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.

FILM SYNOPSIS Seeking an alternative to America’s consumer culture, hundreds of back-to-the-land families coalesced around Poet Laureate Gary Snyder and settled on the San Juan Ridge in the late ‘60s. Repeatedly threatened by corporate Goliaths intent on clear-cutting the Sierra forests, damming the Yuba River, arson, and polluting the Ridge with open-pit gold mining, the community organized to defend their homesteads. Their success overcoming these seemingly impossible obstacles has created national models of sustainability. Now they are facing their greatest threat of all: climate driven wildfires. A Radical Thread is set against the dramatic scars of 19th century hydraulic gold mining and told through Marsha Stone’s 17-year collaborative project stitching an 83-foot tapestry visualizing the Ridge’s story in twelve narrative embroidered panels. Shelly Covert, the spokesperson for the Nevada City Rancheria Nisenan Tribe credits the community’s activism for helping set the stage for cultural reparations. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder’s prescient archival footage about the environmental costs of fossil fuels are combined with his faith in the Ridge’s continued vitality. And Tapestry Illustrator Jennifer Rain Crosby demonstrates how its creation embodies the ethos of the community. But the main character is the tapestry itself that depicts a community originating with much optimism and hope, runs into multiple challenges, grows and learns as it survives, faces the existential threat of climate change, and comes together to understand new ways of sustainability for future generations. The fact that many voices contribute to the community’s narrative, reflects the power of their collective nature as well the process of making the tapestry. A Radical Thread explores what can happen when a community truly dedicates itself to “living lightly on the land.” As second-generation Ridge member Caleb Dardick says, the Ridge endures because each member will step up and say, “I want to add my stitch.”

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.

A mysterious young girl wanders a desolate, otherworldly landscape, carrying a large egg.

Anand, a 30-something city dweller compelled to spend a 10-day mourning period for his father in the rugged countryside of western India, tenderly bonds with a local farmer who is struggling to stay unmarried. As the mourning ends, forcing his return, Anand must decide the fate of his relationship born under duress.

What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.

Moscow, winter 2021: At TV Rain, the only remaining independent channel, young journalists have been branded “foreign agents”— targeted for surveillance or worse, and required to tag their reporting with a disclaimer that they are serving foreign powers. Regardless: Ksyusha furiously produces and edits stories to distract herself from her fellow-journalist fiancé’s imprisonment; Anya hosts everyday heroes of resistance on her interview show, while shielding both her sanity and her young daughter from the regime’s relentless “fuckery”; Sonya produces the “Hi, You’re a Foreign Agent” podcast at her kitchen table while beholding her empty living room (why buy a sofa when who knows what will happen to her?); Alesya fends off anxiety that her office has been bugged, while hiding her relationship with her girlfriend from her traditional mother. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is just weeks away, as these Gen-Z heroines confront propagandist absurdity and personal endangerment, fighting for the soul of a country they love to the bitter end.

What begins as an intimate portrait of Russian independent journalists facing persecution by Putin’s regime takes a drastic turn when Russia starts a full-scale war in Ukraine and they are all forced into exile. The film offers a front row seat to how authoritarianism works and the lives of those who resist, which becomes all the more globally relevant every day.

When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients’ dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it.

Conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and Linda Rosenkrantz from 1974 sheds light on New York's vibrant downtown art world and the introspective journey of an artist's life.

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.

An affluent and unexceptional homemaker in the suburbs develops multiple chemical sensitivity.

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.

"Suburban Fury" examines the 1975 assassination attempt on U.S. President Gerald Ford by Sara Jane Moore, a conservative, middle-aged, single mother from the San Francisco suburbs who became radicalized while working as an FBI informant.

A high school A/V assignment goes full-on activist when English teacher Fred Isseks sends students, armed with video recorders, on an investigative assignment to suss out the brown muck surfacing at the local dump in their upstate New York town. The toxicity they discover lives not only in the landfill, but in political corruption and environmental injustice in their community. Archival footage of their 1996 class project, “Garbage, Gangsters, and Greed,” outtakes, diaries, and interviews with Fred and several students 30 years later weave a sobering yet buoyant story both timely and for the ages, about fighting the good fight as its own life-changing triumph.

Librarians emerge as first responders in the fight for democracy and our First Amendment Rights. As they well know, controlling the flow of ideas means control over communities. In Texas, the Krause List targets 850 books focused on race and LGBTQia+ stories – triggering sweeping book bans across the U.S. at an unprecedented rate. As tensions escalate, librarians connect the dots from heated school and library board meetings nationwide to lay bare the underpinnings of extremism fueling the censorship efforts. Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work – the librarians’ rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale.

With ghostly visits and joyful songs, Michael Caine and your favourite Muppets tell their hilarious version of an old, bitter miser's redemption on Xmas Eve. Guaranteed to put you in a holiday spirit!

Set in a remote Chilean mining town in 1982, Diego Céspedes’ dazzling debut feature follows young Lidia, who grows up within a vibrant queer household led by drag performers and trans women. When a mysterious illness—rumored to spread through the gaze between men—sows fear and hysteria, the community becomes the target of suspicion and violence. Through Lidia’s eyes, Céspedes crafts a haunting allegory of love, myth, and prejudice that reimagines the early AIDS era as a queer western with poetic intimacy and desert-dry surrealism. Winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo recalls the emotional vibrancy of Almodóvar and continues Chile’s proud legacy of queer cinema—marking Céspedes as one of the most exciting new voices in world cinema.

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.

Inspired by the folk tale of the boy Siljan, who after a quarrel with his father turns into a stork and leaves home, the film is a story about the relationship between a farmer and a white stork.

A research facility in Antarctica comes across an alien force that can become anything it touches with 100% accuracy. The members must now find out who's human and who's not before it's too late.

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.

25th Anniversary Screening! This sweet, sharp, snowbound story from director Lukas Moodysson (Lilya 4-Ever, Show Me Love, We Are the Best!) is perfect viewing for that cozy yet liminal pocket of days in between Christmas and the New Year. In mid-1970s, fleeing life with her abusive husband Rolf, Elisabeth moves into her brother Goran's commune, with her two children Stefan and Eva. A big house in suburban Stockholm, the commune is called "Together" and inhabited by a crowded assortment of people. Initially resistant to Elisabeth's entry, the commune soon accepts her and her children as part of their family. Soon Elisabeth is acclimating to her new surroundings and the commune's liberal attitudes towards sex, drugs and politics. But just as she's becoming settled, her husband shows up looking to get the family back together.

On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo find a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.

Unbecoming Attractions RETURNS! Kelly and Carl present to you a SEVENTH helping of jewels and junk sifted from the scrapheap of our collective cinematic consciousness, just in time for ye olde holly days. There will be some jingle but jangle will be kept to a minimum. Join us for around 70 minutes of: Dazzling colors! Beautiful humans! Hyperbolic press quotes! This eclectic hoot of a trailer show - all in 35mm! - has something for everyone! (Except children.) Selected from the archive of the Film on Film Foundation.

Viridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.

Winner of four Ariel Awards—for Best First Feature, Original Screenplay, Actress, and Breakthrough Performance—and selected as Mexico’s official submission for the Best International Film Oscar, We Shall Not Be Moved tells the story of Socorro—played by Luisa Huertas in a tour-de-force performance—a retired lawyer consumed by her obsession to find the soldier who killed her brother during the student protests of October 2, 1968, when demands for democracy and justice were brutally silenced in Mexico City’s Tlatelolco Square. Nearly six decades later, her relentless pursuit has fractured her relationships with her sister, Esperanza, and her son, Jorge. When a new clue emerges, Socorro sets out on a perilous quest for vengeance, putting her family, her legacy, and her own life in jeopardy. Shot in striking black and white, director Pierre Saint Martin delivers a powerful and intimate reflection on the enduring wounds of Mexico’s modern history.

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother-in-law is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank and his business partners make bad decisions.

Terry Zwigoff returns to The Roxie with a double-feature that includes a film he and his neighborhood cinema have been heckling, cajoling, even daring one another for decades to get up on screen in the Mission District; his 1st cinematic effort, the 1985 LOUIE BLUIE; a wry, ribald, & magical portrait of the country-blues string band player and irrepressible raconteur Howard Armstrong (a.k.a. Louie Bluie), paired with the ‘Director’s Cut” of a perennial cult favorite, the nasty as it wants to be, BAD SANTA. Terry in person to talk us through why these two, and why now, while he’s signs & sells Criterion remasters of both.