2022 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Short Film Challenge

Ilanga Alikho follows the son of the professional mourner who has now taken up the mantle of his father. He is confused. He does not want to mourn anymore, but it is all he knows how to do. He goes to the local flea market and purchases some chickens for a sacrificial ceremony in the name of his ancestors. Soon enough he is traversing the vast mountainous landscape of Kwa-Zulu Natal as he struggles to find a place where he belongs.

Aida and her daughter Aidita are struggling to survive the ravages of a hurricane that has devastated the island of Puerto Rico, when they suddenly find a strange creature living in their backyard.This is a magical realist horror film about the desperation people like my family and I felt in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

An expecting Korean-American woman returns to her mother's rustic home. They bathe and scrub each other, searching for reconnection and redemption.

Sharing explores a mother and daughter relationship as they get ready to separate for the holidays.Bianca a single parent shares custody of her daughter, Jade. The film follows Bianca on Boxing Day morning, as she takes Jade to her fathers house. Exploring how their relationship is affected by proximity.We watch Bianca as she puts aside her own feelings to keep Jade close and does what she feels is best for her daughter, despite not wanting to be apart.

As a political and health crisis foments in the republic of Georgia, folk singers, winemakers and retired maths teachers attempt to restore harmony through practices that integrate ancestral knowledge.

Deer Girl follows a reclusive ecologist who becomes enamored with a teen girl after he captures her on surveillance interfering with his experiment. Inspired by the restrictions of pandemic filmmaking, the film structurally explores how individuals can connect without ever appearing in the same physical space.

Still mourning the loss of his mother, Jorge prepares to celebrate her return during the Xandú, a blend of Catholic and traditional Zapotec practices where departed souls return to the living world during the All Saints Day/Dia de Los Muertos celebration. Jorge is at the center of a massive community effort to make this celebration just right while tackling the mixed feelings that the Xandú brings.

DZUD follows Munkhjargal, a 10 year old female jockey, and her family of nomadic herders as they train to compete in Mongolia’s most important festival–Naadam–following a devastating cycle of extreme winters and dry summers that decimated their flock and threatens their way of life.

Panorama Exótico explores and satirizes what it means to call something “exotic”. I believe that the use of the term is almost always charged with racial, gendered or nationalistic assumptions, and in this manner, calling something "exotic" often reveals more about the person labelling rather than what is being labelled. The film asks: what is exotic for who? By using close-ups of fruit and playing with objective voice overs, the film explores the fetishes we all hold in our minds about certain places, people, and things.

Nine-year-old tomboy Xiaoyu always wants to hang out with a group of boys in her neighborhood, but when her chance to join the “boys squad” would be at the cost of a girl that she just made friends with, Xiaoyu has a hard decision to make.