A showcase of the best of new films from around the world today.
AUDIENCE AWARDS (from FEEDBACK Film Festival):
Best Short Film: SAFE ZONE
Best Micro-Short Film: AZIZAM
Best Documentary: BODY OF WORK
Best Visual Design: FREE SPIRITS
Best Sound & Music: SURROUNDED BY LIGHT
Best Story: THE HIRSCH EFFECT
Best Performances: THE ALOHA WITHIN
Best Music Video: TRUTH IS DEAD
Best Animation: JUMPING AT SHADOWS: FORSAKEN FATHER
Best Experimental: FIVE HOTELS
Best Fan Fiction Film: LOST WOODS
SAFE ZONE, 8min., Egypt/Italy/USA
Directed by Ahmad Alameldeen
Hidden in a dark sewer pipe beneath a ruined besieged city, a mother and her eight-year-old daughter are starving. They survive by staying dead silent, terrified of the soldiers patrolling the streets above them.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-safe-zone
AZIZAM, 5min., USA
Directed by Anish Chandak
An aspiring writer breaks out into a musical dream sequence when he discovers the muse for his next story.
https://instagram.com/reel.prods
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-azizam
BODY OF WORK, 24min., USA
Directed by Cassidy Rast, Odin Wadleigh
Introducing artist Eric Anfinson, who was critically injured at 16 and went on to achieve success as an artist, creating a body of work of over 700 paintings. Told through 8mm, cinematic recreations, intimate interviews, and archival footage.
https://www.instagram.com/Bodyofworkmovie
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-body-of-work
FREE SPIRITS, 13min., Argentina
Directed by Ferina, Ferrán Echegaray
FREE SPIRITS is the visual component of CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso’s 2nd studio album titled FREE SPIRTIS. The album arrived following a surreal campaign that included “GOO GOO GA GA” featuring Jack Black and “HASTA JESÚS TUVO UN MAL DÍA,” featuring Sting, who was unveiled as the unlikely architect of the mysterious FREE SPIRITS Center, a fictional holistic retreat that became the conceptual backdrop for the album’s rollout. Across the project, CA7RIEL & Paco, and their featured guests––Sting, Jack Black, Fred again.., and Anderson .Paak––undergo Sting’s FREE SPIRITS therapies to channel ego death, absurdity, personal reckoning, and hard-won clarity into a body of work that feels both wildly entertaining and unexpectedly revealing. In this short film you can get a detailed sense of the groundbreaking techniques employed at the FREE SPIRITS Center.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-free-spirits-film
SURROUNDED BY LIGHT, 13min., USA
Directed by Steven Clarkson
An experimental, improvised guitar journey complemented by an extensive array of vivid and imaginary AI generated images. The video is an immersive meditative experience.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-surrounded-by-the-light
The Hirsch Effekt, 28min., Germany
Directed by Florian Glock
Alone in a dusty rehearsal room, Nils Wittrock writes the most personal album of The Hirsch Effekt—caught between parenthood, post-pandemic pressure and self-doubt, he searches for air, meaning, and a way back to the band.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-the-hirsch-effekt
THE ALOHA WITHIN, 17min., USA
Directed by Elvis Maleko, Robert Massetti
Through a time of personal struggle and tragedy, a young Polynesian stage performer named Marc discovers a new meaning of hope. This hope is found through a support system he never knew he had. As he pieces together the support of family, friends, and culture, Marc realizes something of great worth and value, the Aloha within.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-the-aloha-within
TRUTH IS DEAD, 4min., Australia
Directed by Martin Ryan
Messengers from the future try to give a warning.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-truth-is-dead
JUMPING AT SHADOWS: FORSAKEN FATHER, 40min., Australia
Directed by Locky Boaretto
Charlotte’s 18th birthday takes a dark turn when Agent Nixon arrives with shocking revelations about her past and his true reasons for hunting aliens. When a desperate attempt to change history unleashes catastrophic consequences, Locky and Jett are thrown into a terrifying alternate future where humanity faces extinction, and must find a way to undo the damage, before it’s too late!
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-proof-of-concept
FIVE HOTELS, 17min., USA
Directed by Harry Roseman
Five Hotels is a first person view of traversing from my hotel rooms down to the street. It simultaneously encapsulates dislocation and location. The sound track evokes the unseen. The vertical orientation of the video reaffirms looking ahead along the long hallways as well as following my gaze as I walk forward. The experience of the film is both strange and ubiquitous. Visual issues: abstraction, pattern, form, and structure are embedded in the experience of this film.
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-five-hotels
LOST WOODS, 20min., Canada
Directed by René Albert
A no-budget fan-made film paying tribute to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
https://www.instagram.com/exnihilocreativeyeg/profilecard/?igsh=cnp3cWhjbG9jZ3lh
https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/audience-feedback-lost-woods
WILDsound Festival 