
Tom Koch’s Oscar-qualified short film OLIVE is a quietly devastating yet deeply tender meditation on love, memory, and the cruel distortions of Alzheimer’s. Fronted by Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Lesley Ann Warren, the film is elevated by her haunting, lived-in performance, a reminder of why she remains one of cinema’s most compelling actresses. OLIVE is…

In Butterfly on a Wheel, two-time Emmy-winning composer Trevor Morris makes a striking transition from scoring Hollywood blockbusters to directing a deeply personal, Oscar-qualifying short film. Set against Toronto’s vibrant cultural backdrop, the film is a tender, resonant exploration of mental health, artistry, and the universal human yearning to be truly seen. In Butterfly on a Wheel,…

Lee Knight’s debut short A Friend of Dorothy demonstrates the assured touch of a filmmaker who understands restraint, nuance, and the quiet power of human connection. Fresh from winning Best Director at the Oscar-qualifying HollyShorts, Knight shapes a story that could easily tip into sentimentality but instead finds honesty in the smallest of moments. Lee…

With The Mourning Of, Merced Elizondo proves himself a director of rare precision and empathy. The short film, which has now officially qualified for the 2026 Academy Awards® after winning Best Live Action Short at the St. Louis International Film Festival, is both a deeply personal meditation on grief and a milestone for Latino representation on…

Mushroom Dad is both surreal and deeply personal. What was the first spark of the idea, and how did it grow into the story we see today? The initial spark for the film was both the very silly, but also deeply poignant idea of “what would it be like if you had to take care of…

What was your inspiration behind Recesses? The film was almost built completely as a memory piece around my childhood. We shot this film at my old elementary school in Metro Detroit, the same where my father taught third grade. After dismissal, I would wander the empty halls as he worked tirelessly into the night. Through…

Growing up Indian in America, I was very aware of my skin tone from a young age. Especially as a teenager, I hated what I saw in the mirror. I had a visceral desire to rip my body apart and cobble together something whiter. The violence of that feeling combined with the genuine bodily harm…

Michael Yuchen Lei’s Mushroom Dad is an inventive, heartfelt short that blends surreal comedy with raw emotional truth. Backed by Lena Waithe and developed through the Indeed Rising Voices program, it’s a festival gem that premiered at Tribeca before heading to HollyShorts, earning praise for both its humor and poignancy. The story follows Julian, a rising chef…

In Plastic Surgery, director Guy Trevellyan delivers a gripping environmental thriller that transforms a sterile hospital ward into a pressure chamber of ecological dread. Premiering at the 2025 HollyShorts Film Festival, this bold, atmospheric short reimagines plastic pollution not as a distant catastrophe, but as an insidious threat already flowing through our bloodstreams. Set during…