Tisch School of the Arts (NYU)

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.

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

Zack Homer takes over managing the barbershop after Joe is killed for trying to rip off his "investor", Mr. Lovejoy. All Zack wants to do is run a traditional barbershop giving traditional haircuts, but modern styles have passed him by and business is slow. One evening, Mr. Lovejoy shows up to offer Zack the same deal he gave to Joe. It could turn his business around, but what will he have to give in return?

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.

A forbidden relationship and a religious ritual enlighten a man's inability to orgasm in his mid-twenties.

Valentina Moreno, a single mother who works as a housekeeper for a wealthy Manhattan family, takes decisive action when something from her past threatens to ruin her personal and professional relationships.

A woman tries to capture the difficulties of caring for her ailing husband in a series of letters to her daughter—letters she can never send, as her husband refuses to tell anyone, especially their daughter, of his illness.

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.

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?

This animated twist on Halloween memories involves the traumatic theft of a candy bag on Halloween night.

Pasang, a new girl at a nunnery, has her first period after hearing a late-night ghost story. She keeps it secret until she bleeds at a prayer session. She believes that she has been cursed and needs to sacrifice a black goat to avoid further misfortune.

Floyd has worked his whole life. One day, while out a new job, he discovers something that alters his way of thinking.

On the stormy night of July 5th, 1995, Trick Stuart works the graveyard shift with his plus-sized pal Meathead at the Delta Kream, a 24HR fast food joint. As they practice their brass band routine, a very unexpected visitor arrives.

Holly, an anxiety-ridden high school sophomore, is faced with the challenge of giving a class presentation.

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.

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

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

Max, a deaf 12-year-old, becomes infatuated with his big sister's boyfriend during a weekend retreat.

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.

The tense relationship between a mother and son reaches a climax during a summer heatwave.