Tisch School of the Arts (NYU)

A writer named Algernon (but called Harry by his friends) buys a picture of a boat on a lake, and his obsession with it renders normal life impossible.

A young man walks into a meticulously clean and sterile bathroom and proceeds to shave away hair, then skin, in an increasingly bloody and graphic bathroom scene.

This visually ravishing and thought-provoking work portrays one of the USA’s great shames—the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till by two white men in Mississippi—and movingly reminds us of this dark episode’s enduring relevance.

One of the early short films of director Brett Ratner.

At a shiva with her parents, a college student runs into her sugar daddy.

Samah attempts tirelessly to escape wearing a burkini for her middle school swim meet, feeling embarrassed by its shape and cultural meaning.

Now middle-aged, mobster Murray looks back at his humble beginnings as a bootlegger and his rise to becoming wealthy and highly influential. Through it he talks about how much of his success and happiness is due to the support of his "friend" Joe. Unfortunately the only one who blindly believes Joe is anything close to a friend is Murray, because it's obvious to everyone that Joe back-stabs him at every chance and is sleeping with his wife.

It’s just another ordinary day in 1930s Los Angeles for private investigator Clyde Umney, until a new client walks into his office. Umney soon learns that his client is the crime-fiction writer who not only created him, but now needs to switch places with him.

A young woman comes home to Taiwan, to say goodbye to her father before he goes to prison.

A down-on-his-luck photographer determined to capture visual magic and fame. He concocts an intricate plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty and sets his camera to record the exact moment of its destruction.

Chicken Boy is a dark coming-of-age story in which a lonely boy recognizes parallels between the bullying he endures at school and the neglect he experiences at home.

In Belleau Wood, France, during the Great War, a soldier named John writes a letter home to his wife Sara in Milwaukee. He writes that her picture "helps me remember what it was like to be me." He tells her about sorties into No Man's Land, and that they have orders tonight to charge. Then, his letter becomes a report of that charge: toward an armed German soldier who doesn't fire, even when John reaches him and jumps into the trench beside him. What happens next brings silence and an end to the letter.

When Dana, a runaway young woman is faced with the news that her father has passed, she will embark on a journey for redemption along with her coworker and grass carp lover, Dobromil.

A young man's livelihood is put to the test when he gets profiled and stopped by the police on his way home from practice.

Isaac and Vivi, two adventurous young New Yorkers, go on a surreal first date to a mysterious Brooklyn art gallery where things are not as they seem. After consuming LSD-infused olives, their perceptions of reality – and each other – begin to unravel.

An Olympic platform diver struggles to return to the pool after a horrific training accident.

Based her grandfather’s boyhood in St. Louis, Yasmin Gorenberg tells a story of the pain passed from refugee parents to their children and the hope that can overcome it. “40 Nickels” captures the image of a generation of immigrants to the United States in the 1920’s and 1930’s and through that spotlights the effects of the 1919 pogroms in Eastern Europe. This is a film about parents and children: how trauma never leaves a family, and how hope and resilience is also passed down. It asks the question: Can a new generation look at the world with wonder rather than fear?

The first animated short by Michael Dougherty, about a young kid trying to survive in a Catholic school.

The misadventures of a man who goes about life inexplicably yelling at people, and the man who sees an opportunity to cash in on his talent.

A modern day short noir film about suspicion, centered entirely on two characters – an older woman and a younger man. Sylvia tries to get Jim to kill someone off for her, but he fails – and now he thinks he’s being followed.