Highlighters (2025)

A Dying Tree

As the day ends for a worn-out office worker, he encounters the mysterious gaze of a chimpanzee, sparking a silent exchange that prompts him to make an irreversible decision.

The Trial

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

Hai Mangiato?

A mother feeds her son to the point of possessing him.

Tommy

After a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

Tyngsboro

During his visit to a graveyard, a young man is suddenly projected into a dream-like realm. Empty and removed from time, the familiar landscape forces him to confront certain pains when blood suddenly effuses from his hands.

Apnea

Little Claire kills time with María, her Ecuadorian nanny, while waiting for her mother to arrive.

154

The prototype [TEST TYPE • 154] is a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence, which is capable of autonomously acquiring notions from its surroundings and - eventually - developing autonomy of thought. Given the nearly human nature of its learning capabilities, the laboratory that programmed it hires a kindergarten teacher, asking him to instruct the machine as if it were a newborn child. The learning process - which spans 7 days - becomes increasingly insidious in the long run, posing a peculiar yet crucial problem: can there be a form of autonomous thinking that excludes emotions?

Wander

Percieve the images how you will; Wander is designed at having a different influence over each audience member and provoking self-reflection and deep thought. There was no singular intended storyline, instead prompting a unique perception from each viewer.

Ploy

A husband and wife are locked inside a single hotel room with a stranger named Ploy. Subtle suspicions build up to jealousy as the young woman triggers devastating consequences for the couple.

Soft

A portrait of new found sobriety and love unravels as a young woman moves through the motions of melancholic life in seclusion.

Escargots

An adaptation of a children's poem called Chanson des escargots qui vont à l'enterrement by Jacques Prévert, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Filmed in Paris, France and Los Angeles, California.

Ophelia

At night, a woman at different ages loves, suffers and frees herself. She’s called Ophelia.

Triumph and Ruins

History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.

Three Walls and a Window

A nuclear family sits in front of the television. The phone rings.

Guaret

Pedro is Mallorcan, born to a mother from Burgos and a father from Mallorca. Due to his distant relationship with his father, Pedro doesn't fully master Mallorcan as a language. He turns to the works of Damià Huguet to remember his father, as only his poems can fill the void left by his death. The poet's words transport Pedro to his childhood and his roots, even though many of the words are unknown to him, despite them belonging to his language. This becomes the driving force behind the protagonist's search for his own identity, his origins, what it means to be a man, father-son relationships, collective identity, and "mallorquinness". Pedro constantly questions the emotions stirred by Huguet's poetry, and, most importantly, who he is and where he belongs.

The New Flesh

On an isolated farm, a woman finds an injured and frightened woman in her old chicken coop. Moved by an inexplicable instinct, she decides to help her, without imagining that this silent encounter will awaken buried secrets. When tension finally gives way to trust, something dark approaches, bringing a truth that no one could have foreseen.

Aishiteru

Experimental short film that reflects through the voice of the protagonist, poetically, about a fateful intimate and personal event.

Broken

Plot unavailable

Processing...

A man attempts to operate a mysterious device, but with each attempt comes a new set of problems.

Desert Vows

Hunter, a bride-to-be, feels overworked and unappreciated. Her artistic spirit is squelched by the shallow corporate world she’s in and she has had enough. Unfortunately, she feels as if she can’t turn to Ian, her commercial executive fiancé, for solace. As her wedding day approaches, Hunter and her three bridesmaids embark on a road trip to Las Vegas for one last hoorah together. As the girls venture from the city, they decompress and let their personal barriers fall. An impromptu sightseeing excursion into the desert leads to a clash of anxieties and attitudes between Hunter, the bridesmaids, and her fiancé as Hunter searches for the road that’s right for her.

I’d like that corner seat over there

An omnibus film based on Kim Oki's album Hip Hop Retreat. Twenty characters share the same table at different times, in different emotional states, each with their own story. Shot in one day, edited in one day.

The Tuba Thieves

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

Heartstorm

A young woman goes on a cathartic journey through memory and imagination inspired by the performers at an open mic.

Echo

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

ALICE

During a turbulent night marked by the announcement of a pregnancy and escalating violence, the camera clings from one character to another at the heart of Wonderland.

The Artist and His Canvas

An experimental film revolving around how an artist perceives a man and a woman.

London to Brighton

It's 3:07am and two girls burst into a run down London toilet. Joanne is crying her eyes out and her clothing is ripped. Kelly's face is bruised and starting to swell. Duncan Allen lies in his bathroom bleeding to death. Duncan's son finds his father and wants answers. Derek – Kelly's pimp – needs to find Kelly or it will be him who pays.

The Grass Dwellers

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

Lost Way

Collective experimental film by Team 8mm TENGOKU.

Cain Rose Up

Pigpen has a snore. Bailey has a lot of nerve. And Curt Garrish has a gun.

Puffer Rhapsody

By fabricating her biography, Luo Su, a young Chinese white-collar worker from a low-income family, hopes to wed Mr. Win, an alluring bachelor. But when her mother's shocking TV interview exposes her deceit, she loses everything and ends her own life. Left in limbo, she is mystically given one last opportunity to alter her fate within 72 hours - albeit within the body of a man.

1989

A poem in tap.

Reflection

As she keeps watching old home movies isolated in her hotel room, the screen becomes a mirror from which she tries to see herself. Levels of subjectivity, narrative, and reality entwine into a surrealist fever dream of scopophilic cinéma pur. The final layer of meaning is all of us watching the film on the screen-mirror in the theatre.

Me + Her

Creating a universe between two small pieces of Cardboard. When Jack and Jill of Cardboard City are separated by Jill's torrid illness, Jack must think outside the box to assure they will be together again.

The Cross Giveth,

A young actor, trapped in an abusive film set, starts spiraling in an anxiety induced attack and reflection as he ponders on his work and role in society. His attack and thoughts get heavier and more sporadic as he sifts through interviews he's done throughout the years - all showing the pain that lies within.

A Sad, Sad Ghost Picking at the Hairs of Their Knuckles

A wandering young woman explores the crevices of her apartment, of her corporeal creases, as well as the shadows made up of those things. Through her journey, she comes into contact with fellow vagrancies: a nondescript man of around similar age; a young girl with similar, even familiar, eyes; streets that can only exist during those brief moments of glazing stares. The rain comes and goes, but the A/C never turns off.

A Trip Elsewhere

During the Covid-19 pandemic, four anxious strangers take a record-breaking dose of LSD, catapulting them into a shared psychedelic dream where they must find solace and redemption before they can return to the real world.

Star

In this experimental short film, a young man and woman enter into a relationship with one another and quickly learn the ups and downs of intertwining their life with the one they love.

Kshya Tra Ghya

A stream of mysterious rituals and symbols are encountered as a young boy journeys to school in the fantastical world of Kshya Tra Ghya.

The Why

The why is an experiential meditation on death, on loves lost, the duality of mind, and ultimately the nature of attachment and memory turned obsession.

Fine

After a period of time where her hearing begins to overtake her sight, Casandra searches for the cause of her problem, isolating herself from society. She starts having visions that remind her of the past and promise an apocalyptic future.

Minhas Vozes Minhas

Plot unavailable