners!

With an experimental sensibility, Karla Condado’s Miriam copes with grief as the filmmaker reads personal letters to her aunt who was a victim of femicide.

In Aleksandr Terekhov’s reflective Monument, a grieving daughter finds comfort from an unexpected source.

A little ballerina dreams big from the wings of a grand stage production of The Nutcracker.

A young girl's ordinary afternoon at the park leads to an unexpected connection with a stranger that gradually reveals an unsettling undercurrent between trust and danger.

In Nita Blum and Jonathan Pickett’s A New Inferno, paramedics race to save the lives of heatstroke victims using a radical new treatment.

A child of divorce learns how to appreciate time with Mom and time with Dad in a family that is together but apart.

A girlfight at poolside between two frenemies who both emerge triumphant.

Can’t a girl just get a pair of regular old glasses in the astral plane?

Of Veins and Wires imagines a future where artificial means can replace human procreation.

Inspired by Langston Hughes' poem, this film uses a bird as metaphor to confront the devastating reality in Palestine, refusing to let viewers look away.

When six-year-old actress Emily grows distressed on set, revealing unexpected childhood trauma, the director must balance her safety and agency with keeping the production alive.

A week after her mother's death, Jiho forgets it entirely as her inner self, "Thought," demands she purge every trace while Jiho clings to denial.

What happens when what you thought you wanted no longer fulfills. Should you take that giant leap into the unknown?

In The Right Fit, Max Mollring and Nicolas Collins introduce the owner of a one-of-a-kind small business in San Rafael.

A collaboration between Ukrainian painter Alla Hurenko and directors Natalie Shirinian and Elizabeth Baudouin, Room of the Absolute is a time capsule and portrait of resilience in the face of relentless destruction in Ukraine.

A moving tale of three generations of Chinese women whose dreams and struggles are linked by one pair of scissors.

In Isabel Pask’s comedic short, selling girl scout cookies is a hidden path for two friends to achieve a much larger goal…or so they think.

A little girl accompanies her mom to the café where she works and discovers a seagull with undiscovered barista talents.

Actor Morena Baccarin (Firefly) makes her directing debut with this tale about the lessons a young girl learns from her father over the years, and how they resonate in her unknown future.

A mother and daughter discover something unexpected about themselves over a mysterious pair of shoes.

Along the picturesque coastline of Brittany, France, bright orange novelty Garfield phones wash ashore in Zack Grant’s eccentric short.

In Simone Stadler’s The Spanish Lesson, a surprise student has some deeper resonance.

Snakes slide along the frame, doing their beautiful dance of life.

A poor little sticker is tired of being stuck to a notebook, so he hitches a ride for a wider view of the world.

A beautifully told first-person account of a youthful stowaway who finds solace and companionship with the ship’s cat.

A humorous punk-rock high school drama centering on an undying craving for an elusive incendiary snack.

A young man challenges himself to swim across a freezing river, only to discover the error of his ways when he gets to the opposite shore.

TT Takemoto's colorful and tangible reconstruction of history is inspired by Filipina-American Rose Bamberger, founder of Daughters of Bilitis, San Francisco’s own first lesbian activist group.

A trance-like dance of human and abstract forms. Undulating and shapeshifting to an irresistible rhythmic beat.

People imagine the animals we wish we could see in real life—all shapes, all colors!

Two teenaged slackers do tarot readings in graveyards for cash ‘til their tagalong, screen-addicted baby brother takes off on his own.

“My child, in this lifetime, you will know what it is to be loved.” A beautiful musical story of young love on the shores of a faraway land.

A child of divorce learns how to appreciate time with Mom and time with Dad in a family that is together but apart.

Composed of black-and-white 35mm photographs, A Town Called Needville traces filmmaker Audrey Lane's inpatient stay at an all-women’s mental health facility in Texas.

When the agents from the underworld come to her door, an elderly woman resists their call until certain conditions are met.

Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo stewards cultivate 7.6 acres of ancestral land at Heron's Shadow, sharing traditional practices and their harvest with the greater Bay Area.

A culinary whiz in the kitchen, this cat is a most unexpected cake-maker.

Inspired by the life of Queen Hsin Phyu Ma Shin and the late 19th-century massacre at Mandalay Palace—a tale of intrigue among the royalty in Myanmar.

Environmental activist Gabi Paun risks his life to expose illegal logging in Romania’s ancient forests, taking on timber mafias and IKEA while revealing the hidden cost of the world’s appetite for cheap furniture.

Blind sailor Walt Raineri thought he'd prepared for his loss of sight but learns anew through sailing, navigating by listening, feeling, and trusting the wind, water, and his community.