Dallas International Film Festival: Shorts Lineup

Audible Static is the sound you hear when love meets panic. Luckily, there's a way to find your voice in the last days of analogue.

Bayard Rustin was the organizer of the March on Washington and one of the leaders of the civil rights movement. In the 1980s Bayard adopted his younger boyfriend Walter Naegle to obtain the legal protections of marriage. In this intimate love story, Walter remembers Bayard and a time when gay marriage was inconceivable. He reflects on the little known phenomena of intergenerational gay adoption and its connection to the civil rights movement.

Dave, a NASA astronaut, and his co-pilot, a genetically-engineered intelligent melon, yes a melon, are preparing for the launch of the first-ever expedition to Mars.

About Yossi, a charismatic Kosher butcher who loses his job, cannot find work at other Kosher butchers, and therefore decides to pretend to be Muslim in order to get work at a Halal butchers.

Two people stumble upon the mother lode of movie memorabilia in the most unexpected of places.

Yiwu International Trade City is the world's largest market, selling cheap goods wholesale in a city south of Shanghai. The fake flowers, toys, pens and alarm clocks traded in Yiwu eventually end up in dollar stores across the planet, but I focus on the people who sell these goods that we take for granted. As a character study of the market itself, the film peers into the lives of those who run this global trade. The sellers, full of life and individuality, live against the uniformly oppressive backdrop of their livelihood. A somber man painstakingly counts tiny metal parts on his desk in a pen shop. A business lady sweet talks one of her customers, peppering him with insults and compliments, but in between the buying and selling, vendors all find different ways to pass the time in this gigantic mall. A mother yells at a group of young boys, berating them for losing a toy. A man in a suit hums along to a haunting song waiting for a customer as the clocks he is selling tick away. Two young siblings play a video game while lazily eating KFC from the bucket, licking their fingers. While these stories seem small and insignificant, in the context of the film, the dialogue and actions take on new weight and meaning, elevating the quotidian to a realm of discovery.

An evocative and imaginative exploration of the racial tensions in Othello and how the themes in Shakespeare's play still resonate today.

A metalhead gets passed down a satanic guitar that riffs to shreds.

An existentialist ironic dark tale about the sins of society and of human relationships presented in a traditional fable setting.

In an aging private hospital, a single-minded surgeon is forced to break her physician's oath when violent gangsters storm in to stop a crucial operation.

14-year-old Emma struggles to hide her alopecia, a condition of rapid, unpredictable hair loss. Fighting a futile battle against her changing appearance, her only hope is acceptance.

A bio-hacker seeks to cure himself by swapping his microbiome with a donor's, a controversial and dangerous technique.

For over 35 years Yussuf Mume Saleh journeys at night to the outskirts of the walled city of Harar to bond with his beloved hyenas.

Adapted from the Flannery O'Connor Award-winning short story by Mary Hood, How Far She Went takes an unflinching look at family, personal sacrifice, and the lengths we will go for those we love.

A young woman incurs the wrath of the internet after inadvertently becoming a viral sensation.

Each year 40.000 people from Africa, Asia and Middle East, try to enter Europe. They flee from war, persecution and poverty. Since the ways by land have been interrupted, they board overloaded vessels and face a dangerous and often deadly voyage across the Mediterranean.

Academy Award nominated documentary filmmaker, Christine Choy, undergoes an adventure of wild proportions when she accidentally illegally smuggles cigarettes.

The film tells the story of Lily, a girl with a secret, on the cusp of becoming a young woman.

Writer/Director Tim Mason pulls the curtain back on the glamorous world of advertising in this short comedy about a voiceover actor trying to nail the right tone for a pair of indecisive ad creatives selling a fictitious children's ice cream brand. Or is it a short tragedy about a pair of ad creatives trying to coax the right tone out of a distracted voiceover actor?

When a couple's cat goes missing on a cross-country move, their relationship is tested.

A top-secret handbook takes viewers on an undercover journey to TITANPOINTE, the site of a hidden partnership. Narrated by Rami Malek and Michelle Williams, and based on classified NSA documents, Project X reveals the inner workings of a windowless skyscraper in downtown Manhattan.

Russ lives and works at a motel with his parents. When a seemingly sick girl and her mother come through, Russ becomes fascinated and tries to befriend the girl.

Crystal robs a liquor store-it goes pretty OK.

Amanda struggles to keep something inside, as she spends the day taking pictures of her best friend.