Film Festival Schedule – 2026 MWFF
Friday, September 18th
NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS / SESSION 01 (11:00 am – 12:30pm)
A special session of 8 narrative short films! Recommended for ages 15+.
This screening is free for all area high school groups and students.
Mamie
Director: Pedro Tamames (Spain)
Carla receives a disturbing call from her mother, Anne. Her grandmother, Mamie, wants to die. With this news they decide to travel to be together, for the last time, the three of them and say goodbye to Mamie. The meeting, initially affectionate, turns muddy as old grudges buried under a history of family abandonment come to light.
Narrative
Abandoned Buildings
Director: Benji Otte (USA)
Four estranged friends explore abandoned buildings in hopes to reconnect and not follow the same fate as the forgotten sites.
Narrative
Spark Wheel
Director: Jeremy Cuevas (USA)
Lester, a heartbroken waiter, needs to find a lighter before his 10 minute smoke break is up.
Narrative
Mobile
Director: Jimmy Lo (Canada)
A newlywed couple from Hong Kong finds their fresh start in Canada.
Narrative
I Exist
Director: Martin Del Carpio (USA)
Jordan wakes up in a hospital after another night full of decadence and finds himself facing two very mysterious strangers who are not what they appear to be. Will it be too late for him?
Narrative
The Chief
Director: Ksenia Chetvergova (Russian Federation)
Grisha suffers greatly from his parents’ arguments. Feeling responsible for his family’s well-being, he goes into a fantasy world hoping to find something that could bring peace back to his home. Red Chief will decide if it’s possible to glue together broken happiness.
Narrative
Run River!
Director: Anastasiia Ostapenko (Russian Federation)
A young girl accidentally meets her father on the street, whom she has not seen for 10 years. After a series of doubts, the girl decides not only to meet the past eye-to-eye, but also to try to get back her dog, which her father took with him when he left the family.
Narrative
Reaching Seventeen
Director: Maria Kovaleva (Armenia)
When a photo of his first love resurfaces online, a thirty-year-old car washer searches for the childhood diary behind his autobiography, confronting the illusion of a happy past undone by his parents’ divorce.
Narrative
EXPERIMENTAL FILMS (1:15pm – 3:00pm)
14 experimental short films from around the world!
I Was Here
Directors: José Crúzio & Martin Gerigk (Portugal)
The short film I WAS HERE is part of the Portuguese I WAS HERE project, a series of short videograms conceived as records of visits to “non-places” and “places”—transitional or passing points, whether circumstantial or intentional.
Experimental
Beyond the Clouds
Director: Andrew Imai (USA)
A story about the inherent pull of discovery and the unknown.
Experimental – Student
Spheres
Director: Martin Gerigk (Germany)
Spheres is an homage to life, a poetic essay that drifts through a series of expanding spheres, each revealing a different layer of our shared reality, from the microscopic to the mythical.
Experimental
Portrait of the Artist as a Posthuman
Director: Zoran Poposki (Hong Kong)
Anatomy becomes an altar, a theater, and a laboratory. The figure is peeled open like a lesson in empathy, its viscera staged with clinical brightness and ritual warmth. From Joseph Beuys comes the sense of healing materials and social sculpture; from Francis Bacon, the torque of flesh into feeling; from Damien Hirst, the cold vitrines of taxonomy.
Experimental
The Language of Love
Director: Valerie Cappuccino Cocos (Russian Federation & Thailand)
The first novella, “Escape,” tells the story of a hero who fled his feelings for another city and remembers the girl he left behind. The second novella, “Lost in Translation,” is about a girl from a tribe living by the ocean.
Experimental
August, 2026
Director: Ava Kennerly (USA)
Using technology of the present to render a seventy-six-year-old vision of itself. Inspired by “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury.
Experimental
The Wild Snail
Director: Pierre Ajavon (France)
By transforming a timelapse of a snail into an audiovisual palindrome, “The Wild Snail” explores the reversibility of time and the breathing of the world.
Through image-sound symmetry, the film unfolds as a meditative loop where movement becomes texture and slowness turns into a form of resistance to contemporary acceleration.
Experimental
Book of Skin
Director: Neil Kendricks (USA)
“Book of Skin” reimagines the myth of Pygmalion with a gender-bending twist as an artist’s fantasies and nightmares expressed in her drawings suddenly appear as shape-shifting, phantasmagoric images on the body of an artist’s model during a life-drawing session.
Experimental
Light Leaks & Memory
Director: Allen Myers (USA)
“Light Leaks & Memory” reflects on cinema as both artifact and illusion — a kind of séance where we reach beyond the edges of our understanding in search of collective meaning.
Experimental
The Mirror of Princes
Director: Rubens Francesco Giusberti (Italy)
The Mirror of Princes, is the personal Divine Comedy of director Rubens Francesco Giusberti, a short film that depicts a fresco of contemporary reality. The work addresses universal themes and philosophical-existential questions related to mankind, using symbolic language and images captured from different parts of the world.
Experimental
Unfolding
Director: Victoria Mohr-Blakeney & Christian Metaxas (Canada)
Unfolding is a short experimental film about relationships, loss, and struggles with mental health, visually explored through the folding, unfolding, idealization and devaluation of origami cranes.
Experimental
Count
Director: Daniele Grosso (Portugal)
A man entertains briefly the idea that suffering can’t be counted, that two who suffer are not more than one who suffers.
Experimental
1000 O
Director: Barbara Peikert (Switzerland)
An artificial umbilical cord inflates into cartoon bubbles with embryonic thoughts of a fetus.
Experimental
Dynamics
Director: Teo Baehler (Netherlands)
DYNAMICS (Frozen Movements) is an experimental, dreamy and surreal stop-motion film, created using everyday materials. The film offers a visual reflection on transformations that emerge through the intuitive blending of dissimilar elements.
Experimental
The Stream XV
Director: Hiroya Sakurai (Japan)
Time dwells within all that flows. I live in the Ogura-ike Reclaimed Land in Kyoto. Wind, water, and lines of cars pass across this land. On the highway, time moves straight toward the future. Yet there are places where time flows backward — rivers, forests, shrines, and villages, where time returns to its source. The echo of wind chimes that rang here a hundred years ago still resonates today.
Experimental
NARRATIVE FEATURE SCREENING (3:30 pm – 5:00 pm)
Ghosts
Director: Hans Henschel (Germany)
When David (36) hears the news that his friend Andreas (40) took his life, the days of their once close friendship have long been a thing of the past. hey hardly knew each other anymore. And yet, David can’t shake off the feeling of guilt over the suicide of his once best friend. David travels back home to the tiny small town near the German-Polish border where they both grew up. But what was originally planned to be a short visit to attend the funeral service, turns into a confrontation with a broken friendship and their mutual friend Paula. When the deceased Andreas suddenly appears as a ghost that only he can see, David initially attempts to shake off the apparition, but the ghost turns out to be as persistent as the question why Andreas took his own life, and even more so, what keeps him still in this world and whether David had a role in this.
Narrative
OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION (6:30pm – 7:30pm)
Come out and celebrate the opening of the 2026 fest! Enjoy food, drinks, & music as our attendees arrive on the red carpet for their photo op!
AWARDS CEREMONY AND SPOTLIGHT FEATURE SCREENING (7:30pm – 9:00pm)
2026 Spotlight Award Winner!
The Green Mill: A Real Chicago Joint
Director: Paul L Carr (USA)
The Green Mill is known as an old hangout for Al Capone and where Billie Holiday sang, and as a swinging jazz joint for generations of Chicagoans. For more than a century, this legendary nightclub was a melting pot of humanity and the music never stopped. In 2024, owner Dave Jemilo and five longtime employees gathered to talk about working till dawn, about playing the music, pouring the drinks, and living the nightlife. “The Green Mill: A Real Chicago Joint,” shares stories profane, profound, absurd, and often hilarious, as told by a group of people who are clearly reverent of the special place that brought them together.
Documentary
(57 minutes)
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Saturday, September 19th
MUSIC VIDEO AND ANIMATION SHORTS (11:00 am – 12:30pm)
16 animated short films from around the world!
Reconcile
Director: Konja Liu (USA)
A man and a woman interacting: “Reconcile”, explores relationship dynamics through a speechless narrative focused on physical human interaction.
Animation – Student
Silence
Director: Yoona Hwang (South Korea & USA)
Tacet, a mischievous yet art-loving deaf boy, experiences a musical concert in his own unique way. By clutching a balloon to feel the stage’s vibrations, he transforms sound waves into a vivid visual journey.
Animation – Student
Long Long Time
Director: Perry Kroll (USA)
A stranded traveller, ensnared out of space and time, glimpses a fractured path to salvation.
Music Video
Shadow
Director: R.J. Carstens (USA)
Two friends play a video game with sleek, realistic graphics. That causes extreme competition and tension that results in explosive reactions. While one friend wins the game, he loses in real life due to the rage of the opposition.
Music Video – Student
The Cartographer
Director: Raphael F Thebaud (USA)
The Cartographer is a 2d animated short film following a young witch on her way back to her home underground.
Animation – Student
You Didn’t Say Goodnight
Director: Daniel Orué (Argentina)
Nico (35), an Argentinian musician, is kidnapped and abandoned in a desert region in Northwest Argentina called the Calchaquí Valleys. Upon waking, he tries to return home and walks through the region’s extreme heat, even finding his guitar amidst the landscape.
Music Video
It’s Such a Bliss
Director: Roman Evdokimov (Russian Federation)
A pair of lovers stalking each other in a perpetual hide-and-seek game.
Music Video
A Grieving Heart
Director: Wendy Cong Zhao (USA)
An immigrant woman examines her past in the wake of her American ex-boyfriend’s death. The film explores how love and loss impact the ways she confronts her identity, memories, insecurities, and regrets.
Animation – Student
Eating in My Car Again
Director: Greg Roensch (USA)
A music video for the song “Eating in My Car Again” by Greg Roensch.
Music Video
Right Back to Me
Director: Jake Apgar (USA)
Music Video for Right Back to Me by Grady Mathison.
Music Video – Student
Big Red
Director: James Pyle (United Kingdom)
After testing a device which allows him to understand squirrel language, reporter Jimmy Benson has a day that’s no walk in the park.
Animation
She Knows
Director: Tómas Nói Emilsson (Ireland)
Haunted by a painful past, a quiet observer steps into a high society poker game, where an incident drags him back into the life he once abandoned.
Music Video
Prison and Time
Directors: Evan Bode & Marvin Wade (USA)
This collaboration was produced by Project Mend, an organization in Central New York which celebrates the lives and creative work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people as well as other individuals impacted by the criminal legal system.
Animation
Funeral
Director: Koco Wang (USA)
The boy attended a funeral at the cemetery, only to realize afterward that it was his own funeral.
Animation – Student
Dodgeball
Director: Jesse Van Norman (USA)
When a tiny robot decides to play a friendly game of dodgeball with a heavily-armed military robot, things don’t quite go as planned.
Animation – Student
Destination
Directors: Nae Rodrigues, Lucile Gervais, Timoté Hely, Melanie Mo, Guillaume Evrard (France)
Adam, a thirty years old man exhausted by his work, wakes up in the dining car of a moving train, without knowing neither when nor how he ended up there. He will have to roam through each car in the pursuite of answers : a trip that he won’t soon forget.
Animation – Student
DOCUMENTARY SHORTS (1:00pm – 3:00pm)
7 short documentary films from US and World filmmakers!
You Say We Aren’t Objects…
Director: Eden Haley (Canada)
A collection of anonymously shared stories detailing women’s experiences of sexualization, showcasing that it may not be ‘every man,’ but it is every woman. Content Advisory: Sexual Content – Descriptions of sexual assault and harassment
Documentary – Student
From Combat To Classroom
Director: Jackson Matthew Milligan (USA)
“Combat To Classroom” shares the story of our teacher Mr. Brandt, and his journey from serving in the military to teaching at a small rural school in Northern California.
Documentary – Student
KosherSoul
Director: Ilja Sarro (USA)
KosherSoul is a documentary that follows the intense two-day creation of a ground breaking, first of its kind pop-up dinner led by culinary historian and author Michael Twitty at a Black-owned restaurant in Southern California.
Documentary
Maintenance
Director: Rotem Avidani (Israel)
Michal is the only woman in Israel who owns a garage. Professionally, she’s an incredible success—a one-woman powerhouse who manages her male employees impressively. But when it comes to looking for a life partner, the challenges seem to be insurmountable.
Documentary – Student
Relevé
Director: Will Gorski & Annsley Helenhouse (USA)
In a small studio where laughter and music replace judgment, a group of teenage boys find strength, joy, and brotherhood through ballet, challenging the world’s expectations of traditional masculinity.
Documentary – Student
Resilience: The Kim LeBel Story
Director: Daniel Leonard Bernardi (USA)
In the face of a brutal childhood and harrowing experiences in the military, a resilient woman defies all odds, emerging as a courageous veteran of the Afghanistan War, fighting for justice and equality in a man’s world.
Documentary
The Fine Line
Director: Daniela Grigorenko (Russian Federation)
The film explores the theme of bone marrow donation from two perspectives:
From the recipient’s side – there are people who are willing to give a helping hand for free to save the life of a complete stranger.
From the donor’s side – helping others is neither difficult, nor painful, nor dangerous. Join the registry – save a life.
Documentary
NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS / SESSION 02 (3:30pm – 5:00pm)
A special session of 7 narrative short films!
Moss
Director: Yi Cheng Lin (Taiwan)
After Jie’s death, Jess receives a mysterious call from him, only to realize he has returned not to be saved, but to help her burn the bridges that have kept her anchored to him.
Narrative – Student
Baba is Melting
Director: Karim Emara (Egypt, Qatar, United States)
As his father waits in the car for him to join Friday prayer, a son calls to confront him about a secret second marriage. Set under Doha’s sweltering heat, ‘Baba is Melting’ unfolds in a moment of silence and tension where truth begins to surface and emotions boil over. The compelling short film examines masculinity, vulnerability, and the fragile bond between father and son with raw emotion and striking minimalism.
Narrative – Student
Deja Vu
Director: Pete Bridges (Australia)
Ben, a solitary artist, has been experiencing vivid moments of déjà vu involving a woman named Dani — starting first in his dreams, then increasingly in his waking life. As the experiences grow more intimate and often disruptive, he searches for clues and meaning, only to encounter another man living with the same phenomenon.
Narrative
Taste of Apples
Director: Kasper Szwaja (Poland)
After his uncle’s death, Adam returns to his childhood village to sell the family house. A chance meeting with his first love releases fragmented memories, where moments of intimacy intertwine with an unease bound to the house itself.
Narrative – Student
Captive Audience
Director: Kew Lin (Singapore)
Rejected by the music industry, a disenchanted musician decides to perform his music to a different audience — animals at the zoo.
Narrative
The Shift
Director: Xenia Beloglazova (Russian Federation)
A young woman finds herself stranded at an empty bus station in a southern town at night. She needs to charge her phone and wait for morning to continue her journey. Suddenly, a young man appears, showering her with attention and concern. But what sinister turn will this seemingly ordinary encounter take?
Narrative
REGIONAL FILMMAKERS RECEPTION (6:00pm – 7:00pm)
Come and meet our 2026 MWFF filmmakers as we hold a reception just for them and our attendees. Enjoy complimentary food, coffee, soft drinks, music, and a photo op on the red carpet!
REGIONAL FILMMAKERS SCREENING (7:00pm – 9:00pm)
A special session of 8 regionally made films! Q & A with the filmmakers between screenings!
The Lone Angler
Director: Giselle Calderon (USA)
A mysterious individual enters a saloon in a human-desolate town occupied by anthropomorphic sea creatures. He hides a secret that, if revealed, could put his life on the line. This secret becomes difficult to keep when robbers barge in. Will the individual stand by idly or will he risk it all to save the aquatic patrons?
Animation – Student
Steadfast
Director: Cayli Hanson (USA)
The local hardcore, punk scene is about the youth expressing their values and contributing to a local community. Participating and kickstarting a movement bigger than oneself.
Documentary – Student
The Rockford Chip
Director: Kai Borgetti (USA)
“The Rockford Chip” uncovers the history and behind the scenes of Mrs Fishers Chips and how they impact the community of Rockford, IL.
Documentary – Student
Our Glass Heart
Director: Anny Jimenez Abreu (USA)
Periodically sighted at a riverside park, a wistful young woman writes to no-one, shallowly soothing an ache she dreads to face. Yet in time, her own words drift back towards her, allowing deeper reflection, reminders of the place she’s truly missing, and a call to return to things she thought would be better buried.
Narrative – Student
Smash Burger
Director: Joy Young Kwok (USA)
An overworked fast-food employee takes revenge on his horrible workplace, but little does he know, his chronic condition makes him take it a little too far.
Animation – Student
Madam
Director: Margot Magdalene Torresin (USA)
Madam centers around Celia, whose secret double life as a woman threatens to upend her relationship with her conflicted Aunt Doris. Will Celia continue to live in comfortable misery or sacrifice their relationship in order to live as her true self?
Narrative – Student
Bound by Love, Not Borders
Director: Junior Gallardo (USA)
“Bound by Love, Not Borders” highlights Jose’s journey to becoming a American citizen.
Documentary – Student
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Sunday, September 20th
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE SCREENING (11:30 am – 1:00pm)
For Gaza We Rise
Director: Nicholas Stange (USA)
The film follows Rockford For Palestine’s struggle to get the City of Rockford to pass a ceasefire resolution.
(55 minutes)
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE SCREENING (2:00 pm – 3:30 pm)
The Zoo
Director: Aleksey Shabarov (Russian Federation)
While Moscow sleeps, the Moscow Zoo lives its secret life. Rody, the roody shelduck, introduces us to its inhabitants: Forester the tiger rescued from the poachers; Pipita the elephant; Elbrus the leopard; Motya the orangutan; and Din the sea lion. Through the stories of animals and people who dedicated their lives to rescuing and taking care of these animals, the film explores the price of responsibility for another life.
(70 minutes)
NARRATIVE FEATURE SCREENING (4:30 pm – 6:00 pm)
Zebra Hooves
Director: David Dawson (USA)
A hypochondriac heads to the Wisconsin Dells to get out of his head and relax. He’s instructed by his doctor to record video diaries of his anxiety symptoms, but soon finds something sinister in the Midwestern air — his own demons and a bad time.
(77 minutes)
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PAST FEST SCREENING LISTINGS
MWFF Film Fest Schedule – 2025