This year, animation is getting top billing at HollyShorts Film Festival. The 19th edition, taking place August 10-20 at TCL Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood, has unveiled its diverse selection of 48 animated short films.
Some of this year’s selections include Sean McCarron’s Corvine, which shares a story of a boy who loves nature, especially crows; Andrew Chesworth’s The Brave Locomotive, an Old West musical tale with 1940s flair about a little train facing harrowing disaster; and Vishavjit Singh’s American Sikh, an animated true story of a turban-wearing American Sikh.
In Ana Gusson’s Pivot, a defining moment in Ashley’s quest to be herself is at the risk of disappointing the person she loves the most; Mitra Shahidi’s Starling focuses on the spirit of a little girl who shoots down from the heavens to spend her birthday with her family; Pierre-Hugues Dallaire and Benoit Therriault’s Canary is a story about a young boy named Sonny who works in an underground coal mine; and Andrea Deja’s Mushka, which tells a story about Sarah, who discovers an orphaned baby Siberian tiger and realizes she must raise him.
Other standouts include Matthew Kalinauskas’s The Tiger at the Zoo, about a tiger-obsessed little boy who goes to the zoo on a class field trip, only to discover that the tiger is off exhibits; Farzaneh Omidvarnia’s Broke in which everything is peaceful, until an unknown aggressor repeatedly breaks the living room window glass; Martha Grant’s Llamas at the Laundromat follows two stylish llamas as they dance and sing their way through the steps of doing laundry at the laundromat; Almudena Toral and Mauricio Rodriguez Pons’ The Night Doctrine, about an Afghan journalist on a journey to find out who murdered her family 30 years ago; and Jinkyu Jeon’s The House of Loss, which tells a tale of the elderly at the nursing home have their heads shaved.
The annual Academy Awards-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival (HSFF) brings together top creators, industry leaders and companies and has launched many filmmakers into the next stages of their careers. HollyShorts, regular on MovieMaker Magazine’s “Top 50 Festivals Worth the Entry Fee list”, also engages its community and spotlights short films year-round through monthly screenings, panels, and networking events.
