Jolene Mendes

When Delaney's boyfriend leaves town to shoot a splashy zombie movie, she becomes obsessed with a character she’s auditioning for after she learns the producers think she has an "ugly cry." But when she tries to make her cry prettier, her performance suffers. Can she contort herself, and her face, to have the perfect cry? Her attempts to change herself cause Young Delaney to haunt her, catapulting present day Delaney deeper down the rabbit hole. She isolates herself and grows increasingly delusional, and interested in physical fixes to her acting problem. How can she make the world see her as she sees herself? How can she become and become and become? She will become famous. Or die trying.

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way.

17 year old Sparkle discovers a free spirited group of Soca dancers at a car show in the bustling streets of downtown Trinidad. Enamored by the glimpse of sisterhood, she uses her wit to convince them to take her under their wing. The women bring Sparkle into a dizzying nightlife of partying, glamour, and money, but as things spiral out of control, Sparkle is forced to make some tough decisions.

Set in the 1960s Brooklyn among a conservative Syrian Jewish community, Extra Innings tells the tale of a young baseball enthusiast, David Sabah, and his trials through family dismay and loss.

A young woman wakes in the dead of night to a world devoid of sound. Yet, through the silence, she hears a mysterious call which draws her deep into the dark woods.