INDIE SHORT FEST

Bitches that Bake

Meet Karen Bonita Gahleeni a.k.a. Sue, your Bitches that Bake hostess of the first and only NON-instructional baking show where bitches get to bitch BIG, and if there’s time, we Bake Big.

“Sue” will guide you to live your life wholly as you embrace your full-on “bitch in the kitch.” Listen as this lovable “bitch” offers some bonafide bitch centered rebuttals for all “her gal pals” who need an unbridled, no-beatin’-around-the-mulberry-bush home base to address the every day doozies that Cannot and Should Not be muted.
Directed by Hope Salas and Madeline Stephensen (USA)

The Soft Parade

Alceste, our protagonist, is a 60-year-old solitary cynic that dies of a motorcycle accident within the first scene. He awakes shortly after in the Hall of Ma’at: the judgment room (of ancient Egyptian beliefs). A courtroom, strange and psychedelic somewhere in the nebulous world between life and the afterlife. Egyptian Gods and four jurors, greet our protagonist. At first Alceste – understandably- is speechless, in a bit of a shock, he tries to process where he’s just landed. A judge arrives. The trial begins. Alceste is shown his life and is asked to defend himself for his actions on earth, but in the eyes of the Gods it’s a lost cause. Alceste has failed the test. As is customary, his heart is taken from him and is weighed on grand scales against the feather of Ma’at. His heart is heavier than the feather. The test is failed. His soul is not worthy. His life wasn’t. The “water of forgetfulness” is forced upon him, erasing his memory, rendering him a blank canvas, another life awaiting him, another opportunity. Another shot at it: life.
Directed by Adrien Dupagne (UK)

Distant Valley

A mid-twenties couple; road trips through remote parts of Mexico. They run out of gas and end up sleeping in their car. They wake up in the morning on top of a mountain, a shaman serves them tea. There they find themselves taking part in a magical, hallucinogenically induced, ceremony. The morning after they awake completely transformed from the hallucinations they both saw. Neither the shaman nor anything from her camp remains, we discover with the couple their car, parked in front of them clean and polished and with a full tank of petrol.
Directed by Adrien Dupagne (UK)

Ride Home

A secret is shared between two teenage best friends that will change their lives forever and vault them into the adult world.
Directed by Will Holbrook (USA)