NO COUNTRY FOR DUMB MAN, 4min., USA, Comedy
Directed by Minhan Liang
An assassin got exposed after meeting a sexy girl.

https://instagram.com/minhan4real

Get to know the filmmaker:

I always love the films of Quentin Tarantino. He makes me feel like film is an art form to satisfy the creator’s fantasy, therefore it can be full of violence, sex and absurdity. And I always want to achieve things that I can’t do in real life in my film, so I made “No Country for Dumb Man”. This is also my very first attempt to involve guns and blood in my short film since there’s technical difficulties to involves these elements in a low budget short. Not only this, I grew up watching Stephen Chow’s comedies, his good sense of rhythm and unique ways to tell stories really inspire me to create such a dark comedy film.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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O, 10min., France, Music
Directed by Fabien Legeron
Locked in since ever, exiled forever – In the in-between of anywhere, a form wanders aimlessly, cut from any companionship or hope.
What will be the meaning of finally being freed ?

http://www.fabienlegeron.com/

https://instagram.com/fabienlegeron

Conversation with filmmaking team:

Director: Fabien Legeron

Musician: Daniel Larose (GEROSTENKORP)

Performer: Jennifer Gothuey

Get to know filmmaker Fabien Legeron:

When Daniel contacted me, I had been in what one would call a creative rut for some time – life, its events and necessities, the struggles with jobs and loved ones that we all encounter, well, it takes its toll.

Amazingly, what felt like a creative emptiness vanished when this old aquaintance reached out saying “Hi, I’ve got this musical piece I’d like to make a short movie of, the only guiding idea is the word “Archangel””.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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FOREVER BOUND, 7min., Italian, Fashion
Directed by Rob Bell
For Forever Bound, we wanted to explore the theme of fate’s adversarial role in a relationship, how destiny, if you believe in such a thing, plays an important role in how our lives turn out. It’s an exciting challenge solving the puzzle of how we are able to communicate such a personal, and yet universally experienced, stage in life. Our aim is that through both action and costume we will be able to artistically portray the inception of a separating thought, consequent tensions, and ultimately the final relief and acceptance of such a painful truth.

https://www.instagram.com/1190productions/

Conversation with

Director Rob Bell.

Writer/Producer Elisa Messi.

Composer/Producer: Flavio Carlotti

From Elisa Messi:

During the pandemic, the desire to take a different professional direction was born. After much reflection, we started to combine the best of our professional experiences to create something that could represent and satisfy us. The desire to be able to express a message through fashion and music, using video as a medium, fascinated us right from the start. Thus was born the idea of telling a story that spoke on several levels. Expressing emotions through clothes and jewellery, defining emotions through colours. Thinking of music as a fourth character on stage, capable of guiding and suggesting through sounds despite the insubstantiality of the body. This fascinated us so much that we created Forever Bound.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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LEFT ON OUR OWN, 27min., Hungary, Drama/Art
Directed by Akos Kovacs
An elderly taxi driver, who happens to be a tireless storyteller, is a man of contradictions: a hopeless romantic and a crude observer of life who has lived through individual hardship and witnessed the despair of others. He doesn’t hold back while roaming the streets of Budapest: the route to the destination leads through the labyrinth of his own memories and emotions, which his words conjure. Friends and strangers, cheap décor, lonely buildings, a life-long correspondence that encapsulates a relationship, numbing melodies from an ancient music box all swirl and blend in this film’s poetic vision. Sensitive writing and emotional cinematography draws the attention to small details, to personal hopes and everyday tragedies. A hypnotic, haunting and tranquil soundtrack gives eerily gentle force to the old man’s tales.

https://www.facebook.com/magunkmaradtunk

Get to know the filmmaker:

I’ve been something of a film aficionado all my life. I was 16 when I attended a so called ‘youth film club’ where all the classic Italian Cinecittá greats were screened, you know, Fellini, Pasolini, Antonioni, the works. Talk about love at first sight. I was thrilled, mesmerized, enchanted and, most of all, intellectually intrigued. My parents were shocked to learn I was not willing to follow the family tradition of attending law school. I respect such Hungarian filmmakers as George Cukor, István Szabó, Lajos Koltai or Vilmos Zsigmond who became Hollywood legends, and love the great Hungarian trailblazing directors who never got their much deserved international break, but are geniuses nonetheless, like Zoltán Huszárik or Károly Makk. They paved the way for aspiring filmmakers like myself. I’m also a big Tarkovski fan, as you might have guessed by our short film’s first scenes that are a dedicated hommage to the opening sequence of Stalker. I’m also an avid reader of literature, be it John Updike or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I couldn’t write anything if not for the books that left their marks on me. Without my love for the great Czech author Bohumil Hrabal my taxi driver character surely couldn’t have been born.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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The Italian Marble Institute hand-selects sculptress Ellen Corsair to study in the marble capital of the world, Carrara, Italy. Will the stone come alive or will it mark someone’s grave?

Watch the Screenplay Reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48T_sHjEQNg

Get to know the writer:

Horror and art fans alike can enjoy this piece. “Pietra Fredda” is a dark spin on how far an artist will go to master their medium. The supernatural elements of the script invite the audience to walk that fine line between genius and madness and get a sense of what it means to be consumed by your art. The limited locations and cast make it ideal for a short film, and it has a proven track record placing and winning at festivals with nearly 20 screenwriting laurels.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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TRACKS, 11min., Netherlands, Documentary
Directed by Maclovia G Martel
A visual Journey of remembrance in Amsterdam.

From filmmaker Maclovia G. Martel:

The producers of the film Michael Potter and Margaret McCarhty lived on the canal in Amsterdam where this particular Stumbling Stone project to honor Holocaust victims took place. We felt a tremendous amount of satisfaction connecting with the audience and really appreciating that we were successful communicating a powerful and meaningful message in a short film.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE STAMP, 10min., USA, Comedy
Directed by Sharon Mayo
A satire on how to complete a task within government bureaucracy.

https://linktr.ee/anniewaits18
https://instagram.com/the.stamp.shortfilm

Get to know the filmmaker:

used to be a government contractor and one day, the person who did a specific task was out for the day. I thought I was doing everyone a favor when I decided to do it myself so I can finish my assignment early. Apparently not. I was told that I was threatening other people’s job for going above and beyond, so I wanted to examine that under a comedic lens.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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50 ML, 8min., USA, Drama
Directed by Vanessa Powers
A young man struggles with his sobriety while he and his wife host a holiday dinner with her dysfunctional family.

https://www.oxfordcommafilms.com/
https://www.facebook.com/OxfordCommaFilms/

https://www.instagram.com/oxfordcommav/

Get to know the filmmaker:

I have had this idea in my head for a while. My dad is 35 years sober, and so alcoholism and sobriety have ALWAYS been part of my understanding of the world. Even when I was a little kid, my parents never lied to me about it. In that spirit, there was a time my dad ran to the liquor store to pick up wine for a family event, and had the experience of being drawn to the tiny bottles at the counter. He was sober enough with enough skills to walk away, but I wondered what might happen to someone younger and earlier in their sobriety journey. In addition, my good friend, Casey Hoekstra, who plays the lead in the film, is a professional actor. We worked together on a couple film projects when we were younger, but we had reconnected and discussed working on another project together for a while. I knew I wanted someone of his talent to play the lead, since the film was so complicated in nature. He had this small gap in his schedule, and so once he was available, it was a done deal.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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KEEP COOL: FORTIFYING BRITISH COLUMBIA, 30min.,
Directed by Ed Akselrud
In 2017 and 2018 British Columbia experienced devastating wildfires that reshaped the province. From the ashes, a surprisingly complex “war machine” arose to reforest the scarred land. Keep Cool: Fortifying British Columbia explores this machine, the key players involved, and the significance of government-designated Old Grown Management Areas in the province’s north.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23793080/
https://instagram.com/edakselrud
https://twitter.com/edaxmedia

Get to know the filmmaker:
At the risk of sounding cheesy, it was definitely the people we met and interviewed. The project was originally meant to be a 3-5 minute video, but when we arrived we were taken to so many sites and locations and introduced to so many people involved by our partner Zanzibar that I felt that this needed to be a bigger project. There are so many moving parts in forestry and we got to interact with so many (though not all) of them. So the planned runtime expanded from those 5 minutes, to 12-15, then to 20, and finally somehow landed at 30 minutes. Going in, I had no idea how much there was to this story and how many different people and characters were involved in this herculean effort, so I felt compelled to try and illustrate their work at the scale I thought it deserved.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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FEELING SPECIAL, 5min,. USA, Animation
Directed by Carlos Hoffman
Animated film adaptation of the children’s book, Feeling Special, about a Turtle who believes that all his friends are special, but that he is just ordinary, and finally realizes that he is special too.

http://www.jenniferkurani.com/
https://instagram.com/jenniferkurani
https://facebook.com/jenniferkurani

Get to know writer Jennifer Kurani:

The motivation to make this film came from the desire to spread a very important message about believing in yourself. Everyone truly is special in their own way! When you believe in yourself, you’re accepting who you really are. You’re not afraid to give your opinion and you’re going to be proud of this person you’re becoming. When you believe in yourself you feel like you can handle the world! Positive energy and a little confidence gives a major lift. Believing that you are special gives you the strength and ability to accomplish goals. Deep down inside, you know you can do anything.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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NAFKOT – YEARNING, 70min., Israel, Documentary
Directed by Malka Shabtay
An Israeli anthropologist traveling to meet a hidden Jewish community in north Ethiopia. Together they telling their special story of survival Abera, a young artist joins to discover what has been hidden from him

Get to know the filmmaker:

I worked with the community two years before we did the film. i did my research to understand their story..and after two years they were ready to share their story with the world. The biggest obstacle is to do a film with a hidden community, oppressed and full of fear. to get their trust and collaboration and belief that the film will help in their struggle. Only when i turned 60 years old, after writing 15 books I felt I wanted to learn filmmaking, so I went to film school and studied for almost two years.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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OUR CROWN & GLORY, 29min., USA, Documentary
Directed by Ashley Brajaé
A group of friends explores their hair journey and what it means to embrace black hair joy!

Get to know the filmmaker:

What motivated me to do this film is the fact that hair is such a big part of the black culture, but with that it’s also been ridiculed, misunderstood, then imitated for “trend” without knowing the tragic and beautiful history of our hair. It was important for me to give the story told embracing our black hair joy and how we are all connected with it (men and women) . Lastly to show how we finally embraced and loved our true self.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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LONG KISS GOODBYE, 8min., Canada, Relationships
Directed by Duy Viet Hai Tong
A window into the last day of a relationship.

Get to know the filmmaker:

I made this film during a period where not a lot of things were happening around me. I was just trying to find my feet in a new environment. I had just graduated from university and moved to Canada. So, I think there was a personal component to making the film because it was for me to reflect on such a long journey from when I was a kid to just being done with the education environment and moving to another phase in life.

The relationship aspect of it came down to reflecting on past experiences and combining them with other things I know of. That’s where the European arthouse influence came in and I thought what a great tribute it would be to have a romance film in that style set in the modern day. We did ditch the excessive smoking though.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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SPIRITS, 9min., USA, Comedy/Horror
Directed by Matthew Catanzano
Some haunts are haunted.

http://thehappyghostproductions.com/
https://instagram.com/MattCatanzano

Get to know the filmmaker:
My two great loves are horror and comedy. I have many MANY sketches online and I wanted to add a more straight-forward horror short to the list. Especially since it more accurately reflects the feature scripts I write. I really wanted to make a short that was scary first, had a lot of lore/rules, and showcased what I could do with no budget.

And subject matter-wise, Ghosts scare the hell out of me. I’m a big fan of creatures and monsters, but it’s ghosts that actually keep me up at night. And I really love the idea of haunted places that are also regular businesses that have to operate day-to-day. haha.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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MONODIALOGUE, 5min, USA, Drama
Directed by Azure Kwok
A surreal encounter with Adam reveals everything about Addison’s past, present, and future.

https://www.theythemfilms.com/
https://instagram.com/theythemproductions

Get to know the filmmaker:

Monodialogue was initially just a shower thought. I wrote it into a stage play at first and I wasn’t exactly happy with how it turned out. I was living in Seattle at the time and was surrounded by a group of talented and ambitious friends who are all eager to work and learn in the filmmaking field. So I adapted it into a screenplay and brought them all onto this project. They loved the idea and were incredibly supportive of me. Honestly, my friends were my biggest motivation behind making this film. We wanted to make something together that we’re proud of, and Monodialogue happened to be the thing.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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L’APPRENANTE (THE LEARNER), 7min., France, Drama
Directed by Angelique Kalani Axelrode
L’Apprenante is an American college student in the process of “finding herself abroad” in Paris. She takes French classes to immerse herself in the culture, even though her accent is tragique. In one particular class, she struggles to recount her weekend where she goes to a Parisian party and meets La Femme; a girl she is immediately drawn to. As she navigates the discomfort of learning a new language, she also navigates the discomfort of discovering her queerness. Her inability to get out of her head inhibits her not only from improving her French, but also from being vulnerable with La Femme. Will she ever be able to commit to the accent and make a move? Impossible n’est pas français.n

https://www.tiktok.com/@lapprenantefilm

Get to know the filmmaker:

I made this film as a way to process some things I was personally grappling with. Like many queer people, I knew I wasn’t straight long before I said or did anything about it. My queerness lived in my head where I would replay interactions I had with people almost obsessively- oh were we flirting? Was she hitting on me? Why did I run away? If only I had said this. Or maybe if I hadn’t been so drunk. Or maybe if I had been a bit more drunk… Imaginary scenarios where I finally mustered up the courage to be intimate with someone else were only temporarily satisfying. I had to learn to get out of my head and actually act on my queer impulses. “L’Apprenante” is about this awkward process. The idea for this film came to me while I was living in Paris at the beginning of 2022 and feeling a sense of freedom I haven’t experienced since studying abroad in college. I was rediscovering myself and relearning what it means to be vulnerable, realizing I had very little vocabulary to work with. It felt like learning an entirely new language- one, like French, that sounds nothing like it is written.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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WAVES, 2min., Australia, Comedy
Directed by Katharina Keil
Two friends Sam and Ethel play a fun game to reconnect at their local beach.

Get to know filmmaker Katharina Keil:

* The motivation to make this film was an application for the Australian Director’s Guild. They had an initiative and as my last short film was 18 years ago, I felt I needed to show my improved skills as director and decided to do a short film for the initiative.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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SILHOUETTE, 9min., USA, Dance
Directed by Alex Sjobeck, Rulon Wood, Marla Hansen
Silhouette is short dance film portraying the ubiquitous theme that members of society have to masquerade in order to blend in, anxiously minimizing aspects of their own identity in order to avoid judgment.

Get to know filmmaker Alex Sjobeck:
I composed the piece “Silhouette” prior to the creation of the film. It was a composition with such a deep meaning that I had to find a way to portray the theme through multimedia. Jazz and dance have a long history of being associated together, more in the past than in modern times. I wanted to help bring this relationship to modern times and believed this would also be the perfect way to portray the meaning of the composition in a new, more apparent way. I was very happy that dance choreographer Marla Hansen and cinematographer Rulon Wood were willing and passionate about taking on this project together.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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SPA SYBARITE, 3min., USA, Experimental
Directed by Joshua Ashish Dawson
The World health organization states that “Although it is unequivocal that climate change affects human health, it remains challenging to accurately estimate the scale and impact of many climate-sensitive health risks. In the short- to medium-term, the health impacts of climate change will be determined mainly by the vulnerability of populations, their resilience to the current rate of climate change, and the extent and pace of adaptation.”

https://instagram.com/joshuaadawson

Get to know the filmmaker:

The thoughts that led to writing this film have been very organic. It started when a few years ago I worked in an architecture firm as a designer. The firm mostly designed high-end hotels and I was very intrigued by the conversations that I would have with clients regarding how the designs of these projects were driven by its marketing. Most of which aimed to target the wealthiest people.

This sparked an idea in my head to think about how the marketing surrounding wellness ebbs and flows with the current preoccupations of its target demographic and isn’t held to the same level of scientific scrutiny as the pharmaceutical industry.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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CREATURA, 13min., Canada
Directed by Ford Mckeown Larose, Phethsari Pathammavong
If the world were to recreate itself in an empty space, how would new forms of life appropriate this environment? How would they evolve? Through lights and movements, Creatura explores the concept of genesis and evolution in a post-apocalyptic universe.

https://www.facebook.com/ForwardMovements
https://www.instagram.com/fwdmovements

Get to know the filmmaker:
The film was inspired by the third season’s opening video of Westworld created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. I was really inspired by the story, the aesthetic and the message and wanted to find a way to recreate that feeling. CREATURA is the story I was able to create through that feeling?

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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