Sundance Kids

We prep for the festival in Utah while the best shorts from Quebec come to us

Author

Jason Sondhi
January 19, 2024

Sundance opened last night, and with it, the 2024 festival season is officially underway. Congrats to all the filmmakers and attendees! Céline is on the ground in Park City, as is our intern, Jared, so invite them out to stuff if you want your event to be cool.

We’re doing Sundance on the internet too, previewing alums presenting features at the fest, compiling a list of our favorite shorts of this year’s edition, and rounding up past winners to watch. All of that is in this week’s Shorts Weekly, but first—our Short of the Week picks.

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

***

Boomerang by Rylee Jean Ebsen

After losing her job, a flailing millennial is forced to move back into her childhood bedroom.

Has it been long enough? Are we ready to laugh about Covid? Rylee Jean Ebsen is betting yes, and we agree! This story of a dysfunctional family—two parents and their millennial daughter—quarantining together under the same roof pokes fun at a lot of relatable behaviors circa 2020 and, according to Céline, brings a “relatable balance between laughs and heart to the screen.”

***

Astonishing Little Feet by Maegan Houang

Afong Moy, the first documented Chinese woman to come to the United States, realizes the men who separated her from her family only have an interest in profiting off the peculiarities of her bound feet.

We welcome back rising star Maegan Houang, who was featured on the site in 2020 with In Full Bloom. Since then she’s broken through as a writer for both film and TV, and now presents the world this fresh and tonally unique piece. We don’t have a lot of period films on the site and Rob notes that “Houang’s short provides a blend of historical depth and modern significance, laced with a touch of subtle horror.”

***

Rips by Major Dorfman

A 9-year-old girl discovers that her favorite sweatshirt is a hand-me-down.

Sensitive and knowing in how it presents class and social standing, Céline admires this film from Major Dorfman that “…crafts a beautiful mother/daughter relationship on the canvas of a coming-of-age narrative. Simple, yet effective, the film possesses an undeniable authenticity that makes it both charming and emotionally compelling.”



***

Sundance Film Festival 2024: A Guide | Short of the Week

From short films to features, we explore the Sundance Film Festival 2024 lineup and make our recommendations of what to watch at this year's event.

Céline will be attending the Park City festival as usual and composes our annual Sundance preview post which highlights upcoming features and shorts from S/W alums. With a healthy collection of first features from the likes of Thea Hvistendahl, Sean Wang, and reigning Short of the Year winner, Haley Elizabeth Anderson, this is a great primer on films and filmmakers that will be much better known 10 days from now.

🩳 A Free Online Showcase of Quebec Shorts

This is a partner message

The 8th edition of Plein(s) Écran(s) is here. From Jan 16th to the 28th this unique festival showcases the best of Quebec cinema for free on the internet, and we’ve partnered with them to spread the word. 📣

This is a definitive survey of one of the richest short filmmaking regions in the world, which has produced iconic films in recent years like Fauve and Lay Me By the Shore. ⁠Each day 4 films stream for free on Facebook or Instagram, but only for 24 hours!

⁠Discover festival darlings from distributors like Spira, h264, & Travelling all from the comfort of home. Many of these might not hit online again for months or even years, so don’t miss out.

A sampling of films we’re eagerly awaiting include:

Watch the films on the festival’s Website, Facebook, or Instagram.

We’re also maintaining a Shortverse collection which allows you to receive notifications when a film you’re interested in comes online. 👇🏼

🪐 Shortverse Collections

Speaking of collections, we’ve got a pair for Sundance fans too. First, our team has seen the entire 53 film shorts lineup and these 12 films are our favorites!

Normally these collections are just an opportunity to put films on your radar for the future. But with Sundance maintaining the virtual initiatives it started during the pandemic (US residents can watch all the shorts for just $25!) there is an immediate and practical need for this guide. Let’s face it, while you certainly can do it, you don’t reeeeally want to watch 53 shorts in 4 days.

Still from “When You Left Me On That Boulevard” the reigning Short Film Grand Jury Prize Winner

Then, we round up recent award-winners from the festival into a 21-film playlist of work you can watch immediately. Featuring early shorts from filmmakers who have subsequently broken out, like Jim Cummings and Charlotte Wells, this is a fantastic collection to play through.

🎟 Coming soon that we’re excited about…

Closing Time | Shortverse

An estranged friend surprises his old college buddies with a tense, unusual reunion.

www.shortverse.com/films/closing-time

We’ll leave you with one final film recommendation. Fresh off scoring a spot on the 2023 Blacklist for the feature script of his short, Return to Sender, Russell Goldman is releasing his latest short online on Monday.

The short presents as a character drama as we meet a group of former friends and start to learn the circumstances that lead them to separate, but Goldman has a genre twist in store for viewers that is impossible to predict.

Thanks for reading, see you next week with more short film news & picks!