We are less than a few hours away from the opening night of the 24th Palm Springs International ShortFest! I’ll be out in the Coachella Valley for this year’s edition, and will be joined by our co-founder and fearless leader, Jason Sondhi, who will take part in the festival’s industry forum this weekend. Additionally, one of our own, Penelope Bartlett, will also fest with us in another capacity—on jury duty!

Why should you care? Well if you have a film in the program you obviously should (and if you’re in town you should say hi), but for general short film fans ShortFest is notable as the biggest festival entirely dedicated to short films in the USA. 100% submission-based (aka no outside curation), over 5000 submissions were narrowed down to 333 films in the official selection. That’s a pretty massive pool of films, and as such, ShortFest tends to be as comprehensive a grouping of the best shorts in a given year as any festival out there. The festival is also one of the few short film markets in the world, and with a three-day forum filled with conferences and networking events for filmmakers and delegates, it tends to be an epicenter for the professional short film industry. Needless to say, it is going to be a busy week, as we’ll be on the hunt for shorts to bring to you on this site, but hopefully we’ll manage to squeeze in some pool time too. 🕶

What to expect from the films? Festival Director Lili Rodriguez previews:

The extensive program definitely includes familiar names: new works from many Short of the Week alums, hi-profile Academy Awards qualified films that we’ve had on our radar from previous festivals, and a bunch of films that are already available online, some of which we’ve featured on the site already and which are listed at the bottom of this article. 

A sampling of top awarded work that we love and which you should seek out includes 2017 Palme D’Or and TIFF winner A Gentle Night and 2018 Sundance winners Matria, Hairwolf, Would You Look at Her, and Emergency. We adored Trevor Jimenez’s Weekends this year at GLAS, and from Regard 2018 personal faves Blackline, Rewind Forward, as well as my absolute favoritist of the year (still shook!) Fauve!

Seeing the names of our alums on festival programs always brings a smile to our face as well, so here is a short, but far from exhaustive list: Celine Held & Logan George with Caroline, Laurel Parmet with Kira Burning, Kristian Håskjold with A Worthy Man, Chris McInroy with We Summoned a Demon,  Mathew Rankin with The Tesla World Light, Patrick Bresnan with Roadside Attraction, Danny Madden with Krista, and Kangmin Kim with Jeom. 

Additionally, we’re excited to welcome new filmmakers into the fold, as Gregory Oke’s Été, Richard Raymond’s Souls of Totality, and Chandler Levack’s We Forgot to Break Up, are scheduled to show up of the site in the upcoming weeks. 

Now if you can’t make it to the desert, I unfortunately can’t bring you a pool and a michelada but you will find below four films of the official selection that have already graced the virtual pages of Short of the Week. Enjoy, and hope to see you at the event in the future!