Here are more of the documentaries showing at HollyShorts Film Festival. She Chose War (26 minutes), directed by Sarah Moshman, lets us meet a woman in war. Nelli Chorba was studying acting when Russia invaded Ukraine. She volunteered for the army and is now part of a...
Casey Carter’s documentary To Use a Mountain is an attempt to help us understand a complex issue, but ends up being too narrowly focused to bring light. It deals with the search to find a place for the US to store its growing pile of nuclear waste. To be sure, this is...
Watching various shorts at HollyShorts Film Festival can give you a wide range of experience in just a short time. There may be surprises. There may be emotion. There may be social commentary. It is all served up in a smorgasbord of stories. Selah (22 minutes),...
It’s time to start in on some of the animated fare at HollyShorts Film Festival. HollyShorts is an Oscar-qualifying festival, so award winners here can be considered for Academy Awards. I’m never surprised when the nominations come out that I’ve seen a few already....
Maybe it’s just me, but I think there is often a fine line between dark comedies and romcoms. So I sampled HollyShorts Film Festival sections of each and will report here and see if you can tell which is which. It’s OK, Johnny (7 minutes), directed by Deniz Akyurek,...
HollyShorts Film Festival is underway! This festival focuses on stories that are told with precision and succinctness. It may surprise you to discover who some of the filmmakers are who have films at the festival. Other filmmakers may have great futures ahead of them....
Directed by Fernando Eimbcke, Olmo shows us a family being overcome not so much by the disease that has come to the father, but by the selfishness of each member. Olmo (Aivan Uttapa) is fourteen and in lust with Nina (Melanie Frometa), the older girl across the...
“I’ve dealt with fools before, but you set a new standard.” Probably the main thing to know about Above & Below, directed by Jesse V. Johnson, is that it is being released to coincide with Shark Week (although it is not officially a part of Shark Week). Those who...
“We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a ‘change of era,’ in which—while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter—most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely...