I have no idea why it took so long for me to get attend Indy Shorts in person. I have been covering shorts for a number of years, but, I guess, the timing was never right or, most likely, I never got my act together in time. Indianapolis is less than three hours away from where I live in Columbus and since everything lined up this year, I was thrilled to hop in the car and make the jaunt over the state line to spend some time basking in some Hoosier Hospitality.
Indy Shorts celebrated its eighth consecutive festival in 2025, and their line up boasted over 250 films curated into 39 distinct programs. Not only do they boost the profile of genre shorts, burgeoning high school talent, and documentaries from The New Yorker, but they feature several separate programs from Indiana natives.
After I checked into my hotel, I made my way to my first program, The Unexpected. I was eager to dive into some films since the festival began two days before my arrival, and I needed to pick up my press credentials. The Living Room Theater happened to be where I saw all of my programs (see you next time, Newfields!), and I got to meet some of the artistic staff of the festival. Hey, Greg and Evan!
The Unexpected
I wanted to begin my Indy Shorts watching with a narrative program, and The Unexpected offered a variety of films across different tones and perspectives.
Matthew Scheffler’s The Traveler will take you to places that you don’t expect. Set in New York in 1887, a young widow moves about her home after the death of her beloved husband. The darkness in her home seems to be pressing in on her with, sometimes, only the flicker of a lone candle providing light. Her grief isolates her into her home, but she becomes increasingly aware of a prescence walking the halls. Is her husband trying to contact her? Would that contact be soothing or troubling?
Natalie Knepp gives over everything in her performance. With little dialogue, she transmits pain and fear with her eyes and trembling breath. Scheffler keeps us invested with the dark palette and an ending that you will not see coming. It was a great way to begin my viewing at Indy Shorts.
“We found a really awesome location in Staten Island,” Scheffler says, at a Q&A after the program. “They were really protective since it’s technically a museum, but when it closed later that afternoon they gave us a lot of trust to do what we needed to do for the project.”
Jono Chanin’s Cattywampus explores how men address their feelings…all while trying to finish a heist in a luxurious home. Featuring a killer pair of performances from John Carroll Lynch and Hamish Linklaker, Chanin’s film mixes comedy with deeper conversations of communication.
When you are trying to steal some jewels, you don’t want your lookout asking too many questions. Barry (Lynch) assures Max (Linklater) that they family they are swindling are out of town, so his position as watchdog feels more like a moot point. Barry wants to know more about the shape and contours of diamonds, and Max reluctantly offers his expertise. These are men that don’t talk about their feelings–Barry is imposing but curious while Max keeps his guard up.
Chanin’s scrpt is clever as he upends our expectations on what men are “supposed to talk about,” and the performances from his leads (as well as Tobie Windham and Adam Daveline) highlight the humor in a disarming way.
A pair of men are at the center of Jesus Beltran’s Motos, but these gentlemen are cousins who make a shocking and life-changing discovery.
Benito and Frank are both struggling financially as they work as loggers in the Santa Cruz Mountains. When they stumble on a large sum of money, they see their lives change in front of their very eyes. We have all fantasized about winning the lottery or finding out that they we have a long lost relative who has left us an enormous sum of cash. When you see a twenty dollar on the street, you dash to grab it. Beltran’s film gave me hints of A Simple Plan filtered through the lens of a family drama.
Speaking to the audience after the film, Beltran explained how he wanted to shine a spotlight on how the immigrant community should be given credit for rebuilding after some California wildfires.
“Initially, the story was just about these two cousins, but we did have a large wildfire event five years ago where we lost about 900 homes,” Beltran says. “Nobody talks about how the immigrant community is helping. I see these guys round where I live. I’ve met some of them, and one was a family of brothers with their father, who were all undocumented living in the mountains. It’s the same way that you might see some people at Home Depot to do whatever tasks you might need. That’s where the initial building of the narrative came from, but, secondly, I wanted to add some sort of element of the unexpected. I wanted to make it more about family.”
What would you do if your partner told you that they were devoted to stopping crime by embracing their superhero identity? Some people might pursure couples counseling, and that’s exactly what Leonie Benesch’s Molly suggests when her boyfriend, Adam, dons a cape and dedicates his life to making the world a better place. Adam almost misses their appointment with Doctor Motosko, played with soothing patience by Imelda Staunton. Andrew Richardson’s The Most Powerful Human On Earth is a sweet, charming look at how our relationships are tested and how we need an outside viewpoint in order to get a more rounded perspective.
While Molly’s concern is quite undertstandable, I wondered what the benefits would be to dating someone who is hellbent on taking care of others. Is Adam taking care of those in need, because he is avoiding the issue in his relationship with Molly? Are we all reaching a breaking point that we should all tied a towel around our neck and start “doing good?” Maybe Adam just needs professional help. What is most important, I think, remains how we must be accept the help standing right in front of our faces. Also, maybe we need to believe in heroes who fly in the sky?
The boy with white skin‘s title automatically percolates the audiences’ interest, but then we descend into a place of mystery as real-life circtumstances replace a young boy’s sense of wonder. Simon Panay’s film is claustrophobic, sweaty, and nerve-inducing.
Issa, a young albino boy, is tasked with going into a mine with his father’s encouragement in order to assist men hunting for gold. His hesitation is palpable, and I heard an audience member a few seats over from my telling her friends that she couldn’t believe that this young kid was going down. Panay makes us wonder if we are seeing a real mine or being tricked by some movie magic.
As Issa goes lower and lower underground, he gets the sense of how adults can be desperate, envious, and demanding. Even as the camera stays tight on young Boubacar Dembélé’s face, we then see the faces of the men who spend hours and hours in that shaft, their eyes wide and unable to hide their trust in this yougster. The boy with white skin might make your heart race or make you curious. It’s rather unforgettable.
Some of us have had the misfortune of having out identity stolen, and it’s a hassle to change all of your card information every single time something comes out of your account. Have you ever considered, though, how much more dangerous that could be if your identity was stolen to create something larger than you could comprehend. In Haley Watson’s film, One in Fifty, one woman recounts how she had to reclaim her life after a web of lies cost her over $400,000.
Most of Watson’s film centers on Renata Galvão recounting how, at the age of six, a family member used her identity to open companies in her name. She tells us about how she saw her name on important looking documents in the mail, but relatives and adults told her that it was nothing. Being a kid, Renata believed her family, but when she got older, she soon discovered that once those companies fell apart, she was the one left drowning in debt. How do you claw your way out of that? One in Fifty, which had its world premiere at Indy Shorts, was the last film to play in The Unexpected, and you could feel the room sticking with Galvão’s words.
In the post-screening discussion, composer Yaron Eigenstein explains his reaction to the material.
“I was shocked to lean how common this stuff is,” he admits. “It’s such a powerful story, and the way that Renata is so candid makes it so visceral. Haley wanted to make sure that the music wasn’t just going along with the words but also carrying us with what we are hearing. When her life is falling apart, I wanted the music to heighten the emotions to place us in that space with her.
There is a lot brimming under the surface of Daniel Solé’s Say As I Say, one of my favorite films of this year’s festival. Raquel is sorting out food donations with her teenage daughter, Eva, in the kitchen of a synagogue as we hear Shabbat service continuing in the next room. When the phone rings, Raquel is told by an aggressive voice that there is a bomb somewhere in the building. What follows throughout the rest of Solé’s film is refreshing and unexpected.
We cannot eliminate danger or dangerous people, but we can change how we react to it. Solé never shows us the service, but we hear it–tradition is within earshot. When you think the film is headed down one road, it opts to take the fork on the path, and Say As I Say transforms into something familiar, familial, and valuable. Miriam Silverman, a Tony Award winner for The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, keeps her voice soft in moments, but it never loses purpose or drive.
Solé sometimes keeps the camera on the backs of his two lead women and sometimes he keeps us at a distance as they continue their work. My favorite shot comes after Raquel receives the first threat, and she stands momentarily at a line of boxes on a folding table. Chairs are stacked against the wall and large chandelier hangs overhead in this ballroom. I am not sure why that moment has stuck with me so much, but it has.
Producer Michael Polk explained to our audience that he felt a pull to the material even though he doesn’t share the same faith as the characters in the story.
“I adored the story,” Polk admits. “I also have a daughter, so I was really drawn to it from that perspectice. I feel like this could happen anywhere–a mosque, a church. Places where people are coming together within the community in order to be together.
Polk then recounted a bonding moment for everyone working on the film.
“One of the other producers on this film was Marlena Skrobe,” he says. “I’ve been making films for 12 years at this point, and I’ve made some short films of my own. It so happened that Marlena and I were the two people that were sent to the grocery story to find snacks and food for everyone. We are the two non-Jewish people on set, so w had to keep kosher since we were shooting in a synagogue. It ended up becoming a beautiful bonding experience that washed away any kind of nervousness that I had. It was very disarming.”
We will continue more coverage of Indy Shorts this week! Keep coming back!
