Ah, Sundance Film Festival – a cloud nine state of mind for filmmakers and film lovers. It’s a place where both the ingenious filmmaking and high elevation will leave you breathless. Where the “Sundance Sickness” represents the unshakeable itch to be at all of the parties at the same time and the inevitable viral infection that will besiege your bod as a result from shaking all the hands, chatting closely with people in loud rooms, and barely sleeping. 

This year, the festival was back in Park City, Utah for the first time since January 2020. In the 15th year of the Staff Pick program’s existence, we were happier than ever to see the names of SP-badge recipients in both the short and feature film programs, including Laurel Parmet, Savanah Leaf, Laura Moss, Staff Picks Best of the Year 2023 winner Eddie Alcazar, and more. 

The curation team watched all 64 shorts that were programmed in 2023. Curators gonna curate, and culling down our favorite films from a larger collection is what we do best. We do this not to discount the actual award winners (shoutout to alum Crystal Kayiza for her Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction win!), but to highlight stories and filmmaking that we believe are also deserving of special recognition. 

So without further adieu, here are the curation team’s unofficial award recipients…

Grand Jury Prize

“A Folded Ocean” by Ben Brewer 

U.S Fiction

“Troy” by Mike Donahue

International Fiction

“Simo” by Aziz Zoromba

Non-Fiction

“Will You Look At Me” by Shuli Huang

Animation

“Christopher At Sea” by Tom CJ Brown

Special Jury Prize – Acting

Lena Papaligoura in “AirHostess-737,” directed by Thanasis Neofotistos

Special Jury Prize – Directing

Ben Brewer for “A Folded Ocean”

Congratulations are also in order for Staff Pick alumni who won big at this year’s festival. A.V Rockwell, received the U.S Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize for her feature film “A Thousand And One”, which Variety described as an “admiring portrait of survivorship, determination and resourcefulness.” 3-time Staff Pick recipient Sing J. Lee took home the Directing Awards in the U.S Dramatic category for “The Accidental Getaway Driver.” And 6-time Staff Pick alum Charlotte Regan won the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition!

We’ll see you on the festival trail in the months to come, and look forward to saluting a fresh batch of shorts at Sundance 2024!

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CONTENT WARNING: The following video contains material that may be harmful or traumatizing to some audiences.

Based on a 911 call that made national news in 2013, this week’s Staff Pick Premiere is “Dekalb Elementary,” a gripping Oscar-nominated short by Reed Van Dyck.

A film that’s shot within a single room doesn’t get much better than this. In the space of 20 minutes, Van Dyck puts forth an impressive feat in environment and pacing. Tension is built around a feeling of confinement, along with a clear and perplexing understanding of a dubious threat. “I wanted to play with what we don’t see,” says Van Dyck.  “Whether that’s obstructing an actor’s face or leaving the chaos of children running [and] screaming off-screen, heard but not seen. My feeling was you, the viewer, would create more interesting pictures in your own mind than any I could show you.” This play on space ultimately makes each minute more arresting than the previous.

Given the astounding performances from leads Tarra Riggs and Bo Mitchell, it’s no surprise Van Dyck said he wouldn’t do the film without the right actors. A true testament to the cast, crew, and attention paid to the craft of narrative filmmaking, “Dekalb Elementary” feels like a non-fiction report of a gravely real event.

We caught up with the director Reed Van Dyck to talk inspiration, challenges, and control throughout the film.

What was your inspiration for creating this film? 

“‘DeKalb’ is based on a 911 call that made national news back in 2013. In the call, we overhear Antoinette Tuff talking to a young man, Michael Hill, who walks into her Atlanta elementary school with an AK-47 and five hundred rounds. I hadn’t heard about the call when it first made news, but I found it years later during research for another project I was working on about a mass shooting. I remember sitting on my couch in Los Angeles riveted and emotional as I listened to the fourteen-minute recording unfold. For weeks I couldn’t get their voices out of my head. Her strength and compassion, his confusion and regret. It touched me in a deep place, and so I began to wonder if I could bring their encounter to life on film.”

Did you face any challenges when making this film?

“The film is essentially a two-hander. So one of the primary challenges was finding the right actors to play the roles. I even decided I wouldn’t make the film without the right cast. It was a months-long process of scouring IMDb, looking at cast lists for indie films, TV shows, etc. Anytime I saw someone who looked right for one of the two leads, I’d add their name to a list. Once that list had grown to 30 or 40 people, I’d start going through all the actors on it and watching their previous work (TV appearances, films, etc) and narrowing it down.

Then I’d start the whole process over again. That’s how I found Tarra Riggs and Bo Mitchell who play the leads. I actually hand-picked every other actor in the film, even the supporting roles, using this same process. My feeling was that a single false performance note from anyone would pull us out of the reality of the situation and so I needed the best actors I could find for every role.”

It’s tough to strike such a compelling tone with subject matter as serious as this. What worked for you in crafting such a tense environment?

“My north star in making the film was always the 911 call. So when I started to think about how to realize the film, visually and aurally, I decided less was more. I had such a strong response to the call, which was more or less a radio play — just these two voices. And so with the film, I wanted to play with what we don’t see… whether that’s obstructing an actor’s face or leaving the chaos of children running [and] screaming off-screen, heard but not seen.

My feeling was you, the viewer, would create more interesting pictures in your own mind than any I could show you. And by giving less information, narratively and visually, perhaps the viewer would engage even more actively with the film, bringing more of themselves to the experience. That was the goal at least.”

This film has exceptional control, which makes it feel like it was shot in a day. What did the production timeline end up looking like?

“The script was twenty pages long and so we shot five days. I tried to keep my daily page count as low as possible for the very reason you mention. The more time my team and I had in production, the more intentional and thoughtful I/we could be with respect to shot design, blocking, performance, costume and production design. So for me, more time equals more control. That includes a long pre-production process.”

What is your best piece of advice to aspiring filmmakers?

“This isn’t so much advice, but I grew up in a small town in New Jersey called Mahwah. The land I grew up on is unceded Lunaape Tribal land. I have researched the Lunaape extensively for a film I’m making and one of the things that struck me, moved me, was their relationship to stories. Storytelling was thought to be a powerful medicine for the community. The Storyteller was an important figure who traveled from clan to clan within the tribe and told stories that taught people how to live. Stories were part of how these communities and their individuals continued to evolve and wake.

Personally, this is why I go to the movies. And in strange times like ours, I crave films and filmmakers willing to speak honestly and deeply about themselves and our world. I crave stories that will help me continue to wake. And so my (selfish) hope or wish for aspiring filmmakers is that they set about this work — this path — exploring themselves and this world and sharing what they find.”

What’s next? Any upcoming projects? 

“I’m in the process of putting two feature projects together right now. One is an original script of mine. My producers and I are out to actors on that. The other is based on a New Yorker piece and we’re in the final stages of securing rights/releases, etc.”

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In this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “West by God,” Vimeo Best of the Year recipient Scott Lazer details an intimate power struggle — aka a first date — between Dane, a low-level drug dealer, and Nelly, a seemingly disaffected high schooler.

After locking eyes at the local water park, the two meet up for a date at the local Dairy Queen. Dane, who’s used to being in charge, pays for the meal, dictates where they go, what they do, and what they listen to.  While Dane might have started out in charge, Nelly’s presence and the brilliant use of a 2000’s rap anthem create a vulnerability in Dane that starts to break his machismo armor. Lazer brings this small town tale to life through a keen attention to detail via setting, situations and characters. 

The specificity of the film is essential to create and then break both the strong male and submissive female archetypes “West by God” explores. The two actors, Kyle Riggs and Aphrodite Armstrong are the stars of the show, even winning a special jury prize for Outstanding Performances at this year’s SXSW Film Festival.

Ahead of the release, we reached out to director Scott Lazer about how the film came together, challenges along the way, and what’s next.

On the film’s inspiration:

“I’d been looking to film something in West Virginia – where I was born and spent a lot of my childhood – for a long time. One of my favorite things to do there is bring friends who’ve never been and see it through their eyes for the first time, which I thought I could do through film. When writer Juli Blachowiak and I first discussed collaborating on this together, she originally set it in Hawaii – where she was born and raised, but I saw it fitting perfectly in West Virginia with specific locations in mind. I started sharing photos from there with her – some I’d taken, some from Google. This helped us shape the scenes, tailoring the story to a world I knew intimately.”

On crafting characters:

“Nelly and Dane sort of straddle the two ends of young adulthood. Nelly is eager to become an adult, and Dane laments getting there as quickly as he did. I know so many Nellys and Danes from growing up who inspired these characters, and a big part of how we brought them to life was through their wardrobe styling, which Juli and I did ourselves.”

On the actors:

“My friend Cat was finishing her MFA at University of North Carolina School of the Arts, which is about three hours from where I wanted to film in West Virginia. I asked her if she was tapped into the acting program at the school, which I know is a prestigious conservatory. Cat has always had a great eye for performance, and when I sent her the script, she replied that she ‘knew’ Nelly, one of our leads. ‘I’ll get a tape from her,’ she said.

A couple weeks later, she sent Aphrodite’s audition, which absolutely floored me. Michael (Fiona) also came from UNCSA, and Kyle (Dane) is an actor Cat knew from the North Carolina acting community. I felt so fortunate to get to work with these incredible actors, and I was thrilled for Aphrodite and Kyle to win a Special Jury Recognition for Outstanding Performances at SXSW earlier this year.”

On casting Aphrodite:

“I didn’t know she was trans when she auditioned. I just knew she was mega talented and right for the role. But once I learned she was a proud trans woman, I did take a beat to consider the optics of me (cis white man) directing her. Aphrodite and I spoke about it. I asked a few others about it. I did some research, and I found an article that quoted a trans actor named Harrison Knights who said “It is not until [trans actors] are being cast in major cis roles because we are the best actors for the role, rather than because we tick a box, that we will have truly arrived.”

Cis actors have played trans characters since forever, why is the opposite so rarely the case? I obviously ultimately decided to cast Aphrodite, which was not only the right creative decision, but helped give the film some purpose. As she put it to me after we filmed, just the presence of her body rendered something unique for the character.”

On writing and performing the final line, “I know.”

“There’s a power dynamic between Nelly and Dane, which is the central tension of the film. They go where he wants, he’s paying, he’s in control. But when he reveals a vulnerable side of himself to Nelly that she didn’t expect, she realizes the power she wields in being a sympathetic ear to him – something she could potentially even exploit. With that last line, she affirms that shift between them. It’s happened, and they’re both aware.”

What is your best piece of advice to aspiring filmmakers?

“Even if you don’t intend to be an editor, learn how to edit, so you can communicate with editors. Editing is where a film comes together or falls apart, so it’s an essential part of the process to understand thoroughly.”

On playing a song for someone you care about:

“Early in my relationship with my girlfriend, I played her a Melody Gardot song called ‘Our Love is Easy’ which I thought summed up how I felt about our budding romance. We were so compatible, I thought, that being together felt effortless ‘like water rushing over stone,’ as Gardot sings. The song didn’t go over how I hoped. ‘Easy?’ she asked me incredulously. ‘So if things get difficult, are you gonna lose interest?’ I didn’t lose interest. And it’s still easy.”

What’s next? Any upcoming projects? 

“We’re not done exploring ‘West by God.’ I think we still have a lot more to uncover in that world. Other than that, I have a couple other shorts I’m making in addition to the commission work I do in advertising and music.”

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I am so tired of waiting.

Aren’t you, 

For the world to become good

And beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

And cut the world in two–

And see what worms are eating

At the rind.

-Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings

The winner of the Vimeo Staff Pick Award at Palm Springs Shortfest 2022 is “Meantime” by Michael T Workman. Michael planted a camera in his Dad Tim’s house to make a “deeply personal exploration of memory, guilt, labor, and the attempt to preserve the fleeting.” At least, that’s what its logline says. What is so beautiful about this documentary is that it isn’t truly about those vague descriptions of human sentiment. “Meantime” focuses a magnifying glass on the product of evils that plague the United States: capitalism, inhumane labor practices, inadequate support for those who suffer from mental illness, and the reality that the American motto of “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is a physically impossible feat. The film outlines the ways in which the United States fails to fully take care of its people, from birth to death. As Michael eloquently states in our Q&A: “

“It may not be obvious, but I believe that the subject of this film is the inhumanity of capitalism. …My dad is a product of a system that views people as “human resources,” a system that dehumanizes those who are unable to fit into a strict regime of labor exploitation. “

As austere in its filmmaking as the bleak Montana winter its set in, “Meantime” is a film about wounded souls who nonetheless grew into kind and loving people. 

We asked Michael some questions about the creation of this personal family portrait and were moved by his thoughtful and warm answers. Read on for excerpts from our conversation with him.

On inspiration: 

“The inspiration for this film came to me after helping my dad digitize his home videos. While reviewing them, I had these profoundly emotional moments in the small, seemingly unimportant moments my dad captured. It was not the birthdays, christmas parties or weddings that were the most affecting. It was the moments where my family was caught in between, waiting for something important to happen and just talking, arguing or joking. In those moments I saw the people I knew at different phases of their lives and my understanding of their experience began to deepen. I had always been pretty averse to the idea of making personal films, but reviewing that footage and finding myself back home in Montana led me to want to create this film.”

His tips on filming family: 

“Working with your family is so hard. Knowing when to turn off the camera and just exist was the biggest challenge. By the end of the process my dad and I were over filming. I think I’m good with just hiding behind my lens now. My tip for filmmakers working with family would be to structure times and situations in which you are going to film and use that as a limitation. Don’t shoot everything all of the time, and don’t chase what’s happening. Think through what you want to film and then let the camera roll. When you are done you are done. You will miss things and that’s fine. What’s important is that you create a scenario in which what you do capture will have a higher likelihood of being deep and compelling. Then turn off the camera and go back to living your life.”

On his family’s reaction to the film: 

“My family has seen the film. I showed it to my mom when I finished; it was the most intense viewing experience I’ve had. Since this film is so personal I would go through waves of feeling completely numb to it and moments of profound emotion. While watching it with my mom, small subtleties in the film made me tear up uncontrollably. It just goes to show how much the context of the audience you are viewing a film with can deeply change the experience of that film. It was a healing experience for both of us and she learned more about my dad’s perspective that she couldn’t see then. 

I was most nervous about showing it to my dad. We were going to watch it together but the timing wasn’t right so he decided to watch it on his own. When he called me and told me he watched it, my heart sank. He said something along the lines of “Mike, I watched your film, it’s a good film, and I never want to see it again.” The primary source of anxiety for him wasn’t the vulnerability of what he shared; instead it was watching himself on screen and hearing his own voice that was most uncomfortable (for me too).”

On challenges faced: 

“The hardest part of making this film was creating distance between myself and the film. I think this is the primary struggle with personal work and where it fails most often. Personal films can be emotional to the filmmaker but not the audience. I wanted to avoid this at all costs and attempt to distance myself from the film and view it as someone who does not know me. Since I was the editor, this was a constant challenge. I overcame this by having many trusted people around me who gave me honest critical feedback.”

What he’d like us to consider upon viewing the film: 

“It may not be obvious, but I believe that the subject of this film is the inhumanity of capitalism. Ultimately, this is the primary source of my dad’s struggle to have a fulfilled and comfortable life. While abuse may be the inciting incident of my dad’s struggle, the lack of support to heal from that trauma is a societal failure, not an individual failure. My dad is a product of a system that views people as “human resources,” a system that dehumanizes those who are unable to fit into a strict regime of labor exploitation.

Capitalism gives working class people two options: work or beg on the street. While this is never explicitly stated in the film, it is the subterranean foundation of the story. If people in my dad’s position had access to robust mental and physical healthcare, housing, and food without the need to justify their humanity through working in terrible conditions, they could live fulfilled and safe lives where they could work on healing their trauma. 

The crucial detail in the opening title cards of the film is that my dad’s stroke was triggered by a panic attack at work because the company was trying to maximize profit by understaffing the nursing home where he worked. I realized this was a recurring situation for him while making this film when I discovered that stress at work rather than the stress of having a family was what led to my dad’s mental health crisis when I was a child. 

I also hope that this film inspires people to treasure the time they have with their loved ones and discuss trauma and hardship in an empathetic and open-minded environment. Ultimately the emotional core of this film is about caring for our parents through understanding them as complex humans and valuing the limited time you have with them.”

Michael’s advice to aspiring filmmakers: 

“I always tell my students that they should fight tooth and nail to maintain their childish excitement for making movies. Every step of the way, this industry will try to force you into the meat grinder of work and turn you into someone else’s tool. They will try to take all of the fun out of it and create artificially high stakes for making the most asinine content. Anyone who has worked on a large advertising set will understand this. My advice is to always be working on something that gets you excited, if your wage labor job doesn’t. Keep working on your own films or creative hobbies that make you feel like an artist. If you get into Sundance, but you’ve lost the joy of filmmaking, why are you even doing this?”

What’s next?

“I’m developing a feature documentary idea that will be a woven-narrative character-driven observational film in a mining town in Montana. It’s in the early stages of development so I can’t say much more than that at the moment. 

I’m also working on a project about people who have jobs that they know are completely useless. If you have a job like this, please reach out and email me. We are currently casting.”

Check out more Staff Pick Award winners

In this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “The Tunnel,” BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Arash Ashtiani tells the harrowing story of three refugees running for their lives through the Euro Tunnel connecting France to the UK. 

Inspired by true accounts, the film is unflinching in its depiction of the bravery and risk unjustly required from the millions of people seeking basic human rights. “The Tunnel” drops us into the tense third act of a larger story Ashtiani is developing with co-writer Daniel Metz. Yet, the short stands alone as a powerful and chilling story of how far three individuals are willing to go in seach of a better life.

Ashtiani describes the stories he heard in preparing for this film as “rollercoasters” of physical and emotional challenges. In the film, this feeling is masterfully captured through the immersive production design of the tunnel itself and the precise editing that oscillates between the camaraderie formed between the men, the growing fear as the train approaches, and the eerie calm of the train station.

Ahead of the release, we reached out to Ashtiani to hear more about the film and his process. Read on for an in-depth look at how he pulled of such a compelling and ambitious film. 

On the inspiration for the film: 

“‘The Tunnel’ is inspired by a true story. My community of friends in London includes people who came to the UK in many different ways and some in the most heroic and horrific ways in the last 20 years. One of the topics that we speak about is how we each arrived in the UK and some of them have come from Calais to Kent with different means of transport.   

When I heard their stories, I felt obliged to share them. Their stories are like a rollercoaster of emotions and events for me. The challenges they overcome, the dreams they have, the will to move, and also the energy. It’s got hardship, physical and mental exhaustion, and moments when their humanity is tested. It’s got laughter and life in the darkest moment and these are the things that inspired me to make this film.”

On the writing process:

“‘The Tunnel’ is the last act of the feature script that Daniel Metz and I wrote together.  The first two acts follow these men in Calais training to run the Tunnel. We finished the first draft of the feature script in 2015. Since then we made the short and at the moment we are writing the new draft of the feature script.

We didn’t want to make a social film about refugees, but of course, during the research and writing of the script, we talked to the people who had been in Calais and reached the UK. We read the memoirs of refugees who have written their stories, watched documentaries, plays and films about the camps in Calais and how people live there.”  

On the production design and cinematography: 

“From the writing stage, we had this question about where to shoot the tunnel. We had some information about the actual EuroTunnel and as much as we wanted to keep the real characteristic of the tunnel we didn’t want to restrict ourselves to those details. After months of location hunting, we came to the decision that it was better to shoot in a studio. The challenge was how to create extensions for each side of the set. 

Mike McLouglin, our production designer, did an amazing job of re-creating a section of the tunnel within the studio and Nick Morris, our DP, worked wonders in the way he shot it. One of the challenges was to create extensions for each side of the set to see the tunnel as an infinite black space.  Mike extended it with the genius idea of putting a mirror on each end so when the camera looks at each end you see the endless tunnel.  Mike then built a scale model version of the tunnel and we used a Hornby Eurostar model train with a tiny lens attached to it to shoot the scenes of the train actually traveling through the tunnel.  It seemed bonkers, but when Static VFX then brought their skills and magic to the post-production everything started to make sense and look incredible.

We decided to get closer and closer to the main character as time passed by. Each time we cut from the station to the tunnel, we get closer to the main character and it helps to create a more internal experience of the tunnel and the fearless attempt to run it.”

On the editing the film: 

“The editing process of this film was one of the most interesting parts of the whole process. One of the most important goals for me was to test to see how we can create tension and suspense. My co-writer, Daniel Metz and I had planned it in the script but I understood it properly in the editing process and I have to thank the film editor Stuart Gazzard for this.

Through the editing process, I learned what kind of information we need to introduce bit by bit in order to build suspense. We shot the Gare du Nord station shots and also the model train after we had our rough cut. The editing process shaped the film by defining the main character, creating suspense and also the pace of the film.” 

On the challenge of making the film:

“I think, in general, making films is challenging. One of the main challenges filmmakers face is getting money to make their films. It took me a couple of years to find producers. Anna Seifert-Speck was leading a program at Berlinale Talent Campus where she heard me pitch the project and introduced me to Anna Griffin. Together we raised money from the BFI Network and Lush Film Fund. 

The mindset for shooting running and action scenes is different from emotional scenes. This became more evident during the shoot and the difference became clear to me. When I look back at the shooting days I learned that I spent the equal amount of time between action parts and more emotional parts which could have been done differently… I should have brought the energy and urgency of the escape and the run into the scenes by shooting them in a faster and more intense time frame and spent more time on the moments between the characters.”         

On hopes for the film: 

“I think what continues to worsen is the rise of Nationalism and populist politicians in British and European governments. It’s the government that uses the anti refugees and xenophobe sentiments for their own political benefits. 

By the new British law that was passed just months ago, young male refugees just like the characters of ‘The Tunnel’ will be sent to Rwanda from now on to wait for their cases to be processed. I hope the audience understands the people who go through hell to get to the audience’s beloved haven are humans and full of dreams for a better life, a peaceful and meaningful life. They escape their homes and countries either from war, religious fanaticism, or economic hardship. They better get humane treatment to be able to join the society instead of always labeling them as criminals.

I hope that by watching a few strange people in an unfamiliar setting, going through a challenge because of basic human needs, audiences see their familiarities and see them as individual humans.”

On advice for aspiring filmmakers: 

“Filmmaking is not a one-man job and it’s teamwork. Try to find people that make you excited about what you are trying to do. Trust in their taste is key for a creative collaboration. Trust comes from knowing people. Spend time with them as much as you feel you need, and listen to what they say, ask them to share with you their five top movi,es and see If you relate with them or not. It doesn’t matter if they are close to the film you want to make or not, but it helps you to understand if your worlds are close and if you share the same vision for the film.

Don’t let the technical side of your story overwhelm you, don’t compromise your story because of the technical side. 

Be respectful to your colleagues and be demanding!”  

On what’s next: 

“Developing and making ‘The Tunnel’ feature film is my next project. The story of the characters up to the moment they enter the tunnel. My co-writer, Daniel Metz, and I are working on the feature-length script with what we learned from making the short.  

I’ve recently finished a feature-length documentary about an Iranian exiled poet, Esmaeel Khoei, who passed away in London in 2021. It’s mostly constructed by the VHS tapes he had collected during his early years of exile.  It’ll be released in October.”

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This week’s Staff Pick Premiere comes from Adrien Merigeau in the Oscar-nominated “Genius Loci” – a psychedelic, fantastical journey taken by a young woman as she explores an ever-evolving cityscape.

With style for miles and a range of 20th-century modern painting influences, Merigeau wows with every frame and detail. Environments are consistently reimagined and contextualized through new angles, and color works in a stark way as it plays alongside white space. A cup of water turns into a river, a rogue carpet doubles as a trampoline – Merigeau stops at nothing to build a bonafide fever dream.

Merigeau explains the genesis for the film as processing trauma he’d experienced for himself and seen through friends, trauma that felt like “a constant flow state.” After squatting with artist friends in Paris during 2015, Merigeau recalls, “What really struck me was how much the city could feel like nature when you experience it at night through abandoned spaces. The nature/culture, order/chaos transcendence that became the heart of Genius Loci linked up with other interests of mine, like fairytales, experimental animation, and contemporary music.” 

With a runtime of about 16 minutes, and informed by the wealth of his experiences and others, Merigeau elevates the short-form animated space with this unmistakable articulation of the abstract.

We caught up with director Adrien Merigeau to talk challenges, timeline, balancing the visual expression with the narrative, and advice to aspiring filmmakers.

On inspiration:

“My very first inspiration for ‘Genius Loci’ was drawn from my group of friends, when I lived in Kilkenny, Ireland between 2011 and 2014. They were a group of beautiful characters, poets, and musicians living in an old water mill outside of the city. The way they were living the moment was very inspiring to me.

The situations we went through, the moments we shared, it felt like experiencing a type of constant flow state. It also felt like it was a way to deal with personal trauma for some of us. I wanted to write about a person like this in some way. Specifically, a person and their spirit, as a metaphor for the poetry and the inspiration that my friends were radiating then.”

On challenges:

“My main challenge was to let the film drift away from the narrative structure using sensitive, poetic language. After a very narrative first draft that I felt lacked sensitivity and openness, I shifted my writing process as I started drawing. It took about three years of adding and removing ideas until the film felt tight together and fluid from start to end. Similar to writing music in some way, 

I didn’t want to explain anything explicitly, but rather for the audience to feel drawn into — and carried by — the on-screen presence throughout the film, like a raft drifting on a river. It took a lot of trial and error for that flow to start working, as I discovered what the film needed to be about, for it to feel tight and not too far-reaching or spread out.

The amount of back and forth needed in the writing process made it difficult to plan for production, as I never felt quite ready to hire our animation team. That could get quite stressful for both myself and Genius Loci’s producer Amaury Ovise at times. In 2018, Amaury made the decision to partner up with Folimage, a production company in Valence in France.

Until that point, I was working in my own art studio in Paris. Coming to Folimage, with a new animation team, I just had to lock down the animatic and finally start production, which was great and came at a good time. So I would say balancing between needing time to adjust the poetic flow of the film and the reality of the production deadlines was the biggest challenge for this film.”

On timeline:

“It took about 5 years to make ‘Genius Loci.’ The first year or two were spent writing and funding a project that started out to be more narrative than what it ended up being. Then I needed a couple of years to re-write it, and about 18 months for production. The deadline kept getting pushed back. At the end of the day, 5 years is not uncommon for the production of an animated short film, but I will try to be better prepared before starting preproduction next time!”

On the balance between visual and narrative:

“It was very tough to identify let alone articulate what the ideas were in the first place. Even now I find it hard to put into words. The film talks about the birth of a person’s inner spirituality as she experiences the chaos of a Parisian suburb at night, and the traumas she is escaping from. I also wanted to just focus on small details, observations, moments, and finally just for the character to take a back seat and experience beauty in broken spaces. The themes and intentions for the films were very dear to me but the actual representation of them needed a lot of digging and most of what happens in the film comes from some sort of accident.

I wanted the visual expression of the film to tell the film story intrinsically. And then I worked with wonderful artists to narrow down the scenes and make the whole film shine, specifically Brecht Evens, Celine Devaux, and Alan Holly who were a huge help from the start.”

On advice to aspiring filmmakers:

“As a teenager, my original artistic interests were often connected to folklore and fairytales. What I aspire to now is to represent more personal, real-life, and specific scenes that I live through and observe in my day-to-day life. It pushes me to put myself in situations that are interesting to me, friends that inspire me, and social dynamics that I care about.

I love taking notes of discussions, writing about extraordinary locations that exist in real life, and taking note of moments that were touching, meaningful, or just put me in that flow state. It can also be very small, or insignificant — but a reflection of light, a side-eye look, a floating moment, or trash on the sidewalk. I love the attention to detail that gives the feeling of living in the present moment. Let the story tell itself through observations and details.” 

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We all know the virtues of pet adoption — but if pets had a choice, they surely would not want to be “rescued” by the family in this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Ghost Dogs,” by Joe Cappa. Oscillating between wry, dark comedy and satanic ghost horror, this short is an imaginative exploration of genre tropes via a dog’s POV with vintage MTV animation vibes. Needless to say, it’s a wild ride.

The film starts simply enough with a cute rescue puppy, gated in the laundry room, waiting to meet its new owners. However, before the owners show up, things start to get weird. A robot vacuum starts to stalk the halls as the owner’s former dogs, now mutated anthropomorphic ghosts, walk through walls. Cappa brilliantly mines humor by subverting human horror tropes: when observed by a dog, the ghosts aren’t scary so much as intriguing; while the robot vacuum becomes the villain.. These differing tones and atmospheres are conjured beautifully through a grungy, heavily outlined, and color saturated style reminiscent of MTV’s Liquid Television and early RAW comic anthologies. 

This film is a long time coming. Cappa decided he was finished working for others and wanted to go all-in on a personal project — so he gave himself six months to complete his first animated film. Cut to two years later, post-steep learning curves, mistakes, and a debilitating arm injury, his risk paid off. “Ghost Dogs” premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2021, before going on to play a number of domestic and international festivals. 

Ahead of the Staff Pick Premiere, we reached out to Joe to learn more about his inspiration, style, challenges and more. 

On the inspiration:

“I had been drawing these dog people that crawl around on their hands and knees for quite some time.  They were weird looking and made my coworkers laugh. A few years ago I finally decided to buy a Wacom tablet that allowed me to draw straight to the computer. The first thing I thought to animate was a dog person crawling across the floor. It turned out okay, and I thought I could make a little short film out of it.

At the time, I was making music videos for friends’ bands but I had never worked on a passion project for myself. I think I just wanted to prove to myself that I could create something that would have aired on MTV’s Liquid Television back in the 90’s. I wanted to make something that inspired me as a kid when I first discovered my family’s camcorder. I think that’s where the whole vibe came from. The story was just inspired by the trope in all horror movies where a family’s dog is barking at something unseen to the rest of the family. I figured there could be a really interesting story if dogs could sense the spirits of deceased pets.”

On the dog’s character design:

“I find myself attracted to movies and art that ride the fine line between humor and horror. I think a lot of my art goes there as well. It’s just such a funny emotion to evoke out of people where they don’t know if they should be scared or laughing. I think the dog people create that reaction. There’s also something mysterious about a dog with human legs and arms. Is it mostly dog or is it mostly human? And how would something like that behave?”

On the visual style:

“That goes back to Liquid Television. My producer JW Hallford and I were adamant about the texture of the film feeling dated. Like an obscure short film that’s resurfaced. We gave the film some film shake, but I didn’t want to add any dust or hair. I think the animation style speaks for itself. I also want to give a shout out to the background artist, Patrick Carroll, who I think nailed the aesthetic and attitude so well.”

On point of view and influences:

“I think what was most fun about writing ‘Ghost Dogs’ was playing on horror tropes from a dog’s perspective. Like the underlying joke of the whole piece is that the dog isn’t scared of the things it should be scared of, and scared of things that it shouldn’t. So I had to make reference to ‘The Shining’, obviously. ‘Poltergeist’ was also a huge influence tonally. There’s even a reference to Michael Mann’s ‘The Keep’. But I think the spirit of the actual ghost dogs characters (no pun intended) is borrowed heavily from ‘Gremlins’ Are they silly? Are they dangerous? How dangerous?”

On conceiving of the robot vacuum character:

“The first version of the film that I wrote centered around three dogs stuck at home. I really was just storyboarding out each shot as I was writing it and just coming up with interesting gags and what not. My brother came up with a run-in with the Roomba. After I rewrote the film with just one dog protagonist, the robot vacuum just seemed like such a fun character and a huge plot device for tons of misdirection and humor.”

On challenges faced:

“I mean this was my first animated film so it was a learning curve from day one. Everything was a mistake after a mistake after a mistake. What I thought could be accomplished in six months ended up taking two years. The biggest challenge for me, however, was animating the psychedelic sequence. The animation ramps up from 12fps to 24fps so it became a very labor intensive segment. The repetitive motion of effectively drawing the same frame over and over blew out my arm! I got a frozen shoulder and couldn’t lift my drawing hand past my belly button for a good two months. Not to mention it hurt like hell. So I had to take a six month hiatus while I let my arm heal. That was a major setback.”

What is your best piece of advice to aspiring filmmakers?

“If you want to make your own stuff — like, not for anyone else — I think it’s hard to find that motivation when there’s the incredible risk of going broke. I sort of lived with that anxiety my entire adulthood. At some point, I really saw no future in what I was doing for other people. I had no endgame. And at the same time, I had no endgame for making my own crap.

At the end of the day the only option you have is just to follow the bliss. Ignore the doubt. You make the sacrifices, and you take the risk to follow your own passions. I was just looking for something that felt fulfilling to me and it miraculously is beginning to pay off. It’s such a yogi thing to say and I don’t really feel qualified to give career advice like that, but it’s currently working for me and it’s something I wish I did sooner!”

What’s next? Any upcoming projects? 

“Yeah! I’ve been making minute long short films you can find on my instagram @joecappa.”

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In this week’s Staff Pick Premiere, forgotten folk singer Lena Black discovers her fifty-year-old song “Charlotte” has been remade into a hit pop song. Set in the aftermath of the release, filmmaker Zach Dorn explores how the legacy of the song impacts Lena, her daughter Diane, and her 11-year-old grandson, Eli.

In a letter to the pop star, Lena writes: “There is something far worse than being forgetten, and that is to be misunderstood.” This central theme is embedded throughout the film as the song’s newfound success reveals old wounds. Weaving a collage of isolated conversations – Lena’s letter, Diane’s phone call, and Eli’s cassette recording – Dorn paints a poignant portrait of a family starting to hear each other through the music. 

When asked about his unique structure for the film, Dorn shared: “I loved the conceit of exploring these relationships without ever seeing the family interact with one another. By delivering the story through isolated monologues, I wanted it to feel like the characters were each creating their own cover of the same song. There are these generational, geographical, and emotional gaps, but, hopefully, something at the core of their anxieties ends up converging into the same melody.”

The melody may sound familiar for audiences that have felt their families drift apart, but “Charlotte” is unlike any other family drama we’ve shared on the Vimeo. Using hand-made puppets and stop-motion animation, Dorn draws us into their lives, memories, and imaginations for a deeply emotional experience. 

Ahead of the release, we reached out to Dorn to hear more about his inspiration, process, and style. Read on to hear more about “Charlotte.” 

On the film’s inspiration: 

“In 2019, I was making a puppet show about the world’s largest sponge and the TV show Gilmore Girls. One day, while picking up some miniature supplies in the faux flower aisle of a Michael’s craft store, Carly Rae Jepsen’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” came on the loudspeaker. The cover is incredibly upbeat a great bubbly pop song, which is odd because the original song is rather mournful and complicated. It was an uncanny feeling, because I loved this Carly Rae cover so much. For me, the pop song version, despite being more artificial, still possessed all the emotional complexities of Joni Mitchell’s original. I felt conflicted and embarrassed by this idea, but kept imagining Carly Rae Jepsen and Joni Mitchell’s versions of “Both Sides Now” in conversation. This conversation eventually became the script for “Charlotte.”

On writing the script: 

“I imagined the original version of “Charlotte” as a radio play, sort of a Joe Frank voyeuristic drama, set inside footage of miniature landscapes without any puppets. I wrote from the perspectives of eight characters who all had a personal or professional relationship that revolved around the song “Charlotte.” After spending time getting to know these characters, Diane and Eli felt the most interesting, and so I kept them around along with Lena and the pop star T.Y.M. Once I figured this out, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make their stories intersect.” 

On the music collaboration:

“When I wrote “Charlotte,” I always had musician Jenna Caravello in mind. While I was writing the script, I sent her fictional Rolling Stone interviews with Lena Black and some of faux-diary entries. From this material, Jenna wrote the folk song. 

I sent Jenna’s song to Zhenya Golikova, who I met online. In 2020, Zhenya covered these voice memo melodies I wrote for a girlfriend, goofy and pathetic songs about marshmallows and cats and missing someone who lives in another country, and then Zhenya transformed my songs into incredible ballads. Her work has this early Magnetic Fields vibe, like it’s composed underwater by horny sea monkeys.. I sent her Jenna’s song and she had the pop version a week later.”

On the talk-show segment: 

“So many female folk musicians from the 1960s and 70s were deeply under-appreciated. Artist like Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Linda Perrhacs, and The Roches were overlooked or marginalized into categories like “freak folk,” and never taken as seriously as their male counterparts. I think there’s this an interesting contradiction, where folk music is associated with progressive ideals, while still bogged in a certain type of quiet misogyny. 

With these artists in mind, I kept imagining Lena at this strange moment in her career, where to maintain relevancy, she’d have to participate in a 1970s Laurel Canyon lifestyle, party with the right people, do the right drugs – a world made and conducted by men. And I just don’t think she’d be up for it. Maybe because she was a mom, or maybe she saw through It all. I’m not sure. But I was motivated by her grief – spread over a lifetime mourning a career. What happens to her anger? How does the grief play out with her daughter? Thinking about these questions, I tried to write Lena’s interaction with Sam as the prologue to her relationship with her daughter.” 

On developing his unique visual style: 

“In my early 20s, I trained as a puppeteer, but I was never any good at it. I  am missing an eighth of my brain and I swear its led to a real lack of spatial awareness. Building or manipulating anything in three dimensions was out of the question. Luckily, I fell into Toy Theater, a type of two-dimensional puppetry once popular in late 19th century England. I started building tiny dioramas out of matte board and acrylics, these sort of makeshift pop-up books, and I manipulated live-projecting digital cameras inside of them as I narrated stories about my landlord or dead dog. 

I obsess over the details of stuff, whether it’s the bar code on a Doritos bag, or the shape of a McDonald’s Happy Meal box. Maybe because of the missing brain, I can’t cut straight lines or shape anything too realistically – so, I have this style, a sort of mashup of something falling apart and obsessive. 

For the puppets, I worked with stop-motion animators Oliver Levine and Lily Windsor to maintain a slightly grotesque and textural quality that fit the film’s hand-painted world. Since I made the film during the lockdown, we worked long distance, Lily from Chicago, mailing tiny boxes of llamas, and Oliver leaving head sculpts at my front door in Burbank.”

On what’s next: 

“Currently, I am independently working on a short documentary about the CGI Livia Soprano from the third season of The Sopranos, as well as this genetic mutation called BRCA2. I grew up with an Italian American family filled with a bunch of eccentric traditions and personalities, but by my late 20s, the BRCA2 derailed these familial connections through the premature deaths of family members. 

In 2020, I watched The Sopranos for the first time. Each episode felt like I was suddenly in conversation with my family again. Now, I am making a film about this experience where I recreate home videos in stop-motion and analyze Livia Soprano’s posthumous performance in relation to my personal experiences with grief.”

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This week’s Staff Pick Premiere is Seyed Payam Hosseini’s “The Kites,” a poignant story from the point of view of a kid, situated on the war-torn border between Iran and Iraq. 

Through what begins as a distant call-and-response, a young boy must figure out a solution when a young girl’s kite ends up on the opposite side of a mine-laden divide. Between them is a barrier in the most literal sense, but cross-border languages present yet another obstacle. With the help of friends and an elder, the boy embarks on a mission to return the kite in one piece.

In many ways, this slice of life is symbolic of a sort of radical imagination: the palpable care for one another, the innovation in problem-solving, the courage to reconcile what is lost. With “The Kites,” Hosseini manages to image a film that feels like such a ray of active hope, despite the nearness of a conflicted past.

We reached out to Seyed to talk about his inspiration for the film, challenges, and casting. Hosseini’s responses are in prose below:

On inspiration:

“We live in a historical geography

Kurdistan is a land that is divided into four parts

We live in the Kurdish part of Iran

Border is not a new story for us

And this is what made it look like love, peace, and friendship

From the children’s point of view

Connect the borders

For me, the tree is a sign of authority, a sign of endurance

The kite for me is a sign of freedom and liberation, flying in free lands

And that helped a lot to build ‘The Kites.'”

On challenges:

“Making a short film is not always difficult

And when a filmmaker wants to make an independent film

Everything gets difficult

Building a believable border was the most important challenge facing the project

The location I have been looking for for years

Fortunately, I found the location in a remote border village, a mountain away from Iraqi Kurdistan

But the love of making a film eases all the problems and difficulties.”

On casting:

“Choosing an actor is very important and complex for me

And I always use amateurs to choose my actors

Sometimes even the people I invite to act have no knowledge of cinema and how to make a film

It was very important for the kites that the child actors could be believable

And accept their geography and story

For this reason, I was mostly looking for rural children to choose from

Until I was able to find these children in the lower part of the city (slum)

I tested them, their IQ convinced me they were my choice

I read scripts with them several times, but only to understand the story of the film

And fortunately, I was very pleased with the final result of the film from all four child actors.”

His advice to aspiring filmmakers:

“As a young filmmaker

Apart from academic education which requires filmmaking

Watch movies, read and write specialized books and novels

Especially a collection of short stories

And making low-budget independent short films

It can provide the conditions for us to start making films as a carbald filmmaker

Learn to make independent films

Read, write, and watch.”

On what’s next:

“After ‘The Kites’

I made two short films

Russian vodka short film with a child theme

Non-mahram short film (funded by a thousand women) This film is about violence against women

My next project is the genocide of the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan by Saddam Hussein called “Beyond the Hills,” which we are currently pre-producing.”

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Until we learn otherwise, it is the ones who made us who we turn to with our most open heart — and the ones who have the capacity to hurt us the deepest. This week’s Staff Pick Premiere is a knot-in-stomach-inducing drama impressively written, directed, and acted in by Ève Saint-Louis that depicts this unfortunate fact so viscerally.

“The Journey” is Saint-Louis’ directorial debut (!), which follows Chantale, a young woman on her way home from Paris after a year away from her Canadian family. To her dismay, Chantale’s father offers to pick her up from the airport despite, the audience quickly learns, a fraught relationship. Chantale’s doe-eyed sweetness (played beautifully by Saint-Louis) is in direct contrast with her bitter father’s unfounded irritation (portrayed perfectly by Claude Laroche), resulting in a thick tension that is so intense its as if the actors reached offscreen to hand the viewer a bundle of anxiety. The dynamic is so effective in generating stress in the viewer, in fact, that those who have endured emotional abuse from loved ones should be aware that this film may be triggering. 

“The Journey” will likely be a familiar story to many about complicated familial dynamics, and is a painful example of the unfortunate truth that sharing blood with another human being does not mean they will always have your best interests in mind.

We asked the multi-talented  Éve Saint-Louis a few questions about her film, and are excited to share her answers with you upon its exclusive online debut: 

On inspiration: 

“Family relationships. More specifically, what we dare not say about them. A rich, complex, universal subject of which I wanted to explore some unspoken and mysterious aspects: the feelings underlying our dialogues and the wounds that we bear. What I find interesting are the certainties and the taboos surrounding the family core. There is a strong belief you should forgive your family for everything, and defend it as if it were a sacred space. But then, what happens when such a relationship becomes toxic and to what point must it be endured? It was important for me to translate into images the idea that parentage does not guarantee intimacy, and that sometimes family can feel like strangers.”

On challenges faced: 

“Since this was my first experience as a filmmaker, everything was challenging because everything was new. But, there is one particular challenge I am sure I will remember for the rest of my life. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The house in the film was the hardest character to pin down, to find. I wanted a place that could represent the Father’s den, filled with objects and history, with a lowered ceiling weighing down on the characters and creating a sense of enclosure.”

On writing, directing, and acting as the lead:

“It all started with the urge to write that story, followed by the wish to bring it to the “big screen” myself. Well aware of how demanding theater directing could be, I knew full well directing for cinema would require considerable work. So, the thought of acting in it as well, made me hesitate and leave the issue open for a while. During that time, I drew inspiration from directors who combined both roles, and convinced myself to do the same.

I put all my energy into preparing for both roles of actor and director, and drew the clearest line possible between the two. As an actor, I set aside time slots to rehearse and visualize the scenes. I made this as a priority regardless of the pre-production stress that exists in any film. As a director, I did much the same and was fortunate to have an experienced Director of Photography I could lean on. When I arrived on set as Chantal, my artistic collaborator knew my intentions for the film and its overall perspective, so he could direct me as needed. My amazing team and our approach have allowed me to both act and direct at the same time.”

On finding the perfect location: 

“Location scouting required driving for hours in Quebec winter, knocking on people’s doors, sometimes putting handwritten passionate letters in their mailbox just to show the owners my love for their house. The artistic director and I finally found the rare pearl. The first time I met the owners, they invited me in because, from inside, they thought it was their daughter showing on the doorstep. How lucky I was!”

Her advice to aspiring filmmakers: 

“Persevere and trust your instinct. If you think a story is worth telling, then it usually is.”

On what’s next: 

“I am currently working on my second short film as a screenwriter and director which I find quite exciting. Again, it takes place in winter. The story is about a group of friends who one night meet to go sledding and how, what starts as an ordinary outing, becomes a life-change”

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