Indie Miracle: 20 Years of HollyShorts Festival

How time flies! HollyShorts is taking Los Angeles by storm on its 20th anniversary. For two decades, the festival has flourished near the industry's epicenter and become one of the most high-profile competitions for up-and-coming filmmakers, who might get an award, representation, or at least exposure. Or all three, if you are lucky!

HollyShorts is also an Oscar-qualifying event. Four award winners get a ticket to submit their movie to an August competition organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. How's that for a bonus? The lucky foursome includes whichever movie gets the Best Short Film Grand Prize, Best Animation Short, Best Live Action Short, and Best Documentary Short.

HollyShorts' successful run has allowed it to grow. There's a satellite event in the U.K., HolyShorts London, and a spinoff Screenplay Contest. Winners get the green light to produce their opus with the help of Holyshorts Festival's sponsors and automatically get picked for next year's fest. 

This year's jury includes genre stars like Adrienne Barbeau. There are box-office draws like the upcoming Louis Lane, Rachel Brosnahan, and David Dastmalchian (Late Night with the Devil). They faced the daunting task of making their way through a program of over 400 entries. It's an embarrassment of riches. Here's the lowdown on some of the shorts in competition. Visit this page often! We will add more as soon as we catch them.

The Dog

Stars can be good sports. Despite success in long-running T.V. series or box-office juggernauts, they are gracious enough to take roles in new filmmakers' shorts. Case in point: Kate Walsh. The "Grey's Anatomy" doctor plays a different king of Medicine Woman in "The Dog," Danielle Baynes' third production. Walsh is Claire, a beleaguered veterinarian who is reaching burnout between ever-dying pets, distraught owners saying goodbye to their best friends, and clients embittered by the cost of animal healthcare. One good night - or perhaps, one bad night - she gets the visitation of a white dog who speaks with a booming human voice. He brings an urgent message just in the nick of time. Walsh's poignant performance saves the movie from itself.

Will I See You Again?

Michael Perez-Lyndsay has worked in the film industry for over ten years. He has operated cameras and toiled in the electrical and editorial departments. This year, he will venture into writing and directing with his ambitious new debut short, "Will I See You Again?"

Short films have no time to lose. With barely a whiff of context, they spring on you a surprise that may defy credibility. Alas, you have to roll with it. If the movie is working, you won't mind the craziness. "Will I See You Again?" begins seriously enough at the service for a recently deceased man, Jim (Robert Okumu). We only see him in a blown-up photograph at the altar, where pastor Max Palmer (Hosea Chanchez) shares his reminiscences. He is not just the spiritual leader of the community but grew up with the dearly departed, one in a trio of inseparable friends. The third one, Paul (Nick Wechsler), enters the church in the middle of the service. By the stern look in the pastor's eyes, you can tell he is bothered by something else besides tardiness.

The festival placed the movie under the LGBT section of the program, which qualifies as a spoiler. It hints at the revelations, but nothing can prepare you for Jim's machinations from beyond the grave. Like me, you may take pause at the value conferred to lie detectors, but you can't quibble with a dead man's last wishes, right? Again, solid performers come through, lifting the material even if contrivance almost drags it down. 

Fishtank

In Julio Cortazar's legendary short story "Letter to a Young Woman in Paris," a man inexplicably vomits bunny rabbits occasionally. Wendi Tang's "Fishtank" cannot afford the luxury of unexplained symbolism. Jules (Tiffany Chu) is a recovering alcoholic taking back control of her life. She suffers one instance of lack of control: she vomits little fishes, which she keeps in many aquariums around her gloomy apartment. Despite their horror-tinged origin, they are the cute kind. Goldfish, angel fish, and many other decorative species stare at her from beyond the glass, ignorant of their bizarre inception.

Soon enough, we get clues of their origins. It seems like Jules expels the fish whenever she experiences violence from men. It may be something as egregiously familiar as the unwanted petting of a drunken suitor at a club or a cruel power grab by a controlling lover. She turns these instances of trauma into something beautiful, which she keeps around, perhaps not to forget. You'll have to decide as things come to a head with an unforgivable betrayal. Tang deals with symbolism with a sure hand. For once, clarity is not a facile way out.

Anuja

Most filmmakers in developing countries can't escape poverty's hold on imagination. It's what the market expects from you, what socially-minded NGOs and film funds favor. Less charitable critics speak of "misery porn," but then again, if the problem is so pervasive, how can we run away from it? I do not know the circumstances behind the making of Daniel J. Graves' "Anuja," but it does offer a hint of how to save these projects from the weight of good intentions.

Anuja (Sajda Pathan) is a whip-smart nine-year-old living hand-to-mouth in contemporary India. Her sole family is her sister Palak (Anaya Shanhbhag), a teenager who toils in a sweatshop with vague dreams of saving enough money to cover her wedding expenses. Anuja has a better way out. A stubborn teacher dangles before her the possibility of winning a scholarship if only she shows up for a qualifying test. The sweatshop boss competes with the promise of short-term money and a job. What will Anuja choose?

We know what we want, but Graves is not in the business of giving it to us. The movie careens to an open ending, which is more didactic than dramatically satisfying. If you can handle the frustration, "Anuja" is a vivid family film showing the harsh reality children on the other side of capitalism must live with.

River of Grass

Young war veteran Larry Johnson (Dylan McTee) does not know he is switching one combat zone for another when he returns home after a tour of duty that left him with a nasty case of PTSD. He is warmly received by all except older brother Robert (Victor Webster), who seems to resent his return. Are we in for a fratricidal fight for control of the family state, with the grizzled firstborn and the traumatized baby bro at odds?

Well, no. The warm family welcome has a dark undercurrent. Their livelihood does not come from living off the land but from trafficking drugs. When Robert takes little Larry on a work-related errand, all hell breaks loose. "River of Grass" has a few problems. First, it shares a name with an early Kelly Reichardt film, which can be confusing. Second, and most damming, is that its momentum feels truncated. This movie belongs to a particular strain of short film, which plays more like the first act of a feature-length than a narrative exercise complete in itself. I don't know if director Derek Magyar was aiming for that, but it feels like that. As such, it's eminently unsatisfactory.  

Corpse Fishing

Don't you love it when foreign talents grab means of production from the U.S. and use them to tell stories close to their culture? I do! Such is the case of director Jean Liu's "Corpse Fishing." It's one of two films she released in 2024 - the other, "Learning English," premiered at SXSW. It hits HolyShorts a few months after premiering in Tribeca. HollyShorts does not demand you open their movie on their turf - total mensch behavior. The film holds U.S. citizenship but is Chinese in language and spirit.

A young orphan (Harmony He) scraps by in a coastal town, barely earning a living selling snacks and renting a makeshift karaoke setup on the beach. Her father has disappeared mysteriously, which accounts for her somber disposition. One night, a stranger (Jizhong Zhang) comes by, manning a rustic dinghy that smells like death. It can't be any other way. The man works fishing for corpses in the open water and sells them back to the grieving families. He strikes a deal with the girl. He promises to show her the three bodies on board, one for each day she keeps him company. She might find her father, and he will ease his loneliness. Everybody wins.

Writer-director Liu serves a morbid fable with a surprisingly sweet core. For all its dark humor, "Corpse Fishing" gives us the encounter of two lonely souls among the stench of rotting flesh - which you never really see. Online literature identifies the girl as a 13-year-old, but actress Harmony He is visibly more mature, and there is no attempt to infantilize her. Perhaps the filmmakers were preventing any hint of criminal behavior. Liu's deft hand at mythical underpinnings and twisted warmth make her a talent to follow.