North Carolina Shorts 2025: Program 3: A Student Perspective
Showcasing the talent and creativity of student filmmakers from across the state, this program offers a fresh take on storytelling through the eyes of North Carolina’s emerging artists.
OBEX
Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing OBEX, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs, and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.
Order for Ben
Ben, a trans man with a bright and joyful life and community, agrees to meet his traditional father for coffee after seven years of estrangement.
Oscurecimiento, El
Lara Sholtz is a skilled assassin with dissociative amnesia who lives a double life. When you don’t remember pulling the trigger, killing is easy. At least it was, until the man in the Bunny Mask handed her the red envelope. When a routine job goes bad, the tables turn, and she becomes the target caught in the crossfire. Now she must wake up and choose between truth or deception, reality or oblivion, life or death,
Our Movement Starts Here
The story of a rural community in the American South that inspired the environmental justice movement and articulated the concept of environmental racism in 1982 by fighting the state of North Carolina’s toxic landfill.
Outrider
OUTRIDER is a portrait of visionary poet/performer, Grammy-nominated librettist Anne Waldman and a portal to her path of imagination. Along with collaborators Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Thurston Moore, Meredith Monk, Fast Speaking Music, and others, “Outrider” moves within the poetry communities constellating around Waldman’s life and legacy. The film trails Waldman’s investigative mind within her recent epic works, woven with activism and a broken heart, as she sings out and takes the whole ride.
Overcast
Cirro, an optimistic cloud, tries to keep the sky from raining until his first encounter with Nimbus, a jaded cloud, who is not so easily convinced.
Pack Rat
In rural New Zealand, a 15-year-old girl fights to keep her place among the pack of boys she has grown up with. As day turns to night, she falls into a power game with the pack’s alpha, but it is the wrestle within herself that proves to be her hardest challenge.
Pantone Guy, The
At 96 years old, Larry Herbert, known as “The Pantone Guy,” is a visionary whose revolutionary idea to standardize color remains largely unrecognized. Growing up in Depression-era Brooklyn, Larry entered the print and manufacturing trade during a time when color was a chaotic and subjective experience. He channeled his unique vision into creating the Pantone Matching System.
Papillon (Butterfly)
In the sea, a man swims. As he does, memories come to the surface. From his early childhood to his life as a man, all his memories are linked to water. Some are happy, some glorious, some traumatic.
Ponce de Leon
Exiled to a remote villa to spend the summer with her great aunt, a disconnected teen girl uncovers a dark secret surrounding the mysterious fountain flowing in the property’s gardens.
Pow!
A Native American kid scrambles to charge his dying video game console at a bustling intertribal powwow.
Pumpkin Guts
It happens to someone every Halloween. Follow the rules. Don’t get pinched.
Ragamuffin
A 12-year-old motocross racer spends what seems like an average race weekend at the track with her father. But as the weekend unfolds, she’s faced with her identity, her deafness, and what it means to be a girl.
RAT!
When a disgruntled music journalist accuses a global pop star of queerbaiting, the singer’s devoted fans descend on his remote cabin to seek retribution.
