PIANO-SOLEIL, 8min., Brazil, Dance
Directed by Caio Amon
A young woman feels trapped in a claustrophobic reality. She yearns for vast and awe-inspiring landscapes, where freedom of movement and communion with nature are possible. Yet she realizes that the wondrous beauty of these natural environments is threatened by mankind’s seemingly unrelenting exploitation of Mother Earth.

https://montrealmusica.com/album-videos/

Get to know the filmmaker:

The film was an international commission from Canadian pianist Marc Bourdeau to Brazilian filmmaker Caio Amon and thought as an experimental music video for a piano piece in his last album.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

THE HAIRCUT, 5min., USA, Dark Comedy
Directed by George Dickinson
Andrew just got the best haircut of his life, but will his roommates notice?

Get to know the filmmaker:
One time, my hair got cut, but you know what my hair didn’t get? Compliments! And the insecure side of me got a little mad. I thought to myself, “I feel powerless.” But then some self awareness kicked in and I thought that reaction was hilarious. The idea of a character who attaches power to validation was really exciting to me. I wanted to make a film that captured the powerlessness one feels in not being validated.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

THE USELESS GLASSBLOWER, 15min., Germany
Directed by Holger E. Metzger
A fascinating short documentary on a traditional glassmaker deep in the southern German Black Forest, and his thoughts and feelings about what this 7000-year-old craft has taught him about life.

Get to know the filmmaker and doc subject Dirk Bürklin

l HOLGER: I spent 30 years in China (that is, my whole adult life so far) and only returned to live in Germany again (my home country which I left during my youth) a year ago. Apart from a plethora of culture-shock-inducing elements, I find today’s Germany to be hopelessly behind a much more future-oriented Asia, and with the speed and depth of digitalization representing only one issue among many. I also observed a sort of ideological clash between a “preservation” mindset, with people on the one side of the divide wanting to preserve (or return to) those “golden times” of yesterday, a rose-tinted “Made in Germany” heritage in thought, craft and economic might. Those times are long gone, of course, and thus on the other side you have another set of (younger) people who reject the past, who are eager to think differently and actively create a different tomorrow, a future that is digital, futuristic and completely different from yesterday or even today. I have known Dirk for a while and admired his craft, he operates a glass furnace close to where I live now, somewhere deep in the southern part of Germany’s black forest. He’s a guy who doesn’t see the need for owning a smart phone (imagine that, in 2023…), who has been engaging in traditional glassmaking for all his adult life, who uses a glassmaking recipe that is 7000 years old (the epitome of “yesterday”) and who, in a profession that hardly anyone would see as a “future vocation” in our increasingly automated, perfectionist and AI-supported modern times, has some very interesting and inspiring thoughts to share with a world that seems increasingly paralyzed by a sense of uncertainty. That’s why I approached him about doing this documentary, to start with exploring his thoughts and feelings and experience, to then allow a narrative to take its natural shape while at the same time visually exploring his unique glassmaking process.

l DIRK: When Holger asked me to do a film project about me and my glassmaking, I thought it would be a funny and interesting experience, and I was expectant as to what would happen. I never imagined that anyone would want to hear what I had to say, but apparently, I was wrong. 

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

STRIKE, 5min., USA, Action/Thriller
Directed by Oliver Li. Cinematography by Teddy Jian

Get to know the filmmaker:

Action is a genre that I have always wanted to try, but I rarely have the opportunity to do so. Fortunately, my cinematographer, Teddy, and I got a chance to experiment with action when we audited a directing course that focused on action in films. During the course, we were assigned to shoot a dance/fist fight/chasing scene. Initially, I had planned to shoot a car chase sequence. However, after some test shooting, Teddy convinced me that it was beyond our current capabilities. Consequently, we decided to only shoot a fist fight scene that included a chasing sequence. To give the fight a story setting, I came up with a Bourne Identity-style plot.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

SEEK, 13min., Japan, Action
Directed by Shane Kosugi, Kansuke Asano
K. Hanzo, an assassin for a covert non-governmental espionage group in Japan called “49” or “SEEK”, is grieving over the loss of his girlfriend from a tragic car accident. His ex-boss, J, contacts him to do one last mission for him; kill his ex-partner who has kidnapped a young agent and stolen some vital information which he plans to sell to the Yakuza. Although the Ninjas are gone…the new breed of assassins live on; so the Ninja lives on.

https://www.instagram.com/shanekosugi/

Get to know Filmmaker Shane Kosugi:

– we all wanted to make an action short that could show the world the beauty of Japan, the wonderful lure of the samurai’s and ninjas and that Japan can still make good story based action films.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

DOWN BAD, 27min., USA, Drama/TV Web Series
Directed by Rogelio Salinas de la Torre
After a night of infidelity, Nia navigates the awkward morning-after with her one night stand and battles with what this means for her already stalled engagement.

https://www.instagram.com/toni_adeyemi

From Toni:

Growing up, I yearned to see TV that was rooted in Black humanity. We are often tokenized and/or made to be exceptional – with little room for error or flaws. I wanted to create a concept that allowed us the same slice-of-life realism and character depth that many of my favorite shows are afforded.

DOWN BAD is a project that started as a short story for a creative writing class at Stanford and later became my first screenplay. Throughout the process of writing, producing, acting in and editing this piece, I’ve been inspired to grow as an artist and collaborator.

For most of the cast and crew, this was our first time in these roles on a scripted set. To have this project be so Black – and so grounded – feels radical to us. I hope you enjoy the DOWN BAD magic as much as we do!

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

LADY & THE VAMP, 5min., USA
Directed by Peter Alexander Stass
Two “creatures of the night” discover one of their own kind. Or have they?

Get to know the filmmaker:

This film is a proof of concept for a feature film called “Ackerman & Associates Meet Dracula” about a pair of realtors who unknowingly sell a house to Dracula. The feature is set in LA, though we shot this short in NY, because that’s where I live! But I did live in LA for a long time. The short is essentially a scene from the film. I can elaborate on this on the podcast.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

ROLE PLAY, 8min., USA, Horror
Directed by Bill Neil
A one-night stand goes horribly wrong

Get to know the filmmaker:

Dan Asma, the producer, had been working with Alex Henes and Matt Merenda, on some feature ideas as well as some short film scripts. He sent me a few of their scripts to read. Dan and I have been friends/ film aficionados/ co-workers for decades – and he’s always encouraged me to direct. When I read Role Play, the whole set-up and slow-burn vibe really spoke to me. I loved the creepy note passing scene – that’s what sold me. That weird suspense of hooking up with a stranger in a strange place that seems crazy – but you’re horny so you ignore the weird signs.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

JUMP SCARES: THE MOVIE, 3min,. USA,
Directed by Peter Masterton
Do you like horror movies? Or do you just like being startled? If it’s the latter, this is the movie trailer for you!

https://urbanpebbleproductions.com/
https://www.instagram.com/urbanpebbleproductions/

Get to know the filmmaker:

I drew inspiration from a YouTube series called Honest Trailers, particularly the episode reviewing the video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. The Narrator gripes about the constant use of jump scares in horror films and games as a cheap trick. I wrote a short script, then my friend Bryan Cosgriff and I rewrote it into its final draft.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

A TIGER IN THE SUBWAY, 9min,. USA, Thriller/Drama
Directed by James Abrams
An agoraphobic painter reflects on an old white lie his mother told him as a child.

https://www.caramelhippostudios.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CaramelHippoStudios
https://www.twitter.com/NA
https://www.instagram.com/caramel_hippo_studios

Get to know the filmmaker:
Like a lot of people, I was doing a lot of writing and sitting on my hands during the 2020 COVID pandemic. Today, some of these ideas are developed screenplays while others remain unfinished, but at the time I was searching for an opportunity to create a short film. In the summer of 2020, I began dating my current partner, who is a talented painter. I wanted to find a way to collaborate and her paintings suddenly made the many vague ideas I had been circling around throughout the pandemic all come together. A Tiger in the Subway is not thematically about COVID at all, but a story about an agoraphobic painter 1000% comes directly from my COVID experiences.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

HOW TO THRIVE, 96min., Australia, Documentary
Directed by Duy Huynh
Is there a secret formula to happiness? Positive psychotherapist Marie McLeod takes 7 people on a transformative journey to learn the secret formula to happiness The film’s premise is; if we offer the science of happiness to people experiencing struggle; what difference would it make? Is happiness a learnable skill and can we teach people skills to live a happy, healthy and meaningful life? With unprecedented access; the result is an intimate, heartfelt and hopeful film that offers a rare glimpse into the lives of 7 people who make incredible transforms as a result of learning ‘How to Thrive?’

http://www.howtothrivefilm.com/
https://www.facebook.com/HowToThriveFilm/
https://www.instagram.com/howtothrivefilm/

Get to know producer Andrew Kelly & director Duy Huynh:

Duy Huynh, Director: As a first generation Vietnamese refugee, I have my own connection to early life adversity. Some of my earliest memories of life was being lifted into a tiny fishing trawler with over a hundred others below deck; violence at sea, loss of life, inhumane refugee camps and of course watching the consequences of this experience on family and friends.

Despite the impacts from these memories I found my way through and have always considered myself one of the lucky ones. For some of my contemporaries this experience created a lasting legacy of mental health challenges and I’ve always wished I could do more to help. What separates those of us who can undergo adversity and come through the other side ok, versus those for which adversity creates ongoing struggle. I thought if we could understand this better and package it up in a helpful way, then it would be a worthwhile mission.

This film is about some of what I’ve learnt from the sciences of thriving. Turns out there’s quite a lot of research available about how to live a happier, healthier and more meaningful life. These learnable skills are so essential in a world where loneliness and mental health challenges are steeply on the rise.

My vision is for a world where these ‘thriving skills’ are available to all of us, and film is an incredible medium to not only create this awareness but inspire action. Personal action, political action and systemic change to the way we think about mental health.

Andrew Kelly, Producer: I’d been working in the corporate film production world for some time and decided it was time to take my skills and use them for social impact. Duy presented wellbeing science and positive psychology to me and I knew this was an under-represented area we could really make a difference in. A chance meeting with our now lead presenter and Positive Psychotherapist sealed the deal for me. I knew we could make this work.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

MISSING STRING, 11min., Canada, Drama
Directed by Hugo Remy
Marie is a young woman who sees black strings coming out of people’s heads. She is the only one who sees them and she can guess people’s inner emotions by looking at their string. Everyone has a string, except her.

Get to know the filmmaker:

This is not an autobiographical film of course but I identify a lot to Marie. I have often got this feeling that something is wrong or missing with me without being able to fully grasp what it is. So making this film had an obvious therapeutic purpose to me. I would say that it was my main drive. I just needed a concept to tell a story about this feeling and I found it with this idea of those strings which everyone has except for the main character.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

LIGHT, 5min., USA
Directed by Karla Santa Anna
In a world where a huge garbage island floats across our seas, fruit has very suspicious ancestry, and immigrant children are literally abandoned in the middle of nowhere, if one day the ocean rains upward…we would totally believe it. That’s how the world feels: very upside down.

Get to know the filmmaker:

One day I was thinking about the world and how upside down it feels, so that inspired me to write a very dystopic poem. Then I thought it would be cool to illustrate it with Midjourney (Art AI platform). Eventually I put sound effects,started editing, and even got to use a MOBY song that I really love. It all ended up as an experimental short, so as you see it was never a plan. I guess I allowed creativity to unfold and just let it happen as it went by.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

MOSAIC, 8min., Canada, Documentary
Directed by Myriam Vaudry
A short documentary film bold and touching where the director, dealing with physical malformations, asks an artist to illustrate her syndrome in a drawing of herself. This process will help her see it from a different perceptive and grow toward self-acceptance.

Get to know the filmmaker:
First I wanted to inform people about my condition and the syndrome itself to help change de way that people looked at us. Then I realize I have to change the way I think people looked at me and how I want to look at myself and be ok about my body.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

RATS IN THE HOUSE, 13min,. USA, Drama/Family
Directed by Francesca Brice-Martin
A cheating husband tries to fix his marriage while dealing with his mistress who threatens to reveals the truth at Thanksgiving dinner.

https://www.instagram.com/francescabricemartin/

Get to know the filmmaker:

Well, I needed something for my intermediate film project to pass my classes, didn’t I? Just kidding!

I have been in relationships where I felt neglected or misunderstood, and I wanted to write a story that portrays how miscommunication can lead a couple to its ruins. And with this film, even though we follow Derek (the main character) thorough the whole story, I wanted to give a little background of every other character and explain why they behave the way they are. I also wanted to show that failure of a relationship is not necessarily the sole responsibility of one and sometimes it’s better to talk about your feelings so that the other person understands where you are coming from to work through it.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

OUTPATIENT, 26min., USA, Drama
Directed by Joseph Samuel Meyerson
Two young men attend weekly meetings in the basement of a church to satisfy the conditions of their parole.

https://instagram.com/outpatientfilm

Get to know the filmmaker:

It was an idea I’d had kicking around my head for some time. But I wanted to make something, and I’d written this much longer screenplay that was just totally unfeasible to shoot — we’re talking 200-person party scenes, car meets, ambulances, cop cars, high schools, three-minute tracking shots — so I found myself returning to the “three guys in a room” concept and just kind of wrote it from there.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

QUICHE, 11min., Canada, Drama
Directed by Suzannah Moore
A nosy neighbor presses her way into the kitchen of a young mother, who ends up needing her.

Get to know the filmmaker:
My co-producer/collaborator (Adam Crosby) and I have worked together on a number of projects, but none of them were something I had written. We shared a vision in the type of tone we wanted to capture in our storytelling, and wanted to see how well we could bring it to life (tone can be one of the hardest things to skewer in filmmaking, in my opinion). We were both really drawn to the grounded, slice-of-life space, wherein the audience feels like a bit of a fly on the wall. I thought it would be neat to create a world inside of someone’s kitchen, because this is such a lived-in and often private space for many. In my writing, I was also exploring my own sadness, and my relationship to it. Eventually these pieces began to come together, and we made Quiche!

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

RESERVATIONS, 11min., USA, Experimental
Directed by Tom White, John Leviege
While finding love can be unexpectant enough, the only thing even more unexpectant is finding out that same love, may have a past that’s hard to look past.

Get to know the filmmaker John Leviege:

I felt this was an important story to tell & I just couldn’t wait to put it on film. I can’t think of any obstacles (to make the film). The cast was amazing & my team made the process seamless.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

MIND THIEF, 109min,. USA, Mystery/Thriller
Directed by Matt Steinauer
A novelist realizes that her neighbors may be under the mind control of unknown forces. Little does she realize how close and sinister its influence has become. MIND THIEF is a sci-fi thriller that takes us on a harrowing, sometimes humorous journey through the depths of the human psyche.

https://www.instagram.com/mindthiefmovie/

From filmmaker Matt Steinauer:

We were interested in doing our own take on the concept of Mind Control. Our intention was to create a movie that could cross genres and was multi-layered—a movie that we ourselves would want to see.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

ALUCINAR, 5min., Canada, Animation
Directed by Margie Kelk, Lynne Slater
In a cold, lonely world, where buildings are like icebergs and people drift past each other on ice floes, Guy imagines belonging to a colony of penguins. From his window, he sees May, who also dreams of penguins. Inspired by the courage of penguins plunging off an ice floe into the unknown, he jumps off his own doorstep. Traversing dark waters, he searches the city’s streets looking for May. Connecting through their love of penguins, Guy and May are transformed. Overcoming their isolation, they face their world together.

https://margiekelk.com/
https://www.facebook.com/margie.kelk
https://twitter.com/margiekelk
https://www.instagram.com/mskelk

Get to know the filmmaker:
Lynne Slater, with whom I have been collaborating to produce short stop-motion films for the past five years, saw the little ceramic heads I had been making in my art practice and wanted to create a film with them. Two trips to Antarctica drew me into the world of penguins, and I sent Lynne videos my son had taken of the penguins while visiting South Georgia and other islands in Antarctica. Lynne and I also talked about the loneliness people had experienced during the shut-down of Toronto at the time of covid. Together these factors inspired us to create a story where lonely people find solace and identity in a world of penguins which inspires them, in turn, to share life’s experiences with each other.

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.

Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook