Alex Zhort

A prospector encounters the pain that comes with sacrifice, toward something greater.

Hillbilly punk turned honky-tonk singer Hick'ry Hawkins has stories to tell. For thirty years the trailer park kid from South Carolina has worked thousands of stages with his wrestlemaniac flair and cowboy swagger - proclaiming his undeniable destiny as the next big country music star. This film weaves biographical tales and concert videos into an intimate look at the pursuit of fame and fortune.

In this short film, poet and holocaust survivor John Guzlowski bears witness to his parents’ survival of Nazi slave labor camps. More than a personal remembrance, the poem carries his mother’s plea — “tell them we weren’t the only ones” — a call to acknowledge the countless lives scarred by war, displacement, and silence. Through Guzlowski’s measured reading, the film becomes both intimate and collective: a meditation on inherited trauma, the duty of memory, and the fragile line between history and forgetting.

On April 18th, 2017, Larry Bassett refused to pay federal income taxes on over $1 Million, becoming the top tax resister in US history. In his defiance, he wrote letters to U.S. government agencies and representatives, announcing that his conscience will not allow him to pay for the US war machine. He knows that breaking the law will bring retribution from the government, and he accepts the consequences of his actions. In fact, he's begging for their retaliation as his family and neighbors worry about his safety.

The infamous "Memorex" tape circulated the mid-west underground scene in the mid-’90s. Shot in 1993, the film captures a transient slice of post-’80s, pre-Y2K youth culture on the eve of a new century. Following a tribe of teenage heshers and burnouts at a skate park punk show, the film is a snapshot of the stray children of the boomer generation as they navigate their anxieties on the brink of social, global, and digital upheaval. Now, on its 30th anniversary, the original VHS tape has been restored in 4K, revealing a cultural time capsule of pre-9/11 American youth; a candid documentation of a moment both electric and uncanny.

Language of Mules is a poignant exploration of the haunting legacy of the Holocaust through the eyes and words of poet and author John Guzlowski. Born to Polish parents who survived the unimaginable horrors of Nazi concentration camps, Guzlowski's poems give voice to the stories passed down from his parents, stories of suffering, resilience, and survival. The film interweaves interviews with Guzlowski in his home in Virginia, with vivid poetic depictions of his parents' harrowing experiences: the brutality of the German soldiers, the daily horrors of camp life, physical torture, and enslavement in conditions that dehumanized those who endured them. With profound sensitivity and depth, Language of Mules becomes not just a retelling of history, but a meditation on the enduring impact of war on the human psyche.

A street performer in Recife (Brazil), decides to host a live broadcast with his followers to raise money for a new bluetooth speaker.

In 1994, a mercurial teen records an impassioned manifesto for her long-distance lover.

Told almost entirely without spoken words, this film unfolds in the language of its subjects: Guatemalan Sign Language. In a country where more than 850,000 Deaf people receive little institutional support, silence becomes both a barrier and a form of connection. Through classrooms, homes, and everyday life, the film observes a community building its own means of understanding and belonging. Among those leading the way are Melkin, Dairy, and Jonathan, the teachers, students, and leaders within Guatemalan Deaf Ministries, where the language of hands has become the language of hope.

A unique examination of the life-long existential journey taken by a self-made musician, his unforgiving ambition and self-destructive determination to express himself.

Somewhere in stoic, rural Russia, at the edge of mapped time and memory, a snowbound airport idles in stillness. Six Weapons of Post-Modern Time Travel indifferently observes as time stretches beyond the runways. Absence hums under old fluorescent lights as the ordinary turns spectral. This film documents the weight of a place coming to terms with silence, holding it's breath as departures have outlived arrivals.

Warhead, a scavenger living on the fringes of a world ravaged by A.I., risks everything to reunite with her lost son in a forbidden zone rumored to possess supernatural powers.