The children who created this refuge call it Hawaiki, a name that carries spiritual significance to the Maori people.
As we head into the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, women-helmed stories in the Shorts section range over wide subject matter, from a children’s refuge called Hawaiki, to the German tradition of kidnapping the bride, to an Ashéninka boy’s rite of passage, and the Jewish movement to challenge the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Any of these, and all those keeping them company in that category, could introduce a gifted, insightful, and hardworking storyteller who becomes a household name.
The history at the Sundance Institute suggests that many of the next generation of cinematic storytellers emerge in the Shorts section of the Festival. Take, for instance, Wes Anderson, who broke into the industry with his short Bottle Rockets at the 1993 Festival, and then turned it into a full feature and headed off to fame with such films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and Isle of Dogs.
Our following compilation of short films by women at the 2023 Festival suggest a dazzling future for film. These films play for both in-person and online viewing. (Click here to read about the Festival’s full-length films directed by women.)
Make sure to purchase your Festival passes and packages now to gain access to ticket selection ahead of the single film ticket sale in January. The Explorer Pass, for example, unlocks six immersive days of online access to Indie Episodic screenings and select Short Film programs between January 24 and 29. So choose your favorites and witness the next generation of storytellers!
Director: Valeria Hofmann
While a gamer uploads a testimonial video to denounce the harassment she suffers in a video game, a stranger enters her home and hacks her computer, blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds.
Co-director: Anya Chirkova
A middle-aged Iranian man makes a desperate bid to keep his apartment as his relationship with his son unravels.
Director: Iyabo Kwayana
An unlikely hero’s journey into his own memories becomes a vehicle for reconciliation and healing for himself and his sibling.
Director: Tara O’Callaghan
Documentary Short Film Program
Uncovering the multifaceted life of Sinead, a middle-aged single mother and online sex worker.
Director: Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis
Two ships collide in a harbor, an explosion shatters a city, and a sailor is blasted skyward, where he soars high above the mayhem and toward the great unknown.
Director: Zhen Li
Animation Short Film Program
A crush gone moldy…
Director: Nova Paul
At the edge of the playground close to the forest, the children of Okiwi School made a refuge they call Hawaiki. Hawaiki has spiritual and metaphysical connections for Māori as the children create a space for their self-determination.
Director: Aemilia Scott
Six women come to a consensus.
In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-Weeny Pocket
Director: Yoko Yuki
When it shrinks, it expands. It floats and it sinks. It separates but connects. When I think I’m watching them, they’re actually watching me.
Director: Daphne Gardner
Midnight Short Film Program
Tracey is just trying to jerk off with her bathtub faucet like normal when some old memories dredge themselves up, the pipes explode with dirty water, and she starts leaking black goo.
Director: Chloé Alliez and Violette Delvoye
Short Film Program 1
On the night of a big party for Lucie, Maya, and their friends, Jimmy has also come. Everyone knows he is here for Maya, but does she have the same feelings for Jimmy?
Director: Maria Estela Paiso
This short film plays before the New Frontier feature Last Things, which screens in person and online.
A girl’s childhood home attempts to destroy her using her own personal history, but she resists.
Director: Sophia Mocorrea
Short Film Program 5
Luisa from Argentina and Fred from Germany are confronted with their social roles at their wedding. The German tradition of kidnapping the bride shakes the couple’s equality. There is no room for love in this role-play of marriage.
Director: Jessica Bardsley
Short Film Program 2
Set in the outer space of consciousness, where the surfaces of far-out planetary bodies form the terrain for an exploration of 24/7 capitalism, insomnia, and the disappearance of darkness.
Margie Soudek’s Salt and Pepper Shakers
Director: Meredith Moore
Documentary Short Film Program
An artist and visual effects instructor connects with her aging grandmother, Margie, through collecting, art-making, and obsessing as a way to enhance reality.
Director: Bridey Elliott
Two friends role-play a breakup conversation.
Director: Reema Maya
Short Film Program 3
Somewhere between fantasy, trauma, paranoia, precaution, and the promise of a burger, a night gets catapulted into an investigation of child abuse at a dysfunctional police station in Mumbai.
Director: Xenia Matthews
Short Film Program 6
The long-dead Ourika, a Senegalese girl enslaved by a French aristocrat, is awoken in the eerie space between life and death, between body and soul, where she finds her way back to life and into liberation.
Director: Sharon Liese and Catherine Hoffman
Short Film Program 1
Three generations of a Kansas City family are finally unified when they do something that countless other Black Americans could not — choose their own last name.
Co-director: Jessica Meier
Midnight Short Film Program
Bob is a plumber hired to fix a broken pipe. He lands, to his surprise, in a gay fetish club.
Director: Crystal Kayiza
Short Film Program 2
On a bus ride from New York to Oklahoma, Meyi, a young Ugandan-American girl, realizes her place in the world through her mother’s ambitious effort to reunite their family.
The Sea on the Day When the Magic Returns
Director: Jiwon Han
Animation Short Film Program
Sejin once had the power to have anything she wanted just by thinking about it. Now she has lost her magic. Hours before her interview to be a tourist interpreter, Sejin heads to the weary sea to save her father.
Shirampari: Legacies of the River
Director: Lucia Flórez
Documentary Short Film Program
In one of the most remote places in the Peruvian Amazon, an Ashéninka boy must overcome his fears and catch a giant catfish using only a hook to begin his adult journey.
Director: Selma Cervantes
Short Film Program 1
Inés works as a seamstress in a sweatshop where pregnancy tests are periodically administered. When she becomes pregnant, she is sure that her condition will get her fired. She does everything she can to keep it a secret.
Director: Liz Sargent
Short Film Program 6
After their mother’s death, a cognitively disabled woman and her estranged sister must learn to communicate in order to move forward.
Thriving: A Dissociated Reverie
Director: Nicole Bazuin
Short Film Program 4
A surrealist exploration of dissociative identity disorder (DID) based on the lived experience of a Black, nonbinary, disabled artist and former sex worker.
Director: Inga Elin Marakatt
Midnight Short Film Program
A pregnant widow steals silver from a dead body in order to survive and feed her daughter. But the silver is cursed and has consequences for all of them, including the unborn.
Director: Paula Eiselt
Documentary Short Film Program
The Dobbs U.S. Supreme Court decision sparked a national Jewish response. Inspired by the lived experiences of Jewish women, lawsuits are currently being launched by rabbis, Jewish organizations, and interfaith leaders to challenge the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Director: Melina Valdez
Short Film Program 4
Unable to process her grief after the death of her stepfather, a teenage girl escapes reality by shooting guns in the woods.
When You Left Me On That Boulevard
Director: Kayla Abuda Galang
Short Film Program 3
Teenager Ly and her cousins get high before a boisterous family Thanksgiving at their auntie’s house in southeast San Diego in 2006.
Director: Shalini Adnani
Short Film Program 3
A man is summoned from Mumbai to his village to deal with a termite infestation threatening to destroy his childhood home.
