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The 2025 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, presented by Vimeo, is a dynamic showcase of seven standout short films from this year’s Festival, including two Festival Award–winning titles. Curated for theatrical audiences nationwide, the 100-minute program offers an eclectic mix of storytelling that highlights bold voices and fresh perspectives. The 2025 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour provides a curated glimpse into the Festival’s offerings, underscoring the compelling narrative possibilities inherent in the short film format. For those who couldn’t attend the 2025 Sundance Film Festival — held in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah, from January 23 to February 2, as well as online — this tour presents a special opportunity to discover a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and animated shorts brimming with humor, emotion, inspiration, and unforgettable characters, representing truly bold independent storytelling. Long recognized as a vital platform for short-form cinema and a springboard for numerous acclaimed independent filmmakers, the Sundance Film Festival annually presents a diverse array of fiction, documentary, and animated works from global storytellers. Across its many editions, the Festival has been instrumental in supporting short films, connecting both established and rising talents with enthusiastic audiences. Fueled by a spirit of innovation and artistic exploration, the Short Film Program continues to spotlight some of the most distinctive voices in filmmaking today. The Festival’s Short Film Program has long been established as a place to discover talented directors, such as alumni Andrea Arnold, Lake Bell, Damien Chazelle, Destin Daniel Cretton, Jay and Mark Duplass, Debra Granik, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Sterlin Harjo, Todd Haynes, Don Hertzfeldt, Sky Hopinka, Shaka King, Lynne Ramsay, Dee Rees, Joey Soloway, Taika Waititi, and many others.
Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn’t screw it up first. In a performance marked by darkly comic pathos, first-time actor Ubeimar Rios stars in Simón Mesa Soto’s Un Certain Regard Jury Prize-winner A Poet, a raw and riotous farce about how good deeds are often met with the universe’s idea of cruel and unusually poetic punishment.
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A deeply moving, multigenerational drama, ALL THAT’S LEFT OF YOU follows a Palestinian teenager who gets swept into a protest in the Occupied West Bank and experiences a moment of violence that rocks his family. The film unfolds as his mother recounts the political and emotional threads that led to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades, the film traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, bearing witness to the scars of dispossession and the enduring legacy of survival. Jordan's Official Selection for the 98th Academy Awards.
Rfor some violence/bloody images.
In the year 20XX, a huge and mysterious flower called “Darol” suddenly appears in Japan. Volunteers like Rita, a resourceful but lonely young woman who does not fit in with her peers, are dispatched to help clean up and rebuild. But one day, Darol suddenly emits a deafening signal, and its surrounding fruit bursts, revealing hordes of creatures that quickly slaughter everyone. Rita makes a valiant attempt to escape but dies in the attempt. Then… she wakes up again, only to witness the same tragedy. And again. Stuck in an inexplicable time loop, Rita struggles until she meets Keiji, a shy young man who is also experiencing the loop alongside her. Based on the worldwide best-selling light novel and manga, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL is a thrilling and big-hearted vision of what it means to live for tomorrow.
PG-13for thematic elements, violence, strong language, and smoking.
What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.
The film that put director Zhang Yimou and star Gong Li on the international cinema map follows beautiful young Ju Dou as she is married off to an egregiously cruel, and also impotent, owner of a dye mill in the Chinese countryside in the early 20th century. When the boss’ nephew arrives on the scene they fall for each other with lustful abandon. Their impassioned affair soon leads to a son. After the clandestine couple convinces the despotic husband that he is the father, the boy is raised as his long-awaited heir. However the myriad complications of infidelity lead to a visceral and psychological melee between the lovers and their ruler with explosively dramatic turns. With its stunning mise en scène and sumptuous use of color, Ju Dou was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards® and has earned a reputation as one of the greatest Chinese films ever made.
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A portrayal of Ferdinand Magellan and Beatriz Barbosa's 1517 marriage in Seville, focusing on their brief time together before his departure on the Spanish crown's expedition.
For the first 25 years of his adult life Jose Maria Sison was known to various degrees as the Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara of the Philippines. For the last 35 years of his life he has been living in exile, 10,000 km away from the bustle, the intrigue, the bribery and the squalor of Manila, in the tranquil medieval city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. In the 1960s Jose Maria Sison founded the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the CPP’s guerrilla-military arm, the New People’s Army (NPA), among other noble and nefarious activities that led to his Philippine passport being revoked in 1987. To the US State Department, the Philippine government, and some European authorities, Sison is a certified terrorist. With his wife Julie he lives a hand-to-mouth Spartan existence and yet they are the most charming couple. This is their love story: their love for each other, their love of country, and the love of many of their compatriots for them.
In pre-internet 1987, Conor and his dog Sandy live a life of seclusion, lost in the slow-rendering graphics of early Macs and televisions aglow with late night horror movie marathons. But when he begins playing OBEX, a new and mysterious, state-of-the-art computer game, he finds himself trapped in a low-tech, but high-stakes analog hellscape as the line between reality and game blurs. Audacious and uncanny, writer-director Albert Birney's OBEX is a delightfully skewed lo-fi fantasy. Shot in striking black and white, this surreally nostalgic nightmare revisits the dawn of personal computing to reflect on the loneliness of our always-online present day.
In a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. This monster, adrift in reverie, clings to visions no one else can see—until a woman appears. Gifted with the rare power to perceive these illusions for what they truly are, she chooses to enter the monster’s dreams, determined to uncover the truth that lies hidden within.
Rfor some language including a sexual reference, and brief nudity.
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star. Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father — and deal with an American star dropped right in the middle of their complex family dynamics.
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Shredding is a short surf film program that invites both lifelong diehards and the uninitiated alike to re-examine how surfing is culturally framed. Within the context of the sport, the term “shredding” has had difficulty escaping its mocking association with a certain archetypal image of the surfer, caricatures like Jeff Spicoli, Bodhi, Zack Morris, etc. Rather than merely decrying this apparent lack of representation, Shredding affirmatively undermines those cumbersome and outdated stereotypes by sharing the experiences of those whose very presence on a board redefines the discourse. Through contemporary lenses from as far afield as Morocco to up and down the California coast, we get to see how people are expanding the surf space today. Myriad perspectives, uniquely shaped by similar challenges: feeling seen, gaining access, and eventually, changing that archetypal image of what a surfer looks like. Each film incrementally opens up that much more space for someone new to try, welcoming their identity and interpretation into the surfing lexicon, with others then feeling welcome to follow suit. After Shredding, it seems irrefutable that surfing really is for everyone. Any time or place they can get to the beach, the rhythmic beat of the waves will be there waiting. Going deeper still, what remains after the shredding of this homogenous cultural image is a shifted focus to what’s actually most important: how surfing makes you feel. The implicit lesson being that, in spite of differences about who that surfer is and where they come from, or their respective struggles at getting there, the joy experienced upon arriving at any place where the waves break seems almost universal. A kindred calling to the water, a sense of freedom, a transcendental escape from temporality, a feeling of clarity, a communing with nature. What Shredding says most emphatically is that surfing is love.
"A rare glimpse from the inside at the daily racial, economic, and environmental issues confronting the African American residents of San Francisco's Bayview/Hunters Point districts (circa 2001). This documentary depicts hip-hop culture in its rawest, uncut form: from the history of this once-thriving black community, built military-barrack-style overlooking the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site) and PG&E's toxic wastelands, to the truth behind the alleged gang-related "Rap Wars."--Container. Kevin Epps directs and hosts the "hardcore hip-hop documentary" Straight Outta Hunters' Point. This searing, deeply troubling program carries the audience to the poverty, crime, and grunge-infested borough of Hunter's Point, a neighborhood of the mostly-affluent San Francisco, California. Epps reveals how the 'rap battles' conducted by cutthroat street gangstas have torn this already-struggling community to bloody shreds - with slim odds for a socioeconomic rebound. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
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Brought up in an environment torn apart by violence and alcohol, Lidia Yuknavitch seemed destined for self-destruction and failure until words offered her unexpected freedom in the form of literature. The Chronology of Water, adapted from Yuknavitch’s autobiographical bestseller, follows Lidia’s journey to find her own voice in an exploration of how trauma can be transformed into art through re-possessing our own bloody histories, particularly those uniquely experienced by the bodies of women and girls.
R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, language, and some full nudity.
1977. In a Brazil tormented by the military dictatorship, Marcelo, a man in his forties fleeing a troubled past, arrives in the city of Recife where he hopes to build a new life and reconnect with his family. That's without taking into account the death threats that lurk and hover over his head.
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Red Crescent volunteers receive an emergency call. A 6-year old girl is trapped in a car under IDF fire in Gaza, pleading for rescue. While trying to keep her on the line, they do everything they can to get an ambulance to her.
Rfor language and some drug references.
Spinal Tap, one of England's loudest bands, is chronicled by film director Marty DiBergi on what proves to be a fateful tour.
PG-13for some violence and a scene of sensuality
Bella Swan has always been a little bit different. Never one to run with the crowd, Bella never cared about fitting in with the trendy girls at her Phoenix, Arizona high school. When her mother remarries and Bella chooses to live with her father in the rainy little town of Forks, Washington, she doesn't expect much of anything to change. But things do change when she meets the mysterious and dazzlingly beautiful Edward Cullen. For Edward is nothing like any boy she's ever met. He's nothing like anyone she's ever met, period. He's intelligent and witty, and he seems to see straight into her soul. In no time at all, they are swept up in a passionate and decidedly unorthodox romance - unorthodox because Edward really isn't like the other boys. He can run faster than a mountain lion. He can stop a moving car with his bare hands. Oh, and he hasn't aged since 1918. Like all vampires, he's immortal. That's right - vampire. But he doesn't have fangs - that's just in the movies. And he doesn't...
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Christine (Sandy McLeod) takes a job selling tickets at a porno theater near Times Square. Instead of distancing herself from the dark and erotic nature of this milieu, she develops an obsession that begins to consume her life. Few films deal honestly with a female sexual pointof-view, controversial and highly personal, VARIETY does just this.