An improvised scene where Nathaniel tells his therapist about his breakup.
Title: Running from Isolation in Isolation Logline: An intimate look at the exhaustion of "performing" wellness while drowning in the weight of a past that refuses to stay packed away. Description: This experimental short film serves as a visual diary of a mental health crisis. Utilizing a blend of dreamlike symbolism and fast-paced editing, it captures the "mountainous baggage" of depression and the betrayal of self-trust. It is a story of a woman recognizing her own red flags while standing in the middle of a burning life, desperately seeking a destination that feels like home.
After his wife leaves, Jonathan is visited late at night by a mysterious couple who claim they want to help him. Their intentions soon shift toward an unexpected sexual proposition, pulling him into a surreal unraveling that exposes the wounds he’s tried to bury.
Created by Three-time Cannes Lions winner Ganesh Pareek- FLUID MASS is a five-minute autobiographical psychological experience exploring crowd anxiety through image and sound. Constructed remotely by a filmmaker unable to enter crowded public spaces because of childhood trauma, the film transforms Mumbai's festival crowds into an internal psychological landscape where overwhelming noise becomes the true antagonist.
Two years after fleeing an abusive partner, Blair struggles to feel whole again. Desperation drives her into a Muay Thai gym, where owners Camilla and Jackson Kingsley welcome her with warmth in stark contrast to the gymХs ferocity. Though the charged, male-dominated environment stirs old trauma, she keeps returning, slowly gaining strength, trust, and a sense of belonging. Bonds with Camilla and Jackson reshape her view of othersСbut BlairХs hardest battle lies deeper. When Jackson suggests sheХs ready for a fight, the idea feels impossible. Yet on fight night, Blair discovers her real opponent wasn't what she expected at all.
Matei, a young shepherd boy living in the outskirts of Romania, finds more comfort among his sheep than with his abusive, alcoholic dad. But now Matei is starting to mimic his father's violence, he's faced with a question: "Who am I?"
An experimental short film presenting neuroscience didactics about various aspects of schizophrenia in the context of a horror visual narrative and horror electronica music.
A reclusive writer (Ann Dowd - The Handmaid's Tale, Hereditary) has been tormented by writer's block for four decades, following the overwhelming success of her first and only novel. When her true identity is discovered by the young woman who visits every week, the writer must confront her past, and when the young woman makes an even more shocking discovery about her, the writer must confront her present and future.
Triggered by a livestream of South Korea at a graduation party, Kate, a Korean American adoptee, embarks on an emotional journey to reconcile longing for a place she cannot remember with the life she has built.
In the wake of a breakup and the sudden death of his uncle, Jace inherits a forgotten sci-fi novel. As the story begins to fold into his reality, heХs drawn into a surreal meditation on grief, memory, and the small, stubborn messes we leave behind.
A gay military police officer, Gustavo lives two irreconcilable realities. In a world where the uniform condemns him to hiding, he feels his true nature being crushed by fear. But for how long is silence a shield, and when does it become a weapon?
An artist's journey into his own neurodiversity and the impact drawing has on his mental well being.
Red is a color found everywhere in our lives, yet we never draw attention to it. It grows, festers, and overpowers without anyone noticing. It clouds our minds and the way we perceive the world around us. It's time for us to wake up and start noticing.
A young woman is offered up as a vessel for demon possession, against her will, in order to fulfill an ancient covenant and continue her family's prosperity. She must face her demons both mentally and physically in order to survive the overwhelming pressure from her family and her ancestors.
How do we go on living when physical and emotional pain block our path forward? Marble Me Free is an evocative animated journey through a "dark night of the soul," exploring resilience, healing, and the power of creative expression.
Narrated by Starlit Swan, author of the featured poem "The Marble Block," the film draws from her experience living with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)—a severely debilitating condition often referred to as the "suicide disease."
The project began when Starlit attended an online Arts & Healing Resiliency Center workshop sponsored by Dr. Kaufman and facilitated by John Fox of the Institute for Poetic Medicine. A few days later, Starlit and Dr Kaufman met again. When Dr. Kaufman asked how Starlit coped with such overwhelming pain, Starlit shared "The Marble Block." Inspired by the poem's transformative power, Dr. Kaufman envisioned it as a healing animation and invited animator Lucía Martínez Rojas to bring the vision to life—giving birth to Marble Me Free.
A young woman is lost between her dreams and reality, searching for meaning amidst the distorted visions she has of her own reflection.
When a photo of his first love resurfaces online, a thirty-year-old car washer searches for the childhood diary behind his autobiography, confronting the illusion of a happy past undone by his parentsХ divorce.
Amber, a worker at a mushroom cultivation farm, loses her partner- sending her on a roadtrip to find a rare psychedelic mushroom in order to find closure.
Patterns is an experimental meditation on the patterns imposed upon us—and those we choose to create. Through symbolic images of sewing, children’s clothing, urban structures, food, and nature, a Thai American artist traces a journey from childhood and cultural identity through psychiatric diagnosis, hospitalization, and the clinical gaze. Moving between conformity and resistance, the film explores memory, embodiment, interdependence, and reclaiming the freedom to create one’s own patterns.
A short film in which reality and illusion blend together, losing their boundaries and meaning. Paranoia has a face.
Steve enjoys a day on the lanes with friends. Both living and dead.
No one fully knows the hidden corners of their mind. Not even Alba. When the forces of the psyche struggle to surface, a race against time will determine whether she gains self-understanding or loses her life forever as she knows it.
Basophobia follows Luke, a young boxer navigating the quiet war inside his own mind. After a year inside a mental health facility, he walks back out into a world he assumed had been waiting for him. It hasn't. His coach has moved on. Some people, he discovers, were more than comfortable in his absence.
Now Luke must learn to navigate a changed landscape, new faces, shifted loyalties, and a fear that never fully left, fighting to define himself before it defines him.
Sejin, a university student, is being scolded by her seniors in a library stairwell one night. Then the lights go out with a Тhwoo-У electric signal, and the seniors twist into grotesque beings, spilling black sludge. In the chaos, her boyfriend HojunСwearing a military uniformСappears, hides Sejin in a restroom, and says he crossed over from another dimension to save her. Now Sejin is pulled into the nightmare of this strange night.
Procrastination meets a clown who says I don’t think so.
A little girl, now a woman, writes to her grandfather, wounded by a mental disorder. She watches him as he seethes inwardly, pondering the place of childhood in suffering.
A grieving father, shattered and isolated withdraws into a house that no longer is a home. The walls close in. Sleep disappears.
Then, he hears it... A sound from the other end of the hallway.
One year after our first journey to the Amazon, we return not only to a place, but to a way of living. Through physical challenges and unexpected discomfort, this film captures a quiet process of transformation. A story about moving through discomfort to uncover an inner strength.
More than a journey, a confrontation. More than a retreat, a return.
After losing their eldest son in a tragic accident, a fractured Jamaican family must decide whether to leave behind their grief-filled home for the promise of a fresh start, before the weight of guilt and unspoken sorrow tears them apart for good.
This documentary delves into the purpose behind the creation of Palate, a coffee shop built to support the fight against human trafficking, and the community impact that has grown from its mission. Through the story of its founder, a survivor whose vision sparked the shop’s creation, the film reveals how Palate grew from a single mission into a wider community movement centered on hope, empowerment, and survivor‑led healing. By exploring the mission behind the shop, the impact it has had on the community, and the ways its influence extends far beyond its doors, the documentary highlights how meaningful change can begin with one person’s story and the courage to reclaim it.
Sometime after their nasty breakup, two film-obsessed serial killers are captured and forced to confess to their heinous crimes.
High school students form a rock band and achieve their first victory in a competition; it seems like fame is just within their grasp. But then the time for final exams and graduation arrives, and they temporarily postpone their dream until autumn to return to it later.
However, nothing goes according to plan. The lead singer is drafted into the army, and the guitarist tragically dies in an accident. The young men are confronted with death for the first time. This terrible event becomes a catalyst for a new stage of "growing up," leading them to reconsider the value of unpredictable life. The story is narrated from the perspective of the band's drummer, directed by Anton Nemov
A meditative story about an online therapist comes across a mysterious young woman in one of his session. Failing to help, he becomes obsessed with who the girl was as his thoughts bleed into his own life.
A visual and poetic journey through the experience of chemotherapy for Large B Cell Lymphoma. Created from original watercolor drawings made by William Doan. Dedicated to Bonita Doan, a two-time cancer survivor.
A woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder gets in touch with a long lost part she thought trauma had destroyed.
Dissociative episodes are often a matter of slipping away for a moment and not knowing how I got where I wound up. Trauma causes the mind to shield the self from truths that are too painful to deal with.
After years of trauma therapy, the walls between my parts are crumbling, and my hidden parts are starting to feel safe enough to reemerge and become open sides of myself.
Georgette Castro will steal your heart in Company, a touching short film about the unexpected bonds that can become our true family.
When Candela, a young Colombian woman feeling isolated in her new life, discovers Larry, a small, quick-witted puppet living in her desk drawer, the two form an unlikely friendship that helps her find courage, joy, and a sense of belonging.
As they navigate work, loneliness, and life together, the film reveals that family isn't always the people we're born to, sometimes, it's the company we keep.
Company also surprises audiences with remarkably realistic practical effects that have to be seen to be believed - all created without green screens, CGI, or AI.
The film has earned more than 30 festival selections, awards, nominations, and honors, including multiple Best Short Film and Best Comedy wins, along with recognition for its original score and visual effects. Its continued festival success has helped establish Company as one of Mortenveld Productions signature narrative projects. Company is a warm-hearted comedy about friendship, belonging, and finding family in the most unexpected places, and one that will leave you with a smile.
Art therapist Jamie Silvestri reflects on the work and impact of her organization ArtVan, which has brought mobile art therapy to low-income communities in rural Maine for over twenty years. By guiding individuals to explore and use materials to create whatever comes from the heart, Jamie expresses how art can transform, heal parts of ourselves nothing else can reach, and open worlds of understanding—a truth she knows from her own experience with trauma.
We Hold Their Grief in Our Hands; a video work made in response to processing my fathers death. I speak to my father one last time. Laying bare the vulnerabilities of grief now that he is gone. This work examines societal norms around mourning, what it means to hold space for another's sorrow, and how we honor those we've lost, not only through memory, but through our instinct to protect who they were and not who they became.
MATT had been a dreamer since he was 12. He wanted to become a musician, he played guitar, he founded a band. Growing up, day by day, he lost all his dreams and expectations.
Matt doesnХt have a face anymore and is living his life as a loop: nothing can make him feel alive. He is no longer able to taste any food, he is not able to feel any emotion, even sadness.
As the years went by, the passing of time became unbearable, and Matt thinks of being going. Through the tough way of counselling, Matt, with many difficulties, finds a counselor that helps him continue on living.
Haunted by the echoes of war and the bitterness of betrayal, a man seeks refuge in the quiet of the woods. In this simple, solitary landscape, his inner chaos meets the silence of nature. This intimate drama explores a fragile journey through vulnerability and confusion toward a path of healing and an unexpected connection.
"After the Ashes" is a poignant drama that follows two estranged sisters, reunited by the death of their mother after years of silence. What begins as a formal farewell slowly unearths layers of emotional residueСgrief, guilt, and unresolved childhood trauma. Set amidst the stillness of mourning, the film explores the quiet moments between memory and confrontation, where whatХs left unsaid often weighs the most. Through a series of emotionally charged encounters, the sisters are forced to re-examine their past and the roles they were pushed to play within their fractured family. As truths begin to surface, After the Ashes becomes a story not only about loss, but about resilienceСthe kind that emerges when we dare to look at our pain, and perhaps, offer a hand through it.
Thirty years after a string of unexplained disappearances, three friends uncover a hidden crawlspace containing an old puppet buried beneath their home. The night quickly spirals into a twisted nightmare when the puppet springs to life and unleashes its curse.
Trapped inside the house with the unhinged puppet, the three friends must find a way to break the curse before it’s too late.
Blending practical puppet effects, body horror and dark comedy, Curse of the Were-Puppet is a blood-soaked love letter to 1980s B-grade horror and children’s puppet shows gone horribly wrong.
Advanced Mathematics Professor Ruby Finnegan is drowning in obscurity and mediocrity. She needs to publish the paper
shes dedicated the last decade of her life on, but her math isn't quite working out. When she ropes her T.A. Aiza Tahan into
helping her, their relationship begins to fracture and spiral out of control.
In rural Hayti, Missouri, matriarch Elizabeth Holiday confronts her past when an unexpected call from her former student, Jeremy, disrupts her routine. As they navigate their shared history and the challenges of their community, they're forced to confront harsh realities, igniting a journey of reconciliation and redemption.
"Broken Reflections" explores the internal battles we face and the strength it takes to confront our inner demons. Jame's journey represents the power of self-acceptance and finding the hope of overcoming even the darkest of personal struggles.
Drawing a parallel between bi-polar illness and creativity Mind Unseen explores the different angles of this notion. Showing footage of varying stages from manic episodes to depths of depression the viewer is brought into the mind of a person with bi-polar.
Moving Forward is a heartfelt, inspiring film about reclaiming one's inner light and finding strength not in perfection, but in progress
"Follow Dingdang to Learn Chinese Poems" is a series of AIGC-animated short videos dedicated to disseminating the essence of traditional Chinese culture. It employs elements such as ink wash animation, traditional opera music, and Chinese calligraphy-all featuring distinctive ethnic characteristics-to spread classical Chinese poetry and historical stories. Created collaboratively by Dingdang and her father, the production integrates various AI tools including Kuaishou Kling, DeepSeek, and MuseAI. Since its release both domestically and internationally, the series has garnered high view counts and positive social feedback. "Follow Dingdang to Learn Chinese Poems-The Three Stages of Loneliness " is based on 3 different works of ancient China.
Rosa, a wheelchair user, has just started a new job. Nevertheless, her inexperience irritates not only her workmates but also her boss. This makes her suffer because Rosa does not know whether this rejection comes from her inexperience or her condition. One night Rosa meets Puri who, by lending her a sympathetic ear, reveals something inside her that will change her life.
Inspired by true events from Springfield, MO, a man who is haunted by the victims of lynchings and unsolved hangings in America and creates a machine to erase trauma from DNA is forced to redefine his identity and confront historic trauma when his machine breaks and an African war goddess beckons him.
In the North East of EnglandСa region facing some of the highest male suicide rates in the UKСthe ice rink serves as a sanctuary of stoicism and grit. But when a beloved teammate, Mich, takes his own life, the communityХs silence is pushed to its breaking point.
A Game to Remember follows MichХs teammates as they organize a final, profound tribute: a memorial game where his ashes are placed inside the game puck. Moving beyond the "tough" exterior of the sport, the film captures a community refusing to let a friend be sidelined by his own death. It is an intimate portrait of the unique, often wordless language men use to communicate love, fellowship, and loss.
An angel watches his son and daughter as they visit his gravestone at the cemetery.
Absent of Me is a short documentary that offers a look into the lives of nine individuals across five U.S. states and three countries who live with a little-known mental health condition known as depersonalization disorder. With expert insight from medical writer Jeffrey Abugel, audiences will gain a clearer understanding of this largely unknown and under-researched condition.
Mark Sharman is a timid 17-year-old high school student with a passion for musical theater and a dream of performing on stage, yet something keeps him from pursuing it. When an opportunity arises to audition for his school’s upcoming production, Mark finds himself unable to take the first step. While his best friend Carly and his father encourage him to pursue his passion, a mysterious, human-shaped figure cloaked in black relentlessly tears Mark down and does everything it can to stop him. The figure reminds Mark of his insecurities and his painful past experiences, challenging the encouragement he receives and making him question whether he truly belongs on stage. As the audition approaches, Mark finds himself caught between the voices telling him to move forward and the one urging him to turn back, forcing him to decide whether he can find the courage to take the stage, even when his fear tells him otherwise.
Days before a school tragedy strikes, a single mother's effort to relocate her family in search of a better future is unknowingly racing against time.
America follows Valerie, a single mother who refuses to break. Determined to give her children, Daniel and Georgia, a better life on the West Coast, she pushes forward against all odds. But on the eve of their move, tragedy strikes. A school shooting shatters their world, forcing Valerie to confront an unthinkable question: Are her children victimsЙ or perpetrators?
Our short film is a raw and urgent exploration of resilience and sacrifice through the lens of a mother's fierce love. America lays bare the devastating impact of gun violence and its ripple effects on families and schools across America.
One year after the death of his son, a grieving father confronts the unanswered questions and unspoken truths that haunt him, searching for meaning in a loss he cannot understand.
A young man takes his first step into therapy.
Brilhante, a contemporary slave catcher, has fun with his victim before the mercy shot... . . .
Suicide has been silently & disproportionately affecting Black Children for years. Through interviews with Educators,Elected Officials, Clinicians, Suicide-Bereaved Families and first hand accounts of Survivors of
youth suicide, Butterflies Jump Too spreads awareness of racial
disparity in Mental Healthcare.
This story is a study in ethical cultural practices, the respect for final wishes, partnerships, and family. It’s an intense, uncomfortable time in which an American woman must decide where her loyalties lie and open her mind to new ideas, cultures, and (ahem) flavors.
A woman experiences the stillbirth of her baby, depicting a raw and rarely seen moment of grief. Alone in her home, she faces the immediate shock and profound horror of loss, giving birth at twenty weeks and confronting a tragedy that few films depict. Silent, intimate, and unflinching, “Still” captures the reality of a devastating experience that is often hidden from view.
Storyteller-of-the-Year, Jessica4Jesus, blesses the stage again. But this time, her humor fails to hide her truth.
Lost in his deepening mental confusion, Francisco discovers that he has been living for decades with early-onset Alzheimer's, diagnosed at age 51. Now, at 78, during a particularly intense crisis of the disease, he sees his perception of reality fracture. Between memory lapses and moments of disorientation, his wife and son become his safe haven, helping him face the truth through routine, creativity, and, above all, love. The family attempts to preserve what the disease insists on erasing: Francisco's identity, affection, and dignity. A silent struggle against oblivion.
Pablo left everything behind and moved to England, staking his future on the promise of the "London dream". But reality has betrayed his expectations. Ashamed to face his family, he drowns his despair in alcohol. Tonight, he is a body on the edge, a fragile soul flirting with self-destruction С until the hand of his cousin Santi, an intern in London, reaches out to reconnect him with the family he has pushed away.
Ant—nio Aleixo built his identity around the need for recognition. But when his body failed and his insecurities forced him to stop, he entered what he calls a ТSilent WinterУ. A period in which everything that once seemed solid begins to collapse, leading him to descend into Xibalba, on a journey through Yucat‡n.
Girl of the Holler
A one-woman memoir, storytelling show about growing up in small town Appalachia with mental health issues and her relationship with her moonshiner father.
Funny and Poignant, Girl of the Holler Short Version runs about 35 mins.
Because of the subject matter and some adult language, Girl of the Holler is for mature audiences only.
Girl of the Holler contains mature themes including mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, incarceration, childhood trauma, and grief. It also includes strong language and references to emotional and physical abuse.
For More Information Contact
girloftheholler@gmail.com
276 952 7190
girloftheholler.com
The lifelong friendship of two young men is tested as they each struggle in silence. Texts they exchange and the messages they type and delete reveal what they cannot bring themselves to say. Their efforts to hide their pain unravel after a tragedy exposes the cost of their silence.
ItХs not just any Saturday. One decision can change everything. At dawn, when the house is still quiet, a choice sets everything in motion. Relationships shift, truths surface, and what seemed like a normal day becomes a turning point. Because sometimes the smallest gesture opens the door to a new pathСand nothing looks the same again.
Making Unquiet
What if music could help us feel what others live through?
Making Unquiet is a powerful new film that explores the emotional landscape of bipolar disorder and the profound gaps in understanding that often leave it undiagnosed for years. Through a moving blend of interviews, original music, and visual storytelling, the film invites audiences into a deeply human experience shaped by both struggle and resilience.
At the heart of the film is an extraordinary creative collaboration featuring world-renowned jazz drummer Joe Farnsworth and composer Shelbie Rassler. The film features the making of the musical composition Unquiet, which becomes the films emotional backboneСtranslating the highs and lows of bipolar disorder into sound. Each musical motif mirrors the lived experience of the condition, offering audiences a visceral understanding that words alone cannot convey.
Blending artist and expert interviews with live performances, animation, and dynamic visual design, Making Unquiet takes viewers on a cinematic journey through the extremes of mania and depression. Moments of intense energy, euphoria, and impulsivity collide with periods of deep isolation, sadness, and hopelessness revealing not only the complexity of the disorder, but also its impact on relationships, identity, and daily life.
Bipolar disorder affects an estimated 46 million people worldwide, yet it remains widely misunderstood and often underdiagnosed, with an average care gap of over a decade. Making Unquiet seeks to change that offering not just awareness, but empathy. By connecting science, art, and lived experience, the film creates space for conversation, recognition, and hope.
After the theft of her diary, M is subjected to a series of symbolic violences that plunge her into a state of unraveling psychological panic.
The single mother Sarah, exhausted from dealing with her sleep-addicted daughter's frequent school absences, sensed the hidden corners of her adolescent girl's heart amidst her tangled emotions.
"Happy Birthday" follows Rae, a teenage girl, as she navigates the tension between healing and relapse in eating disorder recovery. This film aims to shed light on struggles with body image, toxic diet culture, and disordered eating.
Everyone on the block thinks he's paranoid. Then the lights show up over the rooftops. Obsessed with proving what he saw, a loner chases the truth until his grip on reality starts to slip. The answer he finds rewrites the world around him, and the one inside him.
What happens when you sell your soul to a devil and they extend the deal you made with them in exchange for a favor?
A disturbed young women is visited by a demon that gives her an extension on a deal she made with them in exchange for a favor. To become its hit women and collect on past deals that it made with others.
During a walk in the mountains, four girls have a lively discussion about ethics following a forest fire that occurred a year earlier and was caused by them. The protagonist Rebecca will have the opportunity to discover how revengeful nature can be.
After becoming a mental health service user, a former social worker reflects on the profession from both sides of the helping relationship. Through personal narration and original music, the film reveals the emotional labor, dedication, and human connections that exist behind workloads, case numbers, and professional roles.
Production: Austria, Germany
Languages: French, German
Short Synopsis: Over the course of a day full of misfortune, a dancer who has been robbed of his ability to dance finds the strength to heal his wounds and dance one last time.
Long Synopsis: STUPORIA is a deeply personal LGBTQIA+-themed story about a dancer who is forced to stop dancing after surviving a violent attack in a park. The film follows his emotional and physical recovery throughout a day as he finds the strength to heal and dance one last time. At its core, the film explores trauma, resilience, and the quiet power of reclaiming oneХs identity through movement and art.
After enduring relentless noise from the apartment above, Aaliyah desperate for peace begins to unravel. As sleepless nights blur the line between reality and paranoia, her obsession with regaining control spirals into a psychological nightmare where every sound becomes a threat. Forced to confront the darkness consuming her, she discovers that the greatest danger may not be the noise above her.
A seemingly idyllic camping trip takes a chilling turn after a missed voicemail.
Raina is known as the "strong one" the one who helps everyone until she can no longer carry it all, when it gets too heavy. She is force to address her issues, and the generational dysfunction she learned by example to finally choosing herself.
An all American, macho country and western duo are in denial about their sexuality but the truth comes out in their songs.
After returning from a trip to her home country, Myanmar, Pann struggles to readjust to her routine in Singapore, weighed down by an unknown pain.
When the white lily, which her mother left in her care, begins to wither, she becomes fixated on saving it.
As her obsession grows, suppressed emotions emerge, and lost memories resurface, forcing her to confront the root of the pain she has been carrying.
What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About TRAUMA is a love letter to someone coming to terms with the symptoms of Complex PTSD, made by someone with a lived experience of CPTSD. It is a personal and deeply subjective short film that encourages hope, nature connectivity and gives grammar to a condition that is both new and little understood.
This film is a continuation of work by the filmmaker to engage with their own mental health journey through producing work that engages deeply with nature. In this way the cinematography becomes a therapeutic practice.
The aim of the filmmaker is that the film raises awareness of CPTSD, helps give people struggling with symptoms a voice, and ultimately provokes conversations and hopefulness about this difficult subject.
When a quest to find an ancient spellbook goes awry, a nervous young mage must overcome his paralyzing fears to save his best friend.
Finding the right therapist for you. From the studio that brought you "Skate at Your Own Risk" and "The Uprooted," ROAR Studios presents: "The Mental Match," a new documentary film from director Silas Gobat.
Resonare - Echoes Within is a documentary about the impact of music on people living with dementia and their families. At the Komische Oper Berlin, a dedicated music therapy program creates spaces where participants can access emotions and memories beyond cognitive decline. The film also follows their relatives, for whom music can reopen channels of connection that seemed lost. It shows how shared musical experiences can restore moments of closeness С to oneself and to each other С even as memory fades.
Struggling with alcoholism and mental illness, an artist reaches out to an old friend. Eight years in the making, with 5,000 frames painted by hand using oil on glass, Oscar Wyndham Lewis began working on Small Hours as a way of processing his own experiences with alcoholism and mental illness.
Saltwater Psalms is a six-minute visual poem built from fragments of the natural world. Instead of a linear story, the film moves through a living collage of water, shoreline, foliage, animals, food, and sunlight. Each image becomes its own reminder that the body knows how to come home when it is given space to breathe.
The work reflects a season of emotional exhaustion and rebuilding. The film does not chase a narrative arc. It rests inside stillness, repetition, and the softness of everyday beauty. The viewer is invited to witness what healing looks like when it is not performed. Quiet waves. Moving shadows. A fruit sliced open. Wings in flight. The warmth of the sun on the skin.
Through these simple elements, the film becomes a gentle act of self-reclamation. It holds the idea that renewal is not always grand or spoken. Sometimes it is found in the world as it already is, waiting for you to pause long enough to see it.
Blending horror and humour, Lethal Ethel is a mockumentary that follows the story of a Naskapi vampire who goes to murderous lengths to protect her land and culture.
A man battles an annual onslaught of horror to protect the children of his neighborhood.
In front of her mirror, a woman gets ready under the lights, inhabited by the echo of a moment in the spotlight.
A man applies to work as a guard at a factory, but they only hire guard dogs. The man, forced to claim that he is better than a dog, accepts the position.
A woman goes on a journey, discovering pieces throughout various abstract worlds that help her gain abilities, fostering a clearer sense of self and confidence. These abstract objects show her how to move forward through unclear and uncertain times. She perseveres, ultimately emerging stronger and with a renewed sense of clarity.
Mood disorders, dissociation, and the daily, unglamorous work of managing a mind, told through people actually living inside these conditions rather than observing them from outside. It moves from isolation and burnout toward connection, closing on memory and music rather than diagnosis.
Psychological thriller and horror used as a lens on a mind under real siege, where the monster is rarely external. It's the festival's most genre-forward night, escalating steadily from a quiet cold open into full psychological unraveling by its closing film.
A cross-theme launch built to touch every strand of the festival's mission before the themed nights begin, moving between animated meditations, community documentaries, and stories of identity and hard-won healing.
The Mosaic of Horror Film Festival celebrates the strange, the visceral, and the shadowed corners of the mind.
This one-day hybrid festival (in-person and virtual) showcases short films that transform fear into reflection, exploring mental health, absurdity, and psychological transformation through horror, suspense, and the surreal.
As the darker sibling of Mind Mosaic and Mosaic of Laughter, MOHF completes the emotional spectrum, reminding us that horror and humor are two sides of the same survival instinct. In facing what terrifies us, we uncover what we need to heal.
Physical trauma, addiction, and the long process of reclaiming a body that hasn't felt like home in a long time. The night builds from quiet, poetic short pieces into fuller character studies of people fighting their way back into their own skin.
All of the festival's award-winning films screened together in one closing showcase, spanning every theme the week has covered, from grief to identity to resilience. It's the festival's victory lap: nothing new to grapple with, just its strongest work, together, one last time.
Queerness, culture, disability, and the ongoing work of finding language for who you actually are. The films range from a few minutes of pure feeling to full character portraits, all circling the same question of what it costs, and what it gives back, to become fully yourself.
Parents, siblings, and chosen family, and the things, good and painful, that get handed down without anyone asking. The night moves from tender, small-scale family moments toward its two longest films, both about what it means to stay in a family that's difficult to love.
Social justice, mutual aid, and the deliberate, often unglamorous work of turning back toward repair after everything the earlier nights have carried. It ends the themed-night run on transformation, closing with two different stories of people rebuilding a life on their own terms.
