YOUR EVERYDAY HEROES OF COSTA RICA, 25min., USA
Directed by Hernán Salcedo
Your Everyday Heroes traveled to Costa Rica and searched for inspirational everyday people who are changing the world. Jeremy, Tracey, Vernon and Che are clearly all examples of what it takes to be a Hero, and we’re proud to share their stories with you.

http://www.youreverydayheroes.com/
https://www.facebook.com/youreverydayheroes
https://twitter.com/YEDHeroes
https://www.instagram.com/youreverydayheroes/

Get to know producer Albert H. Crane:
One of our film crews traveled to Costa Rica to film Jeremy Levine at Wild Sun Rescue of an episode of season two. Once they arrived, they kept meeting amazing people who were involved with their own non-profits, so we decided to feature all of them in a longer documentary in an effort to draw attention to their causes. To make this film? This production has many legs… Each hero ended up being featured in their own episode, then we decided to combine the 3 animal rescues and recut it from scratch, so to get this far has taken just about a year. That is why you see Che in the after credits, as he was the 4th hero we filmed in Costa Rica, but didn’t hit the theme of this story.

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EP. 1308 - Producer Albert Crane & Director Hernan Salcedo (YOUR EVERYDAY HEROES OF COSTA RICA)

Matthew Toffolo

MITOTE – SMOKEY MIRROR, 9min,. South Korea
Directed by Jana Sturmheit
In today’s world us humans have developed a complex social system of rules and expectations. Children are taught from the day they are born on how they are expected to behave. They are told what is right and wrong, what is possible and what not. That is, by the standards of the children’s parents and other people in their surroundings, in other words the society they grow up in.

https://instagram.com/jaystorm24.mov

Get to know the filmmaker:
It was not a graduate requirement to make a film in my department of video content design, but I felt like it would be the perfect opportunity to create my first work as director and choreographer. I have choreographed stage performances before but never a video and I wanted to portray the vision that I had inspired by the opening excerpt from the book “The Four Agreements” by Miguel Ruiz talking about Mitote – the smokey mirror.
When I have a dance vision, it plays like a movie in my head, rather than a stage performance. Often I find dance visuals intensely focused on the movement rather than the cinematic aesthetics and depth that different camera angles, movement and shot size and cuts add on the final film. I find one of the decisive factors are the intimate closeness that you can create through a camera that is impossible in a stage performance. A second factor is that the camera can move in between the dancers, which a spectator of a stage performance can’t either in most cases.

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EP. 1305 - Filmmaker Jana Sturmheit (MITOTE – SMOKEY MIRROR)

Matthew Toffolo

SALT IN THEIR VEINS, 16min,. Australia
Directed by Rita Hencke
East Indonesia. Communities of sea people live a life that ties them closely to the marine environment. They are known as Bajo, descendants of former sea nomads who were once roaming the ocean to fish and trade.

https://www.ritahencke.com/film

Get to know the filmmaker:

The inspiration for “Salt in their Veins” came from my passion for freediving. I was captivated by the extraordinary diving and spearfishing skills of the Bajo sea people. During my visit to one of their remote communities in Indonesia a few years ago, I saw how their lives are being transformed by modern influences. This experience motivated me to capture the contrast between their traditional and modern fishing practices.

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EP. 1304 - Filmmaker Rita Hencke (SALT IN THEIR VEINS)

Matthew Toffolo

THE FINAL CURTAIN CALL, 16min,. USA
Directed by Jessica Orcsik, Robbie Ryde
As Ella embarks on a musical journey, she meets 4 other teenagers, each with a new song. Taking place in a mysterious theater, the musical numbers reveal heart wrenching stories of child trafficking sung in new and creative ways. The Final Curtain Call combines a serious matter with the power of music to convey an impactful message and tell a devastating story.

http://www.diversitypictures.org/
https://www.instagram.com/thefinalcurtaincall_shortfilm

Get to know creator/producer Paris Joy:

I’m Paris Joy, the creator, co-writer, producer and lead in The Final Curtain Call. I created this film to spread awareness on human trafficking in order to start conversations, to one day stamp it out. This issue is spread vast and wide across the entire world, and without speaking up and being a voice for the voiceless, it will only continue to worsen. I hope this film can give viewers an insight into this issue, so we can come together to put an end to human trafficking.

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EP. 1303 - Creator/Producer Paris Joy (THE FINAL CURTAIN CALL)

Matthew Toffolo

SURVIVING TO THRIVING, 106min., Australia
Directed by Karin Isabelle Ochsner
As a fearless explorer with a disability, surfer and surf coach Karin Ochsner immerses herself in the raw beauty of nature. Her remarkable healing journey unfolds in the face of adversity.

http://www.surfingtosurvive.com/film2
https://www.instagram.com/surfingtosurvive/

Get to know the filmmaker:

This film is the sequel to a documentary about my health challenge, which has been organised by my friends. The purpose was to help me in my incredibly difficult struggles to survive with my countless severe allergies. During the filming, I was very sick and wasn’t able to put the messages in the documentary which I really wanted to pass on, hence I decided to do a second one to do so. The first documentary gave me so much support from my community and clarity in how to manage my disability, it improved my situation so much that I then could focus on filming my own story.

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EP. 1300 - Filmmaker Karin Isabelle Ochsner (SURVIVING TO THRIVING)

Matthew Toffolo

THE SHEPHERD, 14min., USA
Directed by Arie Forma
Struggling with the news of his son’s interfaith engagement, a religious father seeks solace in his estranged brother.

https://www.arieforma.com/the-shepherd
https://www.instagram.com/rosecolored.pictures/

Podcast Hannah Ehman talks to lawyer turned actor Allan Whitehead about finally getting into actor and his role as "Solomon Cohen" in the award winning film The Shepherd.

Follow Interviewer Hannah Ehman on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ehmanhannah/

Watch Hannah’s national commercial spots: https://www.ispot.tv/topic/actor-actress/bP8/hannah-ehman

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EP. 1296 (WILDsound Actors Podcast #) Actor Allan Whitehead (THE SHEPHERD)

Matthew Toffolo

HORNED, 4min,. USA
Directed by Jerrod D Brito
When a cocky cam boy jokingly live-streams a creepypasta dare, he inadvertently summons an ancient demon who craves more than just his soul.

Get to know the filmmaker:

Funny story. I attended Dan Savage’s HUMP Film Festival, a traveling film fest that features short films of an adult nature, and though they had many diverse films, I didn’t see any strictly horror movies. I felt there might be an opportunity there, so I tried to come up with a way to merge horror—my signature genre—with sex. I just started jotting notes and tried to find a way to combine them both, but be fair to both, too, and then I added a little humor. Those were the ingredients for “Horned.” But I really wanted to make sure it stood alone as a horror story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and as much character development as I could squeeze into a short in under five minutes of length. So I cut it two ways—a more explicit version for HUMP with thirty more seconds of content and a better punchline to the film (it was selected, by the way—it tours this fall), and the somewhat censored version we were lucky enough to screen at Horror Underground.

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EP. 1293 - Filmmaker Jerrod D. Brito (HORNED)

Matthew Toffolo

SOLITUDE, 87min., USA
Directed by Jeremy Brown, Mick Strawn
A famous upbeat survivalist is cast for a popular television
series about surviving in solitude, but survival turns to despair when she discovers a supernatural entity's presence.

Interview with well renowed Production Designer Mick Strawn about his upcoming co-director horror film "Solitude".

http://www.brownspacefilms.com/
https://www.facebook.com/solitudefilm2023
https://twitter.com/brownspacefilm
https://www.instagram.com/solitude_film_2024/

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EP. 1292 - Filmmaker Mick Strawn (SOLITUDE)

Matthew ToffoloEP. 1292 - Filmmaker Mick Strawn (SOLITUDE)

FIRST GRADE HEADACHE, 13min., Canada
Directed by Jajube Mandiela
A burnt out first-grade teacher finds herself in a night from hell when a group of vindictive parents break into her home.

Get to know writer/producer/star Jacqueline Godbout & director Jajube Mandiela

Jacqueline (writer): I was wanting to make a horror film next, but it seems whenever I start writing anything remotely dark, it always becomes a dark comedy. I’m leaning into it now. Growing up, my mom was a teacher and I also work part time as a music teacher so there were likely some thoughts from that world floating around in my brain when daydreaming ideas. One day, I was just doing my favourite activity of playing around with loglines (no joke) when I came up with the logline of First Grade Headache. Right away, it was very clear to me that I wanted… needed to make this film now.

Jajube (director): It’s quirky, absurd and yet plausible. Looked like a fun script to film, I could relate to it, and genuinely laughed upon first reading it. How to direct it was very clear in my mind, and for a while Jacqueline (writer) and I had been regularly meeting to see how to collaborate on another project together.

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EP. 1289 - Writer/Producer/Star Jacqueline Godbout & Director Jajube Mandiela (FIRST GRADE HEADACHE)

Matthew Toffolo

THE HARDSHIPS OF SUMMONING A DEMON, 14min., Canada

Directed by Britt Dallyn

In order to woo his school crush, a determined but highly misguided Stan attempts to summon a demon with the help of his sister stuck at home on Halloween night, by kidnapping a heavily intoxicated young man under the ruse of his own sacrifice being an after party.

https://www.instagram.com/summoning_a_demon/

Get to know the filmmaker:

While attending Vancouver Film School, the course allows six story ideas to be voted on by the class to get made for our "final" projects. With these "finals" we are given our highest budget and longest shooting schedule to film our original 9 page scripts. I had made many short films in the past, but all with minimal (mostly zero) other people, less knowledge and no money. I saw this as a great chance to create a film to showcase my creative voice with the type of resources I never had before.

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EP. 1287 - Filmmaker Britt Dallyn (THE HARDSHIPS OF SUMMONING A DEMON)

Matthew Toffolo

LOST DREAMS, 10min., USA
Directed by Andrew Wakeman Proctor
Lost Dreams is about dreams. Scientists have not fully figured out dreams. The ancients believed you could predict the future through your dreams, Native Americans created dream-capturing devices. Some people keep dream diaries. Freud believed that we could fix people’s psychological problems by analyzing their dreams.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32021226/?ref_=ttawd_rvi_tt_i_4

Get to know the filmmaker:

I took an experimental film class at Connecticut College. We studied the works of Maya Dern and Stan Brackage. I was inspired by Anticipation of the Night by Stan Brackage. In the fall of 2009 I received an email inviting me to submit a film to an Experimental film festival in Switzerland. My friend John Prevedini sent me his music “Lost Days” and it inspired “Lost Dreams”.

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EP. 1286 - Filmmaker Andrew Wakeman Proctor (LOST DREAMS)

Matthew Toffolo

MORNING ROUTINE, 2min., Canada
Directed by William Thibodeau
Inspired by the epic true story. After sleeping in, Jack must go through his morning routine before it’s too late…

Get to know the filmmaker:

I wanted to turn something seemingly boring into something exciting. We are all in a rush during our morning routine and I wanted to depict it in the most epic way possible.

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EP. 1284 - Filmmaker William Thibodeau (MORNING ROUTINE)

Matthew Toffolo

PARROT, 24min,. Canada
Directed by Cameron Faulkner
After forcibly being sold a parrot, Ollie is thrust into a surprise birthday party hosted by his roommates. The night spirals into chaos as he tries to regain control and sort his life out. Based on an unbelievable true story.

https://www.instagram.com/parrotfilmofficial/

Get to know Oliver de la Harpe:

Covid is the short answer. Charles (co-writer) and I were isolated across continents and in many FaceTime conversations we finally started to commit to a film project we had been talking about for a few years. It lived mainly as a script we would work on until Charles showed it to our director Cameron for notes. To which he signed on immediately and said he wanted to shoot. From there the only question was when.

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EP. 1283 - Actor/Producer/Writer Oliver de la Harpe (PARROT)

Matthew Toffolo

SCREAMING SILENCE, 17min., UK
Directed by Kalyn Elizabeth Wood, Hal Waghorn
In the hauntingly enigmatic and dialogue-free short film, ‘Screaming Silence’, Elizabeth, a young woman in the aftermath of a traumatic event, navigates her world through a haunting soundscape of everyday noises, which ‘peoples’ her world and forces her to face her reality of circumstances and her fear of reaching out for help. As the audience intimately experiences her journey, Elizabeth’s silence becomes a bittersweet force, echoing the profound emotional depth that empowers her to move forward in an altruistic twist of an ending.

https://www.screamingsilencefilm.com/

Get to know filmmaker Kalyn Elizabeth Wood:

This film first started out as my dissertation project for my masters program in London. I was the only one in my class who was doing a digital piece. I knew when beginning to write my piece that I wanted to examine women’s relationships, mainly womens relationship to trauma, sexual assault, loss, isolation and also to dive a little into the mother-daughter relationship dynamic. The film’s first iteration was completely different from its final iteration that it is today and to be quite honest I am glad I went the route that the film is now rather than what it was ‘supposed’ to be. It challenged me and pushed me to places I had never been before as a performer intrinsically, technically, and emotionally. What started out as a quest to fulfill or rather rewrite my story as a gift to my mom and it then became something in singularity. From women, to women. A singular and multifaceted relationship with trauma, the aftermath, loss, isolation and more importantly silence. I investigated the notion of: the power of female silence in films through the lens of trauma. I want anyone who watches this film to feel as though they are allowed in Elizabeth’s world to experience and observe her life in that present moment. I want people to be inspired by the lack of Elizabeth’s voice to find their own voice. To open up and out and maybe even scream.

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EP. 1281 - Filmmaker Kalyn Elizabeth Wood (SCREAMING SILENCE)

Matthew Toffolo

9/10: Love Before the Fall, 58min., USA

Directed by Daron Hagen

The myths of Orpheus and Charon are interwoven with the entirely sung magical-realist story of four friends dining in an Italian bistro who are fated to perish the next morning in the attack on the Twin Towers. At meal’s end, through magical realism, the restaurant’s mysterious strolling violinist is revealed to be Charon, hand extended, awaiting payment. Complying, each reconciles with death, and departs to the sounds of the next morning’s busy signals and the calls of first responders.

https://www.9-10operafilm.art/

https://facebook.com/burningsled

https://instagram.com/910_operafilm

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EP. 1272 - Filmmaker Daron Hagen (9/10: Love Before the Fall)

Matthew Toffolo

OUT OF THE DARK, 3min,. USA
Directed by Alexa Ruggiero, Ashley Carrizo
A screendance film that portrays how certain relationships in ones life can cause turmoil. The process of letting someone go can be freeing while also being an emotional rollercoaster full of sadness, anger, and relief.

Get to know the filmmakers:

Alexa: To tell a story people can relate and connect to. I’ve always been passionate about dance so l loved using movement verse a script to tell that story.

Ashley: I had always wanted to create my own work on film but didn’t know how or where to start. I was associate choreographer last year on another artist’s project. That experience gave me the inspiration to want to create my own work with cameras and sets verse just creating choreography for stage.

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EP. 1271 - Alexa Ruggiero & Ashley Carrizo (OUT OF THE DARK)

Matthew Toffolo

SYNTHETIC HOPE, 16min., USA
Directed by Chris Hinton
Faced with certain death a young girl unleashes a mysterious AI to help her escape.

https://www.instagram.com/synthetic_hope

Get to know the filmmaker:

Listening to the first 30 seconds of Gravastar by Hybrid when I was sick. It sounds like what a robot would hear when it’s booting up. I thought to myself what scenario could I create to have this in live action. So I wrote a story that created this situation. Unfortunately I couldn’t get Hybrid to let me use the song. I was close though, they were talking to me about it. Also I want to say, recent advances in AI motivated this story as well, there are a lot of unknowns as to how this emerging technology will be used.

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EP. 1270 - Filmmaker Chris Hinton & Brian Todd (SYNTHETIC HOPE)

Matthew Toffolo

Low Down Larry Versus the Giant Reptile, 7min., USA
Directed by Sammy Verni
In their latest adventure together, Larry and Spike set out in a time machine to be the first to bring a living dinosaur back with them to present day. They’ve already been to the Moon and back, but this time have they gone too far?

Get to know the filmmaker:

Low Down Larry Versus the Giant Reptile is the second in a series of shorts that I have made based on a comic book character I used to draw when I was about ten years old. I see it as a love letter to that time in my life as well as an homage to sci fi b movies, classic stop motion and the Saturday morning cartoons that I grew up with.

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EP. 1269 - Filmmaker Sammy Verni (Low Down Larry Versus the Giant Reptile)

Matthew Toffolo

CLAIRE, 25min., USA
Directed by Paul Ambe Ngang
Committed to getting his crush to love him, Mark uses an AI to snoop into her private life; but when the AI unexpectedly develops love for him and spite for her, he must choose the AI or lose everything.

https://www.instagram.com/claireshortfilm/

Get to know the filmmaker:

I started to write this when it started to be a hot topic in 2023. Soon after the writers strike happened so I felt like it was now or never to get the story going.

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EP. 1268 - Filmmaker Paul Ambe Ngang (CLAIRE)

Matthew Toffolo

MELIORA, 20min,. Estonia
Directed by Kristin Hildebrand
Emma is a perfectionistic painter with a rich husband and great style. But it soon becomes clear that her perfect life is merely an illusion. Emma is forced to navigate self-doubt, jealousy and to face the darkest parts of herself. Her repressed emotions come to life in the form of a Monster, who shows no mercy to those who have wronged her. In the end, Emma must choose between staying in her gilded cage or facing the Monster.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32384134/

Get to know the filmmaker:

This film began as something completely personal, a result of spiraling mental health and feeling unable to express myself artistically. I was trying to capture a certain emotion and then built a plot and message around it. As the themes became more clear I became more motivated to see the project through; when I discussed the idea with people, especially other women, I realized that I wasn’t alone in many of the things I felt. I met with several female painters to learn more about the struggles they’ve faced in their careers and it was uncanny how similar their stories were to what I had written, down to a similarly abusive relationship. It made me feel like I was on the right track, that it wasn’t just a selfish ego project but something that could resonate with audiences and make people feel heard.

I researched a lot about emotional abuse and the effects it has on victims. The common denominator is that they get isolated, cut off from loved ones and dependent on their abuser, in Emma’s case both emotionally and financially. When your self-worth becomes so tied to another person’s opinion of you, the smallest look or word can cut deep and drive you insane, yet leaving the relationship feels impossible. I think there is a certain power in art and especially film language to communicate things that we might not otherwise be able to put into words. We worked hard with my cinematographer Luisa

Valgiste and sound designer Venla Rummukainen to put viewers in Emma’s headspace.

20 minutes is a very short time to dive deep into something but I hope that if nothing else we managed to capture that feeling of being trapped.

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EP. 1266 - Filmmaker Kristin Hildebrand (MELIORA)

Matthew Toffolo