2026 Short Film Grant Finalists

This historical drama is set in 1911 San Francisco's Chinatown and is inspired by true events. The mother-daughter story is about a brothel madam who hides her young daughter at a mission house, then secretly joins its leader to rescue girls and bring down the most powerful human trafficker in San Francisco--her owner--a story still relevant today.

The 10-minute proof-of-concept for this narrative feature shows how the daughter arrives at the brothel, is assaulted, and how the mother steals her daughter away to the mission house.

The brothel madam is a combination of two real people: Tien Fu Wu, an interpreter for the mission, and Ah Peen Oie, a madam who sought refuge at the mission.

A teen daughter's secret online sign-up plunges her widowed father into a week of disastrous dating, but just before his free trial runs out, he takes a final leap of faith and posts a coded message that he prays only the right woman can decipher.

What starts as an awkward experiment turns into a wild adventure as Don endures a series of comically mismatched dates, from a roller skating diva to a gold-digger who literally digs for gold. As Grace cheers him on, Don grapples with grief, faith, and the courage to open his heart again. Just when he’s ready to give up, a mysterious message changes everything - proving that love, like life, unfolds in its own time and often in the most unexpected

A young Neapolitan precarious worker bumps into a girl running from the traffickers who kidnapped her in a war zone. Together, they'll unleash a magical rebellion where love becomes the only way to rewrite their fate.

(Musical, Short Film)

After my partner died, I kept thinking, “I asked for this.” I didn’t actually believe that, but I didn’t have the words to describe what I felt until I heard the term “Soul Contract.” Because if someone had told me, the day I met him, how it was going to end, I would have agreed to it then too.

Soul Contract is about two people trying to do the best that they can for each other in impossible circumstances. Maybe because they “agreed” to it. Or maybe because that’s what you do when you love someone unconditionally—and that type of love exists beyond time and space.

In the depths of my own grief, this film is the one I needed to feel seen.

Learn more: https://canva.link/fl3zqme4cnhgfe4

After a mastectomy, a woman returns to life drawing modelling, confronting fear, cruelty, and self-doubt, until one student’s drawing helps her see herself anew.

“This story recognises the sometimes difficult and isolated process that women with breast cancer go through when reconciling their new body image with societal expectations. Community understanding plays an important role in reinforcing that scars and changes to the body represent strength and survivorship following treatment. For this to happen there needs to be an open and continuous conversation in society and films like A Body of Land create this very opportunity." Head of Nursing at NZ Breast Cancer Foundation, Natalie James

Hitchhike is an offbeat road-trip comedy about an Eastern European farm girl who picks up a Texan hitchhiker on the run. A straightforward drive across West Texas becomes an awkward cultural collision filled with deadpan misunderstandings and unexpected chemistry.

A grieving jazz musician living on the streets of Los Angeles begins to reconnect with music and life when a young girl reaches out to him through small acts of kindness.

LOG:
A Black data analyst discovers her company's AI housing app excludes the very communities it claims to serve and finds an unlikely voice guiding her toward the truth she has been carrying all along.

Navaya is a data analyst at a San Francisco tech startup. Talented. Prepared. Doing everything right and going nowhere. When her company launches an AI housing app, she discovers what no one wants to hear. The algorithm is broken. It recommends neighborhoods that have always been safe and ignores the ones never meant to survive. She knows why. She has lived the data her whole life. What finds her next is a podcast she never downloaded. And a voice that knows her in a way no stranger should.

Enter the mind, body, and soul of Jasper Novak, an inmate on Indiana's Death Row, in the hour leading up to his execution by lethal injection.

These days, it is increasingly easy to engage with complex moral issues like capital punishment from a distant, purely theoretical position. We can read about a crime committed thousands of miles away, and in an instant justify the opinion that the perpetrator deserves to die, all while filling out the morning's crossword puzzle. With this film, I want to challenge those who haven’t put thought into capital punishment beyond this dominant narrative by placing them as close to the process as possible, meticulously researched to ensure authenticity.

When Sara begins growing five centimeters taller every day, she faces a devastating choice: end her pregnancy and return to normal, or defy the traditions that have long controlled the women in her family.

Bhagwati brings home a taro plant (Colocasia esculenta) from her job at the pumpkin patch, hoping it will make her more like the glamorous customers that buy it. Instead, it manifests her inner child and deadliest inner critic, forcing her to confront her self-hatred.

United by their hatred of cops, lesbos and mobsters team up to throw a big fat gay wedding in 1950's New York City.

After a stroke leaves a gifted Nevisian trumpeter with Broca’s aphasia, he joins forces with an ambitious medical student to reinvent melodic intonation therapy through soca music—fighting to reclaim his voice in time to perform at Culturama.

An ambitious racing driver has been cut off by her corrupt sponsor. Determined to fund an important race, she plots to steal his precious Mercedes Gullwing with the help of her ally and technician. But when they discover a body in the trunk, their plan takes a dangerous new turn, forcing them to decide how far they’re willing to go.

An ambitious racing driver has been cut off by her corrupt sponsor. Determined to fund an important race, she plots to steal his precious Mercedes Gullwing with the help of her ally and technician. But when they discover a body in the trunk, their plan takes a dangerous new turn, forcing them to decide how far they’re willing to go.

As she heads to her first day on a major studio film, a French actress of Arab heritage is profiled as an illegal, then a threat and subjected to a hostile interrogation at a U.S. airport.

Minh, a jaded cowgirl-esque teen mourning the golden age of arcades, challenges Billy, a mean teen tormenting the kids of a washed-up strip mall arcade, to an epic video game quick draw duel.

Arcade Cowgirl is a whimsical neo-western short that remixes the concept of the vanishing west and applies it to the vanishing world of video game arcades in 1980’s New Mexico.

Minh, a jaded cowgirl-esque teen mourning the golden age of arcades, challenges Billy, a mean teen tormenting the kids of a washed-up strip mall arcade, to an epic video game quick draw duel.

'Arcade Cowgirl' is a whimsical neo-western short that remixes the concept of the vanishing west and applies it to the vanishing world of video game arcades in 1980’s New Mexico.