FOR A LIMITED TIME!
76 DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
OPENING FILM - This miraculous documentary, set in Wuhan hospitals during the 76 days the city was on lockdown, is a powerful, unimaginable, harrowing, but deeply hopeful portrait of front-of-line workers improvising heroic emotional care.
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DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL
Available to watch
Oct 25 12:00 am - Oct 25 11:59 pm
CENTERPIECE FILM - After the murder of the unarmed Akai Gurley by Peter Liang, a Chinese American cop, factions turn out in the streets, some in support of Black lives, others claiming that an Asian rookie is a convenient scapegoat for a racist justice system.
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SDAFF Drive-In! presents GET THE HELL OUT
In this horror comedy, a zombie outbreak unleashes mayhem on the Taiwan parliament and unlikely heroes emerge, as do blood and guts.
Buy tickets
DEFINITION PLEASE
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 24 11:59 pm
Other former Spelling Bee champs go on to glory. Monica Choudry hasn't left her mom's house. With her pesky brother, Monica learns to care for family–and herself.
Buy tickets
SDAFF Drive-In! presents BE WATER
With interviews, outtakes, and glorious archival footage, a dynamic and crucial look at Bruce Lee as an icon, actor, and Asian American.
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LOST LOTUS
Available to watch
Oct 28 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wu Yu's life is overturned after her elderly mother is killed in a hit-and-run. Previously a young, secular school-teacher, she now dives into her mother's Buddhism, and sets off on a solitary mission to bring the killer to justice.
Buy tickets
KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 28 11:59 pm
Some say she’s crazy. Maybe she’s possessed. There’s no simple explanation for Kim Ji-Young, a college grad turned stay-at-home mom. Acclaimed adaptation of Cho Nam-Joo’s best-selling novel and an ode to the unspoken yearnings of mothers and daughters.
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THE PAPER TIGERS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In this action-comedy, coming-of-(middle)-age kung fu flick, three martial arts students reunite after decades apart to find what–or who–killed their sifu.
Buy tickets
ASSASSINS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Perfect killers or accidental pawns? Real-life spy thriller as two women wipe a toxin on Kim Jong-un's brother's face and disappear into the crowd.
Buy tickets
MEMORIES TO CHOKE ON, DRINKS TO WASH THEM DOWN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Four delightful vignettes capture the complex heart of Hong Kong as its people -- young and old, local and migrant -- wrestle with the past and look towards the future.
Buy tickets
DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
One man encounters another in Thailand. Tsai Ming-liang’s wordless meditation to the fleeting beauty of everyday details and the exquisite practice of looking and touching.
Buy tickets
THERE IS NO EVIL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
* Limited tickets available. Golden Bear, 2020 Berlin International Film Festival Over the course of his two-decade career, independent...
Buy tickets
UNDER THE OPEN SKY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
After being released from prison for a thirteen-year murder sentence, a former yakuza member is set on making an honest living and becoming a reformed citizen.
Buy tickets
THE WOMAN WHO RAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Instead of focusing on his favorite subjects–drunken, listless Korean men–master filmmaker Hong Sang-soo flips the script and follows an ensemble of strong female characters as they search for peace in a world where patriarchal interruptions are ever-present.
Buy tickets
SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Focusing on four authors spanning modern China, Jia Zhang-ke sketches literary culture onto a turbulent history, the rural landscape, and the faces of ordinary people.
Buy tickets
BLACK MILK
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wessi awakens taboo attractions and unruly impulses when she leaves her life in Germany to reunite with her sister, faraway in Mongolia.
Buy tickets
THE CHESS GAME OF THE WIND
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
The passing of a wealthy matriarch leaves conniving would-be heirs jockeying for power in this long-unavailable tale of mansion intrigue.
Buy tickets
MOGUL MOWGLI
Available to watch
Oct 30 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
CLOSING FILM - Riz Ahmed plays Zed, an up-and-coming rapper who suddenly falls ill with a mysterious affliction. With a world tour about to start, Zed wants to fight the illness, but instead fights inner demons related to family and identity.
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Use this page to scroll through SDAFF films organized by sections: Special Presentations, Asian American Panorama, Surrogate Valentine Trilogy, Asia Pop!, Masters, Jia Zhang-ke Trilogy, Invisible Waves, After Life, and Shorts. Or use the Sections index at the bottom of this page!
SECTION: SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
The feature presentations of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival examine the deep reserves of humanity, ingenuity, and resilience called for during this singular year.
76 DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
OPENING FILM - This miraculous documentary, set in Wuhan hospitals during the 76 days the city was on lockdown, is a powerful, unimaginable, harrowing, but deeply hopeful portrait of front-of-line workers improvising heroic emotional care.
Buy tickets
DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL
Available to watch
Oct 25 12:00 am - Oct 25 11:59 pm
CENTERPIECE FILM - After the murder of the unarmed Akai Gurley by Peter Liang, a Chinese American cop, factions turn out in the streets, some in support of Black lives, others claiming that an Asian rookie is a convenient scapegoat for a racist justice system.
Buy tickets
MOGUL MOWGLI
Available to watch
Oct 30 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
CLOSING FILM - Riz Ahmed plays Zed, an up-and-coming rapper who suddenly falls ill with a mysterious affliction. With a world tour about to start, Zed wants to fight the illness, but instead fights inner demons related to family and identity.
Buy tickets
SECTION: ASIAN AMERICAN PANORAMA
The best of Asian American cinema in all of its colors—from stories of musical ambition and kung-fu revisited to tales of hustle and humor.
SDAFF Drive-In! presents BE WATER
With interviews, outtakes, and glorious archival footage, a dynamic and crucial look at Bruce Lee as an icon, actor, and Asian American.
Buy tickets
THE CELINE ARCHIVE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
The ghost of one Celine haunts another as filmmaker Celine Parreñas Shimizu uncovers a 1932 Filipino-American community pushing, pulling, and ultimately burying one woman alive.
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CURTAIN UP!
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Students at a NYC Chinatown elementary school work, play, and sing through a theatrical production of Frozen, while reflecting on identity, race, and family expectations.
Buy tickets
DEATH OF NINTENDO
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This delightful and nostalgic coming-of-age film chronicles the crusades of a group of friends as they navigate growing up in 1990s Manila.
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DEFINITION PLEASE
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 24 11:59 pm
Other former Spelling Bee champs go on to glory. Monica Choudry hasn't left her mom's house. With her pesky brother, Monica learns to care for family–and herself.
Buy tickets
THE DONUT KING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Meet Ted Ngoy, the tenacious refugee behind the pink box who is single-handedly responsible for the fact that nearly 80% of donut shops in the Los Angeles area are owned by Cambodian Americans.
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EXPORT MY LOVE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This cross-continental documentary follows Chinese-American Jany Murphy, part matchmaker, part modern day Cyrano de Bergerac, as she tries to help three Chinese divorcees find American husbands.
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FINDING YINGYING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In June 2017, Yingying Zhang, a Chinese visiting scholar, mysteriously vanished from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Soon after, her boyfriend and parents arrive in the US for reasons they never expected: to seek answers from a bewildered campus and a foreign criminal justice system.
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GYOPO
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
With a French New Wave aesthetic and a killer Korean psychedelic rock soundtrack, a motley mix of Korean expats strut and skitter about in the thrum of Seoul’s famously bustling streetscapes.
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MU AND THE VANISHING WORLD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Mu, a Kayan woman from Myanmar, leaves her life as a tourist attraction in Thailand and resettles in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where resettlement and single motherhood test her determination to forge her own path.
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THE PAPER TIGERS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In this action-comedy, coming-of-(middle)-age kung fu flick, three martial arts students reunite after decades apart to find what–or who–killed their sifu.
Buy tickets
Surrogate Valentine Trilogy
Director Lynn Chen rounds out the nine-year cinematic journey of singer-songwriter Goh Nakamura and his friends, lovers, and everyone in between. Playing that line between fact and fiction like an old guitar, these three instant-classic comedies show Asian Americans at their bumbling bests: creating, romancing, glowing under the California sun.
SURROGATE VALENTINE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Goh scrapes by as an indie musician while chatterbox actor Danny shadows him from gig to gig, until an old high school crush suddenly appears and throws everything off.
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DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When a heartbroken Goh Nakamura love-clicks with fellow musician Yea-Ming Chen, he decides to test fate and find her in Las Vegas.
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I WILL MAKE YOU MINE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Three women rethink their lives when their mutual ex saunters back into town in this musical continuation of the Surrogate Valentine trilogy.
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SECTION: ASIA POP!
Films to make you laugh, cry, and cheer, featuring accidental assassins, beauty queen hideouts, and giant robot dreams.
ASSASSINS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Perfect killers or accidental pawns? Real-life spy thriller as two women wipe a toxin on Kim Jong-un's brother's face and disappear into the crowd.
Buy tickets
DRAMA QUEEN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When a transgender woman witnesses a murder, she finds safety in...a beauty pageant! That is, until the villains send an assassin to meet her in the competition.
Buy tickets
SDAFF Drive-In! presents GET THE HELL OUT
In this horror comedy, a zombie outbreak unleashes mayhem on the Taiwan parliament and unlikely heroes emerge, as do blood and guts.
Buy tickets
IT FEELS SO GOOD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
With a wedding on the horizon, former lovers Ken and Naoko reunite and dip their toes into the libidinous limbo of a more carefree past.
Buy tickets
KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 28 11:59 pm
Some say she’s crazy. Maybe she’s possessed. There’s no simple explanation for Kim Ji-Young, a college grad turned stay-at-home mom. Acclaimed adaptation of Cho Nam-Joo’s best-selling novel and an ode to the unspoken yearnings of mothers and daughters.
Buy tickets
MEMORIES TO CHOKE ON, DRINKS TO WASH THEM DOWN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Four delightful vignettes capture the complex heart of Hong Kong as its people -- young and old, local and migrant -- wrestle with the past and look towards the future.
Buy tickets
MY PRINCE EDWARD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Her boyfriend's proposed. Now Fong needs to get out of a secret marriage but her fake husband has got the wheels turning.
Buy tickets
PROJECT DREAMS – HOW TO BUILD MAZINGER Z’S HANGAR
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Workplace comedy meets mecha anime, when an overzealous marketing director comes up with a plan to construct the iconic hangar from the anime Mazinger Z, the PR team gets roped into a wild and bureaucratic ride to achieve an otaku pipe dream.
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WILD SWORDS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Tense hunt between a faceless foe and a disappeared swordsman from two bitterly feuding sects, in this ravishing indie wuxia film.
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SECTION: MASTERS
Fresh from Venice, Busan, and other prestigious international film festivals, these are premiere works by the world’s best directors.
ALL THE THINGS WE NEVER SAID
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Atsuhisa’s quiet life is shattered when he catches his wife with another man. A series of tragic events force him to break through his silence to fight for his daughter.
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AFTER MY HOMECOMING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Playing a fictionalized version of herself, actress Kasumi Arimura visits her mother at home on her unexpected day off.
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CHASING DREAM
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
MMA fighter Tiger decides to help aspiring pop star Cuckoo get onto a singing show and destroy her ex-boyfriend, a celebrity judge and song thief. Johnny To is at it again, in this action and ballad-packed film filled with ringside fights, hot pot, celebrity culture, musicals, and much, much, much…
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DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
One man encounters another in Thailand. Tsai Ming-liang’s wordless meditation to the fleeting beauty of everyday details and the exquisite practice of looking and touching.
Buy tickets
GENUS PAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In Lav Diaz’s scathing allegory for mankind’s innate cruelty, three Filipino miners travel back to their island home and find nothing but menace, corruption, and traumatic memories lingering in the dense forest terrain.
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LOVE AND DEATH IN MONTMARTRE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This fantasy romance/real-life documentary reveals the story, secrets, and longings of Qiu Miaojin, a lesbian Taiwanese writer who journeys to Paris in search of a love story and ends up writing her own.
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MEKONG 2030
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Five filmmakers speculate existence along the Mekong River Delta ten years into the future, as man-made development projects and climate change threaten the river’s ecological function.
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THERE IS NO EVIL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
* Limited tickets available. Golden Bear, 2020 Berlin International Film Festival Over the course of his two-decade career, independent...
Buy tickets
A THOUSAND CUTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Ramona Diaz's blistering look at investigative journalist Maria Ressa’s relentless stand against Duterte.
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UNDER THE OPEN SKY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
After being released from prison for a thirteen-year murder sentence, a former yakuza member is set on making an honest living and becoming a reformed citizen.
Buy tickets
WE HAVE BOOTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Immediately after the feature, ticket holders can enjoy a pre-recorded bonus Q&A with director Evans Chan and film subject Alex Chow!...
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THE WOMAN WHO RAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Instead of focusing on his favorite subjects–drunken, listless Korean men–master filmmaker Hong Sang-soo flips the script and follows an ensemble of strong female characters as they search for peace in a world where patriarchal interruptions are ever-present.
Buy tickets
Jia Zhang-ke Artist Trilogy
With the new SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE, director Jia Zhang-ke completes a trilogy of documentaries about artists in China. The films encompass fashion, painting, and literature, but also the tectonic turns of a modern China and the would-be freedoms of artists and their essential ties to Chinese society.
DONG
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A companion piece to Jia Zhang-ke’s monumental Still Life, Jia follows famed painter Liu Xiadong as he paints laborers demolishing their hometown for the Three Gorges Dam project.
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USELESS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Jia Zhang-ke’s ode to fashion–a textile factory, a designer, and a tailor–in a China where nothing is ever as it seems.
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SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Focusing on four authors spanning modern China, Jia Zhang-ke sketches literary culture onto a turbulent history, the rural landscape, and the faces of ordinary people.
Buy tickets
SECTION: INVISIBLE WAVES
From Asia’s most innovative and thought-provoking filmmakers come new stories and new ways of telling them.
BLACK MILK
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wessi awakens taboo attractions and unruly impulses when she leaves her life in Germany to reunite with her sister, faraway in Mongolia.
Buy tickets
ME AND THE CULT LEADER
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Twenty-five years later, a victim of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack takes a long journey of reckoning with the head of the doomsday cult responsible for his lifelong injuries.
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GAMAK GHAR
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Immediately after the feature, ticket holders can enjoy a pre-recorded bonus Q&A with director Achal Mishra! New Voices in India Cinema Award,...
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LOST LOTUS
Available to watch
Oct 28 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wu Yu's life is overturned after her elderly mother is killed in a hit-and-run. Previously a young, secular school-teacher, she now dives into her mother's Buddhism, and sets off on a solitary mission to bring the killer to justice.
Buy tickets
NOBODY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A strange, elderly tailor with secrets befriends a young girl intent on exposing her unfaithful father in this sensitive portrait of public and private life.
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THE REASON WHY I’M HOME.
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Chen-yun returns home for the first time in five years to deal with the fallout of her estranged mother’s deep involvement in a cult after it leads to her younger brother’s violent death.
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STRAY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Filmed over two years, STRAY follows the resourceful and brave stray dogs of Istanbul. Charismatic mutt Zeytin mixes gentleness with street smarts while navigating a network of humans and animals, itself a rich, ever-changing map of Istanbul’s overlooked and invisible.
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SECTION: AFTER LIFE
The decay of celluloid is especially harsh in Asia and the Pacific Islands, where humidity runs high and the aftermarkets for old treasures are dim. And so SDAFF pays tribute to the archivists, the preservationists, and digital and analog surgeons who bring cultural artifacts — and breathtaking sights and sounds — back to life.
ARCHIVING TIME
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Film restorationists at the Taiwan Film Institute walk us through the process of re-discovering and re-juvenating a national cinema.
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THE CHESS GAME OF THE WIND
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
The passing of a wealthy matriarch leaves conniving would-be heirs jockeying for power in this long-unavailable tale of mansion intrigue.
Buy tickets
THE HUSBAND’S SECRET
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A husband can't tell his wife that her old classmate is his ex-lover, in this fiery Taiwanese-language melodrama.
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LETTER TO AN ANGEL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Roped into a fashion shoot in search of the “exotic,” a young Indonesian boy receives a Polaroid camera and sparks trouble on the island of Sumba.
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MAURI
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A man with an unsettled past and a matriarch with a sixth sense for change face the irreversable in a once-thriving Maori community.
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MISTERYO SA TUWA
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
If a plane crashes in a remote mountain, will anybody notice if villagers loot the wreckage? Or perhaps power will clash with greed, inciting a cycle of deception and a delicious moral thriller.
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SECTION: SHORTS
Discover the thrills of the short form including international standouts, experimental documentaries, narrative thrills, and a cocktail mix–1 part quarantine to 100 parts bravado.
SHORTS: BE/LONGING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Shorts that probe the soft spots of belonging-to and longing-for a place in the world.
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SHORTS: ECHOPLEX
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Inventive films that change the format and spin the artifacts, annals, and echoes of all that’s left behind.
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SHORTS: HORMONAL DREAM
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Shorts that swim in body chemistry.
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SHORTS: HUMAN RESOURCES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Heroic feats, chilling power plays, and surreal misbehaviors while on the job.
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SHORTS: MALL RAT
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Inhale the smell of teen spirit from Michelle Kwan fandom, bank robberies, and monsters-in-the-making.
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SHORTS: QUEER SHAPES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Three shorts that queer the shape of filmmaking into audacious new forms.
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SHORTS: REEL VOICES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Nine filmmakers, nine stories exploring filmmaking from the teen perspective. From our Reel Voices documentary filmmaking program.
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SHORTS: TAIWAN <‐> AMERICA
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Americans in Taiwan, Taiwanese in America, and all the messy, awkward, and sentimental combinations of familial and cinematic border-crossing at the intersection of ABTs and ah-ma's.
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SHORTS: TIGHT QUARTERS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When social distance becomes social compression, these narratives find a way out.
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SHORTS: WE ARE IN A DIGITAL HELL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Shorts that can only exist in the recesses of the remix and the weird underbelly of the digital.
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