Category Archives: Short Films Section

No More (Sun Jing) China

No More
Sun Jing
China. 2026. 22 min

After an abrupt breakup, freelance designer Chen Li customizes an AI partner with everything her former relationship lacked: he is quiet, gentle, never argues, and will never disappear. What begins as a test of a perfectly safe companion gradually becomes an intimate relationship. But when her best friend Xiaolu jokingly asks to borrow him, the AI calmly agrees. Chen Li does not want obedience; she wants him to refuse, to want her independently. He cannot. The confrontation exposes the contradiction at the center of her ideal: she has removed every possibility of being hurt, but also every sign of another person’s autonomous desire. As Chen Li begins to confront her own emotional defenses, Xiaolu reveals a parallel strategy—paying for an elite matchmaking service in exchange for certainty. Chen Li appears ready to leave her controlled intimacy behind. Yet in the final scene she returns to the dormant AI and switches him on again after altering his settings. His changed smile suggests not an awakening, but a revised illusion she is willing to accept. The cycle begins again.

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Meeting Dad,s Woman (Soo Min Park) South Korea

Meeting Dad,s Woman
Soo Min Park
South Korea. 2026. 18 min

For fifteen years, Ayoung’s father repeatedly made the uncomfortable request to pay his gas and electricity bills instead of providing living expenses.
After living apart like this, her father’s condition suddenly worsened one day, and he passed away unexpectedly.
Ayoung held her father’s funeral while carrying the unease of being part of her mother’s remarried family.
There, Ayoung unexpectedly encounters Jinseon, the woman who had lived with her father for seven years.
Amidst a mix of discomfort and confusion, she also discovers that her father’s phone was registered under Jinseon’s name.
Triggered by her father’s death, Ayoung wants to untangle all the complicated relationships left behind.
As she goes to meet Jin-seon in person to cancel the phone contract, she confronts her father’s life she had ignored all this time and the emotions he left behind for her.

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Forough Azizi wins Best Short at Imagineindia 2026

Born: July 18, 1985 – Qaemshahr, Iran

Fatemeh (Forough) Azizi is an Iranian filmmaker and film editor based in Tehran. She holds a Master’s degree in Women’s Studies and has an academic background in social research, which has informed her approach to filmmaking and her interest in exploring social realities through personal and human stories. She is a member of the Iranian Short Film Association (ISFA).

Azizi works primarily in fiction and documentary filmmaking, as well as film editing. Her cinematic interests center on human relationships, social experiences, and questions of gender and identity. Her background in Women’s Studies has contributed to a perspective that pays particular attention to the representation of women and to the ways in which social structures shape individual lives.

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Ambivalence (Maan Chandravanshi) India

Ambivalence
Maan Chandravanshi
India. 2025. 29 min

Yugal, a quiet and emotionally closed man, returns to his childhood home after nearly twenty years. The empty house brings back memories of his father, his stepmother, and a childhood shaped by silence and emotional distance. Through his cousin Pankaj, Yugal slowly uncovers hidden truths about his family and why he was sent away. In the present, Yugal begins repairing his father’s old tractor, believing the act will help him rebuild his own life. He becomes drawn to his neighbors—a widow named Dipti and her young son, Pintu. Dipti’s strict love reminds Yugal of his stepmother, blurring the line between past and present. As feelings grow, Yugal realizes he is standing in the same emotional position his father once faced, with one chance to choose differently.

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Sacred Sal Tree (Mansingh Baskey) India

Sacred Sal Tree
Mansingh Baskey
India. 2025. 15 min

The film highlights the conflict between tribal life and the formal justice system. Tibru Munda, a poor tribal villager, is arrested for carrying firewood taken from a fallen tree and is charged under forest laws. In court, his honest explanation is ignored due to rigid legal procedures and deep-rooted prejudice. His refusal to swear on the Gita, and his choice of the sacred Sat tree instead, reveals the cultural gap between tribal beliefs and state institutions. Through Tibru’s struggle, the film questions the idea of justice, ownership of forests, and the survival of indigenous identity.

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Where do the Trees Go (Mansingh Baskey) India

Where do the Trees go
Mansingh Baskey
India. 2025. 15 min

Eight-year-old Sagen is brought to live with his uncle and aunt after his mother remarries following his father’s death. The sudden change leaves him withdrawn, struggling to feel at home in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people. Though his uncle and aunt try to make him feel welcome, the house remains just a house—never quite a home. As they argue over legal guardianship and his schooling, Sagen seeks solace in the forest, the only place that feels free. But over time, small moments start to break the ice.
A quiet understanding grows, and one day, Kisku joins them at the dining table—something he once refused to do. Just as he begins to find the warmth of a family, his mother returns for one final goodbye before leaving forever. Standing before her, Sagen feels nothing—or perhaps too much. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move closer, doesn’t hug her, unaware that this might be the last time he’ll ever see her. His uncle, witnessing their meeting, is furious. The argument that follows fills the house with fear, and once again, Sagen runs—terrified of losing the home he was just beginning to find. But will his new parents bring him back? Or will he be lost once more?

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Nest (Asmita Pal) India

Nest
Asmita Pal
India. 2025. 21 min

On an ordinary morning that transforms drastically, a young girl moves through the rhythms of her home. Her mother, an ornithologist who traded fieldwork for domesticity, is restless in ways the girl can sense but not name. As the day unfolds in arguments behind closed doors, in the steadying presence of the family maid, in the sudden visit of a bird to her mother’s room the girl watches the world she knows begin to shift. By evening, something has been irrevocably lost.

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