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shareThe following films are scheduled to have Q&As with cast and/or crew immediately following the film. All appearances are subject to change.
Thursday, November 7, 2024
Cells at Work!
Directed by Hideki Takeuchi
In the Urushizaki household, high schooler Niko takes care of her widowed dad. She packs his bentos and keeps tabs on his doctors’ appointments. But for all her healthy habits, there’s a war a-brewing inside her. Hardworking red and white blood cells are on overdrive as ghastly pathogens invade. Niko has a dad to take care of and dates with a cute boy to go on. Can her immune system work together to save the day? A grand spectacle of microscopic proportions, CELLS AT WORK! is a zany action film literally inside a rom-com and touching family melodrama. And for all of the witty worldbuilding and gag-a-minute hijinks, CELLS AT WORK! is a celebration of what makes us feel alive: the wonders of the human body, the charms of youth, and the joys of taking care of loved ones.Friday, November 8, 2024
SHORTS: YOUR BRIGHT FUTURE
One girl’s battle to be a soccer superfan. A Lizzy McGuire-inflected meet-cute. College-applying mania gone too far. These eight films burst with teen spirit in all its aching romance, ‘roids, and rages.
4:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Free Screening
SHORTS: DARK & FABULOUS DAYS
Murderous and decadent good times swirl with psychedelic basement vibes. A plucky office worker fighting off zombie coworkers, a sip-and-paint date gone bad, an aspiring supermodel swap, trippy shamanistic worldbuilding, and slow dancing after all the clubs have closed.
8:15 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Saturday, November 9, 2024
SHORTS for Shorties!
A family-friendly blend of films featuring cute animals, courageous youth, and a legendary Hawaiian queen to inspire the next generation of dreamers.
11:00 am
Edwards Mira Mesa
Standing Above the Clouds
Directed by Jalena Keane-Lee
From the frontlines to the homefront, a rousing and intimate portrait of three families of Native Hawaiian mothers and daughters at the heart of the largest political movement in modern Hawaiian history -- protecting the sacred land of Mauna Kea from the construction of the world’s largest telescope.
12:00 pm
Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA@SDMA)
SHORTS: SWEET FANTASY BB
Kitch cartoons bobbing up and down, AI triplets stretched out in limos, mermaids gorging on each other, BTS joining the army. This program brings together four visionary filmmakers who approach media and fantasy as parallel dimensions to our own, shaping us just as much as we invent them.
12:20 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
SHORTS: HEARTLOCK’D
Baked into the fevered pulse of America’s heartland and the dusty sweat of the landlocked, these four riveting, tender, and poetic films feature Asian American stories from Arkansas, Iowa, Wyoming, and a mythical Midwest.
2:20 pm
Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA@SDMA)
Dead Talents Society
Directed by John Hsu
A raucous coming-of-undead comedy, a timid new ghost has 30 days to scare the living with flair, enough to earn a license or completely disappear. Challenged by a rising ghost celebrity, she enlists a washed-up urban legend as her trainer. Bloody hijinks ensue!
2:25 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Moloka’i Bound
Directed by Alika Tengan
After years behind bars for drug charges, Kainoa is given a second chance to reunite with his estranged teenage son. Bonding over fishing, poi, and li hing mui, Kainoa seeks to mend their fractured relationship. Their journey leads them into deep waters and their Native Hawaiian roots, all while Kainoa’s past closes in on their trail.
2:40 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Home Court
Directed by Erica Tanamachi
In this fiery doc, basketball prodigy Ashley Chea steps onto every court knowing she's the best player and has to prove it. Along with the pressures of being a young, rising star in the game, Ashley also reminds us with every pass, dribble, and shot, that Asians have always been ballers.
3:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
SHORTS: QUEERLY EVER AFTER
Suburban angst. Threesome dilemmas. Pulsating raves. A collection of unapologetic stories celebrating the diversity of the queer experience.
4:40 pm
Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA@SDMA)
Tura!
Directed by Cody Jarrett
Narrated by Margaret Cho, TURA! celebrates the legacy of cult icon and Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill! star Tura Satana through rare archival footage and interviews with John Waters, Dita Von Teese, and more, showcasing her impact on pop culture and the power of female rage.
8:15 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Sunday, November 10, 2024
SHORTS: REEL VOICES
This year’s 11 filmmakers from our Reel Voices documentary filmmaking program break binary boundaries with varying explorations of connection that extend beyond the physical realm.
12:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa Rush Line
Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement
Directed by Quyên Nguyen-Le, Tadashi Nakamura
An essential portrait of singer, activist, performer and stone-cold legend Nobuko Miyamoto and her life from incarceration camps to Hollywood, motherhood, and becoming the voice of an urgent, bubbling Asian American and anti-war movement. Nobuko Miyamoto scheduled to appear for special in-person performance.
12:10 pm
Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA@SDMA)
Extremely Unique Dynamic
Directed by Harrison Xu, Ivan Leung, Katherine Dudas
A pair of stoner best friends spend their last weekend together filming their magnum opus– a meta-movie about two best friends making a movie… about two best friends. But when one tries to come out just as the pot starts to hit, things get lost in the smoke.
12:30 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Bitterroot
Directed by Vera Brunner-Sung
In Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, a middle-aged Hmong American man grapples with loss and pressure at home and at work, finding meaning through unexpected connections. From 2014 SDAFF Emerging Filmmaker Award Winner Vera Brunner-Sung.
2:50 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Light of the Setting Sun
Directed by Vicky Du
Equal parts unflinching and compassionate, Vicky Du sifts through her family’s history during Taiwan's tumultuous post-war decades, striving to create a language for the violence, both political and interpersonal, that she and her family have endured.
3:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
All That We Love
Directed by Yen Tan
Margaret Cho plays Emma, whose dog has just passed and whose ex-husband is back in town. In other words, she’s going through some stuff. Just ask her best friend Stan (Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson), whose patience is running thin. Or her adult daughter Maggie, who finds mom’s emotional crossroads a particularly inopportune time to make her own course-changing announcement. Director Yen Tan wrote ALL THAT WE LOVE because he’d never seen a movie that dealt properly with the vulnerability, humor, and glimmers of hope in the weeks after losing a pet. ALL THAT WE LOVE finds that hope in the unlikeliest people and above all in the mountain of strength waiting to be found within.
5:30 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
SHORTS: DIASPOROUS
Diasporous. When diaspora is not a straight line, but a skin. Permeable, breathing, living, flowing with the exchange of membranes and memory.
7:30 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Dead Talents Society
Directed by John Hsu
A raucous coming-of-undead comedy, a timid new ghost has 30 days to scare the living with flair, enough to earn a license or completely disappear. Challenged by a rising ghost celebrity, she enlists a washed-up urban legend as her trainer. Bloody hijinks ensue!
7:45 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Mistress Dispeller
Directed by Elizabeth Lo
Husband. Wife. Mistress… Mistress Dispeller. Four people entwined in China’s new industry of “mistress dispelling” in which an undercover professional is hired to dissolve a husband’s affair. Miraculously, documentarian Elizabeth Lo captured one couple’s experience in a tender, hilarious, and jaw-dropping portrait of love. From 2020 SDAFF Emerging Filmmaker Award winner and director of Stray.
8:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Monday, November 11, 2024
SHORTS: REENTANGLINGDISENTANGLING
Whether twisted like tea or fingers entwined, these stories snag, warp, and unravel around messy visceral, lingual, or hairy yearnings.
4:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Free Screening
Paper Marriage
Directed by Jeff Man
Fanny decides to pay unemployed Jeff to enter into a green card marriage with a year to prepare for their immigration interview. Except Fanny and Jeff couldn’t be more different, and cultural differences and casual hookups just might jeopardize citizenship and their growing connection. Starring director and writer Jeff Man.
6:40 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
SHORTS: SORRY TO THIS MAN
Stories that navigate the art and artifice of apology - as immigrant shield or ceremonial act, a father/son seesaw or amends between loved ones.
4:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Free Screening
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
SHORTS: passenger princess dies by self-driving jaguar.
When bots and avatars commingle with flesh and bone. Stories of simulations, AI, clones, reenactments, and images-unfound yet commingling with the human.
4:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Free Screening
Thursday, November 14, 2024
SHORTS: TERRA UNFIRMA
Like a hangry, mighty-morphin Mother Nature, these shorts put the wild in wilderness, and consider the mysteries of the land we inhabit -- from two cities’ uncanny ties to sand, the snarly and gnarly vibes of tropical apocalypse, a mother desperate to delay sunrise, and a Singaporean cemetery bursting with life and traffic jams.
4:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Free Screening
Friday, November 15, 2024
SHORTS: SIDEQUEST
Sometimes the real lore happens in life’s smaller missions. A lyrical selection of stories that take place in the side trips, segues, surreptitious hookups, and close shaves.
4:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Free Screening
New Wave
Directed by Elizabeth Ai
Elizabeth Ai’s introspective documentary tells the story of new wave, a musical phenomenon popularized by young Vietnamese refugees in the 80s, where Italo disco was covered by singers with gloriously spiked hair and shoulderpads. Ai weaves archival footage, interviews with industry legends (such as Lynda Trang Dai, “the Vietnamese Madonna”), and her own story of the new wave—of postwar trauma, of coming of age in a new world, and of escapist, synth-pop daydreams on an open, Southern California road.
7:00 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
RUSH LINE
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Anxious.
Directed by Nida Chowdhry
In this surreal dark comedy, Ruby’s anxiety-filled SoCal life of maid-of-honor duties, convenience store job woes, in-store crush, and bad health insurance are transformed into a lush Alice-in-Wonderland with two loud and incredibly dressed Ruby’s vying for control. A visually kinetic debut by writer, director, star, director of photography, and costume-designer Nida Chowdry.
12:40 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
Pooja, Sir
Directed by Deepak Rauniyar
On the India-Nepal border, two boys are kidnapped, including the young son of a congressman. Pooja, a policewoman from Kathmandu, is assigned to the case. While she’s quick on her feet with veteran instincts, Pooja’s real challenge is navigating thorny local politics and impassioned protests for minority rights, along with everyone’s doubts when a woman is in charge.
2:20 pm
Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA@SDMA)
SHORTS: ANIMATION PRIX FIXE
A veritable tasting menu of talent from stop motion to cyanotype schematic quilts. Fill up on animation’s delights with films that explore, explain, and share what makes us who we are, individually and together. Featuring a very special film by legendary anime director Rintarō.
3:20 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
SHORTS: CALL TO ARMS
A flurry of hands, a swing of arms. Nine thrilling shorts that experiment with performance, reenactments, the fine line between a curse and a prayer, and discovering oneself in the archive.
7:35 pm
Edwards Mira Mesa
