An Unwillingness

On the winter solstice, four friends reunite at their family's beachside cabin after years apart. From the ocean, a mysterious stranger arrives seeking refuge, eventually pitting the friends against one another. Fantasy, fear, and reality blend together as the days unfold.

Photos are no longer enough to nourish the memory of happy days... Poems are powerless to preserve lost love... To return to the place of ecstasy is to return to Eden... With risks and perils...

Observing as the World Burns: Poems is an evocative, introspective short film that transforms lines of verse into raw visual poetry—confronting the dual forces of personal introspection and outward chaos. Anchored by cinematic performances, layered voice-over, and an emotive soundscape, the film embodies the tension between witnessing life’s unraveling and finding meaning within it. Rather than dramatizing action, this film immerses the viewer in the experience of attention—the act of watching, contemplating, and articulating what it means to be alive. At the same time, everything feels like it’s burning. It is both a cinematic poem and a visual diary—an invitation to witness, feel, and reflect alongside the narrator.

Meg is a gifted but emotionally scarred 18-year-old who finds solace in writing poetry. Mr. Auster, her English teacher, recognizes her talent and encourages her to enter a national poetry contest. As tension at home escalates and Meg struggles to find a way to get to the poetry finals in Florida, Auster's role in her life becomes increasingly complex.

The Angelic Conversation is a lyrical, haunting film about a young man’s search for love in a dreamlike landscape. Its tone is set by the juxtaposition of slow moving homo-erotic images and opaque landscapes through which two men take a journey into their own desires. Offscreen, Dame Judi Dench recites a sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets that counterpoint the action. Jarman called it, “My most austere work, but also the closest to my heart.”

A trio of interweaved transgressive tales, telling a bizarre stories of suburban patricide and a miraculous flight from justice, a mad sex experiment which unleashes a disfiguring plague, and the obsessive sexual relationship between two prison inmates.

As the day begins, a woman sets out to go about her routine, until she decides to take her children to the cemetery to see zombies. When she returns home, this interruption in her day will leave her with a strange and magical feeling.

Réne Manzor's debut short, a surreal story about a tramp trying to build a road through the desert.

In this farewell letter to Ana (aka Anorexia), I reveal the suffering associated with this illness. I sincerely express my deep desire to regain my freedom and vitality by sharing not only my progress but also my relapses. Through the interweaving of drawings and poetry, I share this quest for reconstruction, which I hope will help raise awareness of this mental illness and bring a little hope to people affected by it and those around them.

Filmmaker Tegan Pearce combines autobiographical spoken word and expressive visual direction to present a cinematic interpretation of autism.

An American poet living in Berlin hopes to win a prestigious grant while dealing with her former relationships, a rival poet, and her own penchant for stealing things.