Holy G, the planet's guardian angel, struggles to recover the Mo-Nad's degenerating baby-form.

Director: Jack-Henry Lee

Jack-Henry Lee is an animator and multimedia artist making funny, gross, and spiritual independent films about cycles of degeneration and the pervasive power of love in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, in 2024 with a BFA in 2D Animation and Digital Art.

Corentin, a slender and reserved young man, comes across a video of a muscular, charismatic man encouraging him to go to the gym. Intrigued, he decides to check it out, but discovers a place with a strange atmosphere, where the members have a strikingly unusual appearance.

Director: Anna Murie

Made over the course of a three day animation challenge, Bluebird follows a lowly animator who, by way of catastrophic computer error, releases a peculiar force of chaos in the world.

Directors: Toby Duska, Damon Orcherton, Jack Hornecker

The Grease Pencil trio (Toby Duska, Jack Hornecker, and Damon Orcherton) are the creators of Bluebird, a short film crafted for the 19th annual Animation Lockdown, a 72-hour animation challenge hosted by Calgary’s Quickdraw Animation Society. This film stands as the trio’s first collaborative production effort.

Toby Duska is an experienced puppeteer and stop motion animator who served as the film’s primary stop motion artist. Damon Orcherton is a digital animator and sculptor who served as the film’s main 3D artist and compositor. Rounding out the three, Jack Hornecker is a digital animator and illustrator who established the look of the film as the set designer and lead storyboard artist.

In an era where the boundary between material and digital worlds grows thin, the final film combines traditional and digital animation techniques with the aim of sharing its creators’ love for animated storytelling in all its many forms.

“TRICHOTILLOMANIA” tells the story of one girl’s Google-search-gone-wrong to find out why she can’t stop pulling out her hair.

Director: Kelly Schiesswohl

Kelly Schiesswohl (Shees-wall) is a 21 year old director and motion designer currently based out of New York City. Her most recent work could be described as “Like a hotdog. It takes the most slimy, overlooked, underbelly of life and turns it into something tasty and erotically shaped”. She will be attending Hunter College Integrated Media Arts Master program in the fall to continue her filmmaking journey of making people laugh, cry, and lay awake at night considering their mortal chains. She uses her endless knowledge of late 90’s-early 2000’s toys, media, and ephemera to inform her work... and to bore unsuspecting strangers on the subway.

On the outskirts of a future city in what used to be Sweden, Vidya and her dad live with others in a small community. The grown-ups talk about something lurking in the ruins of the city center, something they call "the Stray." Vidya, who likes to do things her own way, pulls away from her friends. Today, she doesn't want to help with the chores either. Instead, she's worried about the strange threat outside their safe home. She decides to protect everyone from the Stray, but soon finds herself lost.

Directors: Anna Drake, Marjo Palokangas

Marjo Palokangas and Anna Drake are Stockholm-based directors and animators with a shared background in storytelling and animation from Stockholm University of the Arts. They have collaborated on several projects and bring complementary artistic strengths and a strong visual sensibility to their work.

Marjo Palokangas works across film, theatre, and installation art. She has created animated projections for prominent stages such as Unga Klara and Marionetteatern, and exhibited her own multimedia installations. Her animation work for “Historien om Bodri” (dir. Stina Wirsén, 2022) was produced by HOBAB/Dockhus Animation.

Anna Drake is the founder of Peryton Production and focuses on films exploring animal rights, feminism, and mental health. Her short film Frigående kvinnor inomhus (2019) was screened at, among others, Uppsala Short Film Festival and STOCKmotion. She teaches stop motion animation and continues to explore hybrid formats combining animation and live action.

Together, they direct Irraren, bringing a deep commitment to visual storytelling, social themes, and poetic imagery. Their artistic process is collaborative and interdisciplinary, blending handcrafted animation with meaningful narratives.

An unlikely situation inspires optimism.

Director: Clara Gainer

Based on the creator's experience with chronic pain, 'fusion' is a multimedia animation that sheds light on the duality of suffering and beauty within the uncomfortable. It is a cathartic release of emotions and thoughts, once repressed by pain and limited by words, now come to light in a visual exploration.

Director: Rafeeqa Teo

Based in Brooklyn, Rafeeqa Teo is an Illustrator, Animator, and Graphic Designer who graduated in the Spring of 2026 from The New School, with a dual degree in Illustration and Screen Studies. Born and raised in Brunei, Rafeeqa aims to explore the complexities and intermingling of cultural and personal identity - with an emphasis on the visually weird and wonderful. Her body of work spans a variety of mediums, from 3D sculptures to hand-drawn illustrations to filmmaking. With a passion for Film, Fine Arts, Theatre, and Music, Rafeeqa aims to share art that is not confined to one medium or message but instead embraces the intersection of all the arts in whimsical ways.

An aged man attempts to create a sentence that defines his life.

Director: Stephen Vita Tronicek

Stephen Tronicek is a director/screenwriter/animator focused on psychological horror and comedy. He grew up and is based in St. Louis. Stephen discovered film at a young age and became a professional film critic in his junior year of high school. This eventually led him to write screenplays and make short films. His horror screenplay, "Pieces" was a Finalist in Horror in the Script Pipeline First Look Competition. His focuses include character-driven stories, violence as an extension of the psyche and seeing how much emotionally resonant story material you can get away with if you stick to the theme. Stephen has a Bachelors in Film Production and a minor in Screenwriting from Webster University.

The rock I’ve carried my whole life has been taken from me. The pressure I’ve lived under was stolen from my grasps, what will I do with these empty hands? Shall I carry these instead? Now these are gone too! My legs? They’ve taken me this far, I’m sure they can be a burden. Gone as well! Where else in myself can I find a burden?

Director: Faraz E Ghorbanpour

Faraz Ghorbanpour is an emerging stop-motion video and sculpture artist in Brooklyn, New York, exploring grief and yearning in Gen Z populations. Using clay, digital software, and live video, he shares short animations representing aspects of desire and desperation within our generation. He holds a B.A. in Arts and a B.S. in Digital Media Studies from the University of Rochester, and a Masters in Entertainment Arts and Engineering from the University of Utah. He exhibited his animations globally, from Seoul, Montreal, and throughout the United States, and has been featured in Nguyen Wahed’s residency program focusing on new media. Faraz Ghorbanpour is exploring new media and collaborative works, previously working with Carolina Herrera, Patreon, and the Hilton Hotel.

“2nd Day & the End of the World”

It is a 12 minutes hand drawn on paper, Hyper-Family-Drama about processes of secession, post-traumatic attacks, tempting body conditions & powerless loneliness in a climate-catastropic universe.

Director: Sara Koppel

Musicians Bobby Conn and Monica BouBou retreat to the astral plane, leaving their imaginary companions DUKS and L.A.R.R.Y. behind. Alone, the curious pair discovers a mysterious bottle and drifts back from the astral plane through crude TV dreams into Earth’s fast-food gravity.

Director: David Kellner

Lives and works in Vienna (Austria).
Uses animation to build unstable narratives.
Studied Fine Arts, practices Brut Animations.
He is interested in characters that fall out of rhythm and in images that refuse to stay still.

When a disturbing sound prevents a hand-drawn man from falling asleep, he looks underneath his bed to discover a 3D rendered abstract horror.

Director: Jack Lynch

Jack Lynch is a musician, animator, cartoonist, and researcher based in Queens, NY. In any medium, they express their ideas by combining extreme experimentation with more familiar elements.

i thought about how i am very alive and how everything is very alive and how we came alive and the universe came alive and in any such way anything came alive it is so very alive.

Director: Maisie Sherriff

Maisie Sherriff is an experimental animator from London who just completed their studies at Kingston School of Art. They make short experimental animations by hand, mostly exploring feelings of overwhelm, hopefulness and more abstract emotions through bright, intense, playful animations.

How cool can a dog get before he faces consequences?

Director: Jude Larson

After a frail grave digger comes to the realization that he is a hand puppet. He must put on a performance to confront the stubborn sheriff and blinkered town to follow his path of enlightenment.

Director: Tommy Adzema

Tommy Adzema is a living Muppet, obsessed with the art of bringing things to life through the exploration of texture and movement. A multimedia artist who bends his work toward narrative, he's currently studying animation at Florida State University College of Motion Picture Arts.

An astronaut explores a vast, empty world. On her journey she is stalked by a spindly robotic creature. She comes across a castle which contains a network of information transfer which runs on an infinite army of rabbit-like creatures capable of running faster than light. In order to escape her stalker, Ivy grabs onto one of the rabbits and falls into an endless void underneath the world.

Director: Will Bradley

Director: Hank

Almost 100 years of life culminate in a funny portrait of a grandmother passing down a brisket recipe.

Director: Riede Dervay

Riede Dervay is an award winning cinematographer from Virginia Beach, VA. Now based in New York City, she strives to create the art she wishes to see in the world.

People wait for the intro of Baba O'Riley by The Who to end so they can sing the song at karaoke.

Director: Eric Schuman

Eric Schuman is a director and editor.

His work has won an Emmy, been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and screened at Venice, Cannes, Sundance, and TIFF — among other festivals.

The Holy Mary amidst ongoing traffic. A basement of deities with the light on 24/7. A collection of trash, or so it seems. “Altar Piece” walks through the neighborhood of Ridgewood, Queens, montaging intentional and seemingly unintentional altars in collective shrine.

Director: Kiana Fernandez

Kiana Fernandez is a Filipina-American interdisciplinary artist focusing on the scavenging of hypersignification and hope in our physical and digital existence. Working across the boundaries of video, photomontage, crowdsourcing, and objects, she attempts to recompose everyday experiences with divine importance. Her work has been showcased at the MOMA, The Museum of Moving Image, Anthology Film Archives, UnionDocs, Nguyen Wahed, and UsagiNY.

"Uncanny Monsters: Abjection and the Monstrous-Feminine in Blade Runner" is a video essay illustrating how Rachael and Pris, two female replicant characters in the film Blade Runner, simultaneously perform and complicate real-world ideals of femininity in uncanny ways. I created it for Prof. Margaret Rhee's Spring 2026 Media Theory course as part of the Media Studies master's degree program at Parsons School of Design, The New School.
I edited the project in Adobe Premiere and used Adobe Firefly, Adobe Express, Anthropic's Claude, and Mac's text-to-speech voice Samantha to make elements of it. This was my first time experimenting with AI for a video project: I prompted Firefly and Express to make the feminized cyborg in the opening, used Claude to adapt my final paper into a voice over script, and used text-to-speech technology for the voice over.
This project includes clips from Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, The Brood, and Rosemary's Baby, as well as quotes from Jack Halberstam's "Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminism in the Age of the Intelligent Machine," Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," Barbara Creed's The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis, Alan Turing's “Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Abby Wilkerson's “Embodiment," and Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, used for educational purposes only. All rights remain with the respective copyright holders.

Director: Cat Tassini

I am a filmmaker, artist, and multimedia designer based in New York City. The focus of my artistic practice is creating music- and documentary-based videos from an intersectional queer eco-feminist perspective. My films have been screened at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, Bushwick Film Festival, South by Southwest Film, and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. In 2020, I won the Queering the Quarantine Challenge at OUTStream Film Festival. Currently, I am developing my first long form film project, experimental hybrid documentary Echo’s Answer. The short film version of this project won the Outstanding Sound award at the 2022 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. Echo’s Answer is fiscally sponsored by the International Documentary Association.

The Optimum Aquarium is a film that interrogates who controls where people live in 21st-century Bushwick and Ridgewood: two neighborhoods on the border of Brooklyn and Queens that are experiencing the churn and change of gentrification.

The Optimum Aquarium invites its viewers into the inner worlds of fish tanks, their inhabitants, and their owners, and puts fish tank care in dialogue with cultural and historical ideas around containment, ownership, and human/animal life cycles. The film takes us into the mindset of commercial developers seeking to transform the neighborhood, and it focuses on Myrtle Point/Ridgewood Towers — a new development where an immigrant construction worker fell to his death in 2022. This site reflects the cold calculations of capital and our limited ability to control the built environments around us.

Interspersed with shots of the neighborhood and fish tanks are screen grabs from The Sims 4: City Living, a game where an ideology of ownership and unattainable utopia emerges. By juxtaposing gameplay with real-life images and sounds of a neighborhood in flux, The Optimum Aquarium examines how mythologies about landlordism persist around us — and asks how we might create alternate futures.

Directors: Mia Warren, Jesse Allain-Marcus

Mia (미아) Warren (she/her) is an award-winning audio producer, journalist, documentarian and former fish tank owner living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY. She is the Managing Director of Feet in 2 Worlds, an organization that trains and mentors immigrant journalists. As a former audio producer for StoryCorps, Mia created segments for NPR's Morning Edition, contributed to a 2019 Peabody-nominated podcast season, and collaborated on Un(re)solved, an Emmy Award-winning civil rights series with Frontline.

Jesse Allain-Marcus (he/him) is a filmmaker, documentary editor, researcher, and science-fiction enthusiast living in Brooklyn, NY. Recently, he worked as associate editor on Natchez, a Tribeca-winning documentary on history and memory in the American South. In 2023, he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for nonfiction editing for his work on the “Justice” episode of the 1619 Project Documentary Series.

Writer-director Gareth Stack explores the intersections of gender, geography, and ritual in Breath of the Mountain, an ethnographic short, filmed in the remote Racha-Lechkhumi region of rural Georgia. The film documents an arduous expedition to a sacred summit near the town of Oni, a place which is exclusively the domain of boys and men.

Stack uses this climb to map the contours of his own familial lineage, drawing parallels between inherited intergenerational trauma and the physical trials of the mountain. Set against a landscape layered with both Orthodox Christian and pre-Christian animist traditions, the film functions as a sensory interrogation of masculinity, endurance, and the shared, labored breath of men.

Director: Gareth Stack

Gareth Stack is a writer, film director and radio producer based in Dublin. His narrative work has been screened internationally including Healdsburg International film festival.

His debut feature documentary ‘Sightless Cinema’ screened in 2025 on Irish television.

Gareth created Sound & Vision funded radio dramas and documentaries for a decade for broadcasters like Newstalk, RTE Lyric and numerous local stations in Ireland. Including the six part mystery series ‘The Wall in the Mind’ and the award winning documentary series ‘Mad Scientists of Music’.

He has created new work on site at the Offaly film festival, Caucuses Cinema Residency and as part of Dublin’s Kino Kabaret.

He has devised and directed narrative music videos for artists like Powerful Creative Minds (feat Jazzy), Shy Mascot, David Turpin and Chris Wilson.

His publications include Hobart’s Modern Love, The Runt, Albedo One, Cassandra Voices, and Analogue Music Magazine. His work has been staged as part of the New Irish Playbook and Scene + Heard festivals.

His plays have been staged in Smock Alley as part of the Scene + Heard Festival and in the Civic Theatre as part of the New Irish Playbook.

Gareth’s work takes the audience into uncomfortable places that explore our cultures' contradictions. I’m interested in how relationships are changing, and how the strange and conflicting belief systems that now exist in parallel encounter one another.

I want to be old like my grandmas.

Director: Carly Lauren Lieberman

Director: Juicebox P Burton

When my father was 7 years old, his family emigrated from Peru to Ecuador in the midst of an armed conflict over territory in the region. Years later, he reflects on his experiences growing up during a time of active combat, and the ways these memories do not seem so foreign in our present.

Director: Sofía Arbaiza Martínez

Sofía Arbaiza Martínez is an Ecuadorian animator, designer, and filmmaker based in Brooklyn. She focuses her work on narratives that center around stories of displacement and connection, particularly in immigrant communities. Her Latin American identity is a crucial part of her inspiration as an artist.

Sofía graduated from Pratt Institute in 2024 with a BFA in Digital Art and 2D Animation and a minor in Literature and Writing. Currently she is pursing her MFA at the Computer Arts department in the School of Visual Arts. Through her craft, she looks to innovate and uplift stories about her heritage and community. She loves animals, writing, and enjoys cooking.

There's trouble in the monkey house.

Directors: Christy Karacas, Luca Depardon

CHRISTY KARACAS www.instagram.com/christykaracas

Christy Karacas is the co-creator of the Adult Swim series Superjail! and creator of Ballmastrz:9009, and the animated cult favorites Spacewar and Barfight. His award winning work has been shown around the world including the Ottawa International Animation Festival, Annecy International Animation Festival, Glas Animation Festival, Bucheon International Animation Festival, New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Deitch Projects, Galleri Loyal, Tribeca Film Festival, and on MTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Vice, Playboy Magazine and Deathwish Skateboards.
Karacas studied film and animation at the Rhode Island School of Design where he now teaches as an assistant professor in the FAV Dept specializing in animation.

LUCA DEPARDON www.instagram.com/deadeadeadog

Luca Ogawa Depardon is an animator and illustrator from NYC. His animations are playful fusions of traditional and experimental animation techniques, daydreams, inventive editing, and funky characters. His films have been featured internationally at places such as the Centré Pompidou, The Ottawa International Film Festival, The Bucheon International Animation Festival, LoopdeLoop Melbourne, and the Animation Block Party at BAM. Luca has also done freelance work for such clients as VICE, The Children’s Museum of the Arts in NYC and Adult Swim. He earned his BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design.

A clown gives a man a cassette.

Director: Malcolm Fisher

In a sparsely decorated room, Clem Lea sings of love, accompanying herself on the guitar. Within her silhouette, a whole world comes to life, a fantastical nature with elements sometimes calm and gentle, sometimes stormy and threatening, reflecting the feelings she evokes in her lyrics. Her eyes are two birds that traverse this world, discover this nature, and mingle with it in a dreamlike choreography before a violent storm separates them. When the calm arrives, the silhouette dissipates into a murmur of birds, marking a liberation as well as a disappearance.

Director: Rosalie Loncin

ROSALIE LONCIN is a director, animator and graphic designer. She creates animations for performing arts, and directs animated music videos (Silent and Sweet for Stuck in the Sound in 2013, Always for Yuli in 2016, Crystal Clear for Moon Loves Honey in 2019, Lao Tseu for Jouvence in 2021).
In 2014, she participated in the animation of the short film Sunday Lunch (Le Repas dominical) by Céline Devaux, selected in competition at Cannes Film Festival and awarded at César 2016. She collaborates as an animator or animation assistant with many directors (Marie Larrivé & Lucas Malbrun, Vergine Keaton, Jonas Schloesing, Agnès Patron, Mélody Boulissière…). She works in parallel on her own films, including SEPT. Suite poétique and Igen, drágám, selected at Primanima Animation Festival in Budaörs, Hungary in 2013.
After graduating from École des arts décoratifs (School of Decorative Arts, Paris) in animation cinema in 2015, she continues to evolve in the world of animation. In 2016, she renewed her collaboration with Céline Devaux on You Will Be Fine (Gros Chagrin), which won an award at the 2017 Venice Film Festival.
In November 2018, she held her first solo exhibition of illustrations at the Openbach gallery (Paris 13th), A List of Lists (Une liste de listes).
In 2020, she directed her short film Real Life (La Vraie Vie), co-written with Julie Loncin, and produced by Sacrebleu Productions & Gao Shan Pictures. This project was purchased by Arte and received assistance for rewriting from the CNC Innovation Support Fund.
In 2022, as part of a residency at the Berthelot-Jean Guerrin Theater, she directed the short film The Sky Above the City (Le Ciel au-dessus de la ville) with the artistic collective Le Transmutateur, and accompanied this film in festivals (including ITFS, International Trickfilm-Festival Stuttgart and the National Animation Film Festival of Rennes). She also worked as an animation assistant on Everyone Loves Jeanne (Tout le monde aime Jeanne), Céline Devaux’s first feature film, produced by Les Films du Worso & O Som e a Fúria, and selected for the 61st Semaine de la Critique in Cannes.
She is currently developing several projects: the documentary series Once There Was... (co-directed with Vincent Delbos-Klein and produced by Bagan Films), and the two animated short films Solar memory (Mémoire solaire, cowritten with Remi Grelow and produced by Amopix Studio & Lux For Film) and To Be and to Have Been (Être et avoir été, co-written with Julie Loncin).

music video for "Mexico" by the Butthole Surfers from the album "After the Astronaut" (2026)

Director: Jeffrey Garcia

Award-winning underground filmmaker and music video director from San Marcos, TX

Journey into the dungeon clubs of New York City.

Director: John MacKay, Rosa Luna

The world is burning and our protagonists must escape before it is too late. They are rescued by a pair of space-galavanting ancient aliens.

Directors: The Production Department

Director: Macela Robison

Three friends make the most of their day in Bushwick.

Director: Edward Frumkin

Edward Frumkin is a Brooklyn-based critic and filmmaker. He has written for publications like BOMB, The Daily Beast, IndieWire, Interview Magazine, and Reverse Shot. He shown his films at festivals like Chicago Underground, Big Sky Documentary, SCAD Savannah Film Festivals and venues such as Millennium Film Workshop and Roxy Cinema.

A queer love song written as a manifesto, “For Andy” is an indie-folk confession to a newly discovered sapphic relationship. Built around acoustic guitar, harp, bass, and understated drums, shepup surprised her partner by debuting the song live as a gift. Warm, whimsical, and disarmingly sincere, “For Andy” pairs narcotic vocal melodies with vivid declarations of devotion, turning private dreams into something universal. The music video was captured on 16mm scanned to digital.

Director: Andy Nappi

I am a filmmaker, photographer, animator and researcher born and raised in New York City. As an inquisitive artist and individual, I prioritize discovery and experimentation within my practice. My work mostly focuses on gender, sexuality, reproductive rights, mental & physical health, and dismantling patriarchal power through the lens of a queer millennial. My most notable research and media project is Master's thesis, a zine series and web show titled Code Red. This project works to fight the stigma of menstruation, reviews reproductive health problems and products and discusses all the stuff you weren't taught in high school sex-ed class. I also enjoy making music videos, taking photos of faces and places, and capturing images on super8, 16mm and 35mm film. "Napsack" is the name of my artistic alias because I like to think of my body of work as a bag I carry on my back, full of curiosities.

A sleep-deprived homeowner calls in the professionals to handle an infestation of rats and raccoons. Things do not go as planned in this puppet-filled music video for the Brooklyn band La Banda Chuska.

Director: Brett Burton

Brett Burton is a compulsive creative whose work spans video, design, music, games, and the occasional puppet. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, where he collects records and avoids writing bios whenever possible.

A selfish and destructive android adapts to the life of a cowboy in the desert wasteland.

Director: Alex Benson

Washington-based animator and musician born and raised in Arizona