YOUR FRIEND, RANGER DOUG
Closing Night: What Do You Stand For?
Claire Jantzen - 20, Sarah Nell - 20, Kayla Borkovec - 21, Celine Francois - 21 | California
“Humanity’s story has always been interwoven with nature, and Your Friend, Ranger Doug is a charming, moving reminder of it. From the millions of years it took to thrust up the rock that now forms Glacier National Park, to the decades of his life that Doug Follett has spent maintaining it, we are reminded how much influence we can have both as an individual and a society on our surroundings. The world is large, sometimes the problems are big, but you are never too small to make a difference.”

COMING TO LIGHT
Saturday Night Shorts
Hector Bell - 22, Declan Duffy - 22, Cameron Armstrong - 22, Jamie Farrington - 23 | UK
“For those suffering, in silence or not, Coming to Light might encapsulate the most pernicious effects of continued coexistence with trauma. If nothing else, Hector Bell crafts a compelling embodiment of the “monster-in-the-room” concerning a man’s agency over his own abuse and some horrors that come with it.”

WASTE AWAY
Powerful Grit
Elly Stern - 21
“Redefining “trashy” stop-motion, Elly Stern’s Waste Away is a perspective shift to look at our most vulnerable. I don’t pretend to understand the biology at work here but it’s hard not to realize the consequences of growing apart from one another and being at odds with our changing environment. Let it wash over you, broken bottles and all.”

LENA
Saturday Night Shorts
Gosha Shapiro - 24, Lucy Putnam - 23 | California
“Director and writer Gosha Shapiro shares a glimpse of the intangible experiences of a Russian father and daughter who immigrate to the United States. Caught in the middle of so much, Lena and Lena catch lighting in a bottle with its natural and stellar lead performances at the vertex of cultures, languages, and growing up.”

THE MOOD IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY
Centerpiece
Ward Kamel - 20, Adrian Lausell - 21, Aditya Mayya - 21 | New York
“For such an eye-catching title, Ward Kamel gifts us with an incredibly nuanced and subtle distillation of pervasive ideas we rarely experience on an individual level like this. Less is more with this one, but do not miss it.”