join us at the festival

A GAME OF CHANCE (0:04:25)

Director: Gordon LePage

United States • 2026

A young mouse, lonely for a friend, takes up a board game with the wind.  

BLOOM (0:10:31)

Director: Zachary Gladwin

United States • 2026

After a young man awakes from a hypnotic trance in a strange land, he must search high and low for a way to escape his lonely existence. Will his curiosity and ingenuity be able to withstand repeated failures and the familiar draw to complacency, or will he find a way to break through his limits and explore the great beyond?​

HELL (0:05:00)

Director: Parker Croft

United States • 2026

Hell follows the patriarch of a dying farm on the outskirts of Ash Harbor as he is methodically ground down by the machinery of despair. What begins as endurance curdles into something far more existential, a portrait of collapse told through dust, labor, and silence.

SEND HIM OFF (0:09:37)

Director: Nigel Williams

United States • 2026

Kannon, a young boy who is full of emotions, runs away and gets lost in the woods. His best friend, Braiden, finds and helps guide Kannon back to where he came from, overcoming obstacles in their wake. 

SNORRI - CATCH ME IF YOU CANDY! (0:12:00)

Director: Thierry Marchand

Germany • 2026

Snorri, a sweet-loving sixtopus, faces Bubba, a street-smart crab, in a wild chase for the tastiest lollipop in the seven seas.

SNOW BEAR (0:11:29)

Director: Aaron Blaise

United States • 2024

When a lonely polar bear can't find a friend, he makes one.

SUNSPARK (0:11:00)

Director: Danny Bourque

United States • 2026

While scavenging for spare parts, a lonely robot discovers someone who desperately needs his help.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD (0:05:09)

Director: Julianne Martin

United States • 2025

Two characters must grapple with the complexities of their relationship and decide whether or not to part ways.

A LONG WAY DOWN: THE STORY OF SURGE (0:16:09)

Director: Robert Kinlaw

United States • 2025

After Hurricane Helene devastates their community, a group of high school playmakers produce a play inspired by the storm, bringing their harrowing experiences to a national audience.

ADI, FILLA DA LUZ (0:12:09)

Director: Horacio Cabilla

Spain • 2026

Adi Iglesias, a refugee with albinism who fled Mali, rebuilds her life in Galicia and reaches the Paralympic elite, raising awareness of exile and the work of ACNUR.

AN ETERNAL SOUND (0:11:12)

Directors: Ryan Broussard & Andrew Meriwether

United States • 2026

In the heart of rural North Carolina, Tom Lewtak pursues perfection in one of the oldest and most complex living crafts: Pipe organ building. 

BORN SECRET (0:19:49)

Director: Riley Fitchpatrick

United States • 2025

A filmmaker returns to his hometown that built the atomic bomb. There he meets the workers who created humanity's greatest weapon that now wrestle with their legacy, while their grandchildren inherit a world on the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

DOC WATSON, ONE OF THE PEOPLE (0:33:47)

Director: Elias Shack

United States • 2026

Doc Watson, One of the People tells the story of the legendary musician's humble rise to fame, as well as the history of the bluegrass genre he made such a large impact upon.

DRAGON MOM (0:20:00)

Director: Harrison Buck

United States • 2025

Dragon Mom is a short documentary that follows Laura, a mother learning to navigate the emotional, physical, and societal complexities of raising a child that lives with a severe disability.

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS (0:05:00)

Director: Pablo Quintero

United States • 2026

A college professor turns to the printing press to process the weight of political turmoil, creating prints that invite others to slow down, reflect, and reconnect in an overstimulated digital age.

I WANTED TO HEAR YOUR VOICE (0:12:00)

Director: James Pellerito

United States • 2025

After eight years of caring for his mother with severe dementia, a son struggles through their daily care routine. Recorded voicemails serve to show the progression of the disease, underscoring the frustration, isolation and burnout that comes with intensive caregiving.

MARISKA (0:22:55)

Director: Luca Caserta

Italy • 2026

Through the words and memories of the now centenarian Leda Azzalini, the film retraces her firsthand experience of the partisan struggle on the Cansiglio Plateau during the Italian Resistance.

ONE DAY TWO WORLDS (0:04:57)

Director: Pun Pun Pattrakulchai

United States • 2025

Bob works as a senior mechanic at a Winston-Salem bike shop, where his meticulous attention to detail keeps the town cyclists rolling. At home, his real passion emerges: a 6,000-car slot car collection he repairs, races, and modifies.

RESONANCIA (0:37:56)

Directors: Ted Nash & Cathy Barbash

United States • 2026

In the heart of Havana, Grammy-winning composer Ted Nash invites young Cuban musicians to find inspiration in the colors and forms of a museum’s paintings.

VITA 2.0 (0:18:00)

Director: Vita Stoikova

Ukraine • 2025

Once a neonatal nurse, Vita now serves as a military anesthetist at a frontline stabilization point, where wounded soldiers are brought from the battlefield. Her days are filled with routines of war — wounded, operations, CrossFit workouts, weapon cleaning, and cold showers — interrupted by air raid sirens and the thunder of bombs shaking the shelter walls.

ABSINTHE (0:19:59)

Director: Andrea Paramidani

Italy • 2025

When Rosa, having fled her husband in Paris, cuts off her family’s financial support, her brother Pasquale sets out to find her. In his attempt to save her, he will end up confronting her with painful choices.

BLANK STATE (0:15:34)

Director: Andrew Schwab

United States • 2026

Claiming to remember every moment of her life, a woman spirals between past and present during an interview for her local news channel, slowly revealing the hidden cost of a life she can never leave behind as her memories start closing in around her.

COTTONMOUTH (0:15:30)

Director: Cole Johnson

United States • 2025

Based in the humid heart of rural Alabama, this is the tale of Chip and Fish—two twenty-something drifters scraping by on dreams, drugs, and dime-store philosophy.

EMPATHY REHEARSALS (0:20:00)

Director: Jacopo Cullin

Italy • 2026

Tommy is the school bully, convinced that strength and fear are the only ways to earn respect. After yet another act of aggression, the principal forces him to attend a theater workshop. Facing those he hurt and confronting his own vulnerabilities gradually changes how he sees himself and others.

FAREWELLDAY (0:20:39)

Director: Farzad Ranjbar-Nazari

Iran • 2024

The film portrays the final days of a man’s life, who returns home from the hospital to spend his last moments with his family. However, instead of finding peace, his home becomes a stage for emotional and psychological challenges.

ITALIANO (0:20:00)

Director: Mehdi Davachi

Iran • 2026

Two Iranian gay boys during the Women's Freedom Movement want to smuggle themselves out of Iran due to the difficult living conditions for gays, but they face difficulties in financing the smuggling trip.

LEICA (0:14:56)

Director: Sagi Kahane-Rapport

Canada • 2024

When camera pioneer Ernst Leitz's defiance of the Nazi regime is discovered by the Gestapo, his daughter Elsie must navigate a high-stakes battle of the wits with a Gestapo detective to save her father's life.

MEETING YOUR MAKER (0:18:00)

Director: Gregory JM Kasunich

United States • 2026

Meeting Your Maker is a darkly whimsical short film that follows Otis, a beloved puppet on a long-running children’s show, as he faces an existential crisis just before the series’ milestone 300th episode.

METANOIA (0:15:33)

Director: Martín Collo Sastoque

United States • 2026

Mariana, a Latin American teenager grappling with her identity, travels to the US to visit her older brother. As they celebrate their last day together at a vibrant Latin Dance club, Mariana is given the courage to embrace her feelings for another girl,

MOKUNIN (0:11:00)

Director: Sebastien Abdelhamid Godelu

France/United States • 2026

An old man walks through the city with a child. Elsewhere, a foreign stranger moves silently through the same streets. As their paths slowly converge, everyday gestures begin to reveal something deeply unsettling beneath the surface of ordinary life.

MOTHERLOAD (0:12:17)

Director: Michelle Bossy

United States • 2026

Over one chaotic day, a mother of three navigates school drop-offs, forgotten lunches, freelance deadlines, and endless mental to-do lists. As Margot moves through the ordinary tasks of parenting, her nonstop inner monologue reveals the anxiety, humor, guilt, and love beneath the surface.

SERENITY (0:23:00)

Director: Frank Tremblay

Canada • 2025

A funeral home employee must put her own personal struggles aside to help a grieving woman who just lost her daughter. 

SOMETHING POINTLESS (0:14:21)

Director: Asa Bailey

United Kingdom • 2025

When a bullied young boy discovers an elderly man quietly covering a forgotten brick wall in painted eggshells, an unlikely friendship forms — and a “pointless” act becomes something transformative.

STOLEN HEARTS (0:09:55)

Director: Aiden Smith

United States • 2026

After finding out an American influencer is visiting Berlin, two German natives form a plan to track her down and initiate a “natural spark” between them.

TANDEM (0:13:31)

Director: Darryl Jones

United States • 2025

When two strangers cross paths biking through Raleigh, NC, their chance encounter sparks a romance that changes them both forever.

THE LIARS OF BLACK MOUNTAIN ROAD (0:12:30)

Director: Parker Croft

United States • 2026

When a couple runs over a stranger's dog, they compete for the moral high ground at any cost.

THE LITTLE PRINCE (0:15:52)

Director: Amar Khati

Iran • 2024

A grandfather, who has never let his granddaughter step outside the house, keeps her inside with false stories to protect her from the war raging outside.

THE SESSIONS (0:27:16)

Director: Vince Eisenson

United States • 2024

In this crime driven film, we met a therapy group for murderers where someone is bound to snap.

WHO YOU WERE (0:02:08)

Director: Dhara Alessandra Ortiz

United States • 2026

She spent so long comparing herself to the girls she saw online that she forgot what it felt like to just be herself. Every photo made her feel like she needed to change something, her body, her face, the way she existed. But before social media, she never looked at herself that way. She simply lived.

WITH AN END IN MIND (0:16:54)

Director: Tyshaun Jamal Glover

United States • 2025

Heartbroken and newly single, Oliver spends his final summer in Washington, D.C. trying not to fall apart before a major move to New York. His pragmatic best friend, Burkhardt, urges him to stay focused: new city, new life, no emotional detours.

ALI EATS AMERICA (1:30:00)

Directors: Roush Niaghi, Greg Morris

United States • 2025

Ali Allouche spent his junior year of high school in chemotherapy. Tired of hospital food, Ali and his mom, Lt Col Jen Danko, became obsessed with Food Shows and Documentaries.  Particularly inspired by Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown, Ali and Jen plotted a map of restaurants across the United States they would visit when Ali was medically cleared.

CATCHING PINECONES (1:13:00)

Director: Chad Heddleston

United States • 2025

Jan and Herb Conn were the original American dirtbag couple, pioneering rock climbers and cave explorers who rejected a conventional lifestyle in pursuit of adventure and fun.

IRON PEARLS (0:55:00)

Director: E. Vincent Martinez

United States • 2025

​​Iron Pearls is a feature documentary about the life, career, and creative process of Elizabeth Brim, whose bold, witty, and transformative work has redefined blacksmithing over the course of her forty-year career.

KIKUYU LAND (1:30:00)

Directors: Andrew H. Brown & Bea Wangondu

Kenya • 2025

In Kenya’s tea highlands, one man’s claim to his family’s stolen land sets Mr. Mungai against a multinational giant. His fight draws a local news producer into a battle that exposes buried histories, family secrets, and the unfinished business of colonial power.

LIGHTWORKERS (1:28:00)

Director: Bobby Roth

United States • 2026

Congressman Jamie Raskin, Actor Henry Winkler, Rock Guitarist Tom Morello, Rabbi Sharon Brous, and former Congressman Adam Kinzinger head an All-Star array of men and women who inspire Americans to stand up to authoritarianism as they fight to preserve our democratic way of life.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: WATTS (1:30:00)

Director: Michael Soenen

United States • 2026

Searching for a way to understand what he had seen, he poses a simple question: what would happen if the people living the story told it themselves? Twenty residents—rival gang members, police officers, students, parents, and victims of violence—are given iPhones and full control over their narratives.

PAPERTOWN (1:23:44)

Director: Jeremy Seifert

United States • 2025

When the papermill that defined Canton, North Carolina announced it would close, the town had just three months before its largest employer—and a core part of its identity—was gone.

THE SEEDS OF PEACE (1:06:08)

Director: David-Paul B. Hedberg

United States • 2026

A survivor of the Hiroshima atom bomb confronts her trauma and gathers seeds of trees that survived the blast; planting symbols of hope, healing, and remembrance in towns across Oregon eighty years later.

THE TRACY BARNES DOCUMENTARY: A LIGHTER-THAN-AIR PIONEER (1:00:00)

Director: Peter J. Kulsziski

United States • 2026

The film follows Barnes from his humble beginnings on October 13, 1961, when he made his first hot air balloon flight in “Old Lumpy,” a craft he built from five used army parachutes.

A SAFE DISTANCE (1:26:00)

Director: Gloria Mercer

Canada • 2026

After a woman is abandoned by her boyfriend in the forest, she befriends a pair of notorious fugitives on the run from the law and becomes dangerously entangled in their relationship.

 A TANTALIZING (1:28:46)

Director: Katie Prael

United States • 2025

Dafne, grieving the loss of her father to hypothermia, is reminded of him by the sight of Ambrose, a homeless man. As the temperature in New York City drops Dafne feels a growing sense of urgency to protect Ambrose from the same fate as her father’s.

CAT KINGDOM (1:47:57)

Directors: John Olof Hellberg & Bernhard Rasmusson

Sweden • 2026

The unemployed engineer Kenneth devotes all his time building hobby models. On his way to an imposed job interview, Kenneth runs into the marine scientist Sten, who offers him an assistant job down at his shipyard.

HEKLA (1:28:55)

Director: Michael Glover Smith

United States • 2026

Hekla, a determined Chicago actress, races through auditions, breakups, and self-doubt over the course of one chaotic day, risking her heart and career to claim her voice and step fully into the artist and woman she’s meant to be.

THE SONG OF COLOUR (1:29:15)

Director: Ashley Bligh Dighton

Australia • 2026

Reeling from a messy breakup, a woman’s understanding of the world - and how to find happiness in it - is fundamentally altered by three people she meets in her local coffee shop.