Sponsored by:
Downtown Missoula Partnership, First Security Bank, Topo Real Estate, and Betty's Divine!
Shorts Block 1: Masks
These films brilliantly--and often hilariously--explore artifice, performance, and subterfuge in all their variations. Actors audition for roles and agonize over callbacks, crime victims recreate their traumas for reality TV, secrets are hidden, attractions concealed. The ten extraordinary shorts in this program compel the viewer to watch actively, to look behind the masks.
Candy Bar
Director: Nash Edgerton
Producer: Nash Edgerton
Australia
MT Premiere
A young girl thinks a man in the candy bar line at the movies looks just like her dad. Their sweet interaction makes him long for fatherhood . . . until he learns just how monstrous children can be. Directed by Nash Edgerton, whose film Shark screened at the 2022 MTFF.
Trauma Bonds
Directors: Daniel Collins, Matt McDonald
Producer: Ashley Morgan
US
MT Premiere
Please note: This film is not available in the MTFF Virtual Fest.
The morning after an attempted kidnapping, a stubborn detective’s investigation tests the bonds of a marriage.
The Callback
Director: Kara Herold
Producer: Kara Herold
US
MT Premiere
Fiction, animation, humor, and poetry blend into a comedy, calling out a film industry in which women are underrepresented and underwritten.
Azi
Director: Montana Mann
Producers: Montana Mann, Steven Snyder
US
Please note: This film is not available in the MTFF Virtual Fest.
During a weekend vacation with her best friend’s family, seventeen-year-old Azi gets caught up in an unexpected game with another guest many years her senior.
No Hands
Director: Joslyn Jensen
Producers: Frank Mosley, Liz Cardenas, Adam J. Minnick
US
Over drinks with a friend, a young woman reveals a secret skill that must be experienced to be believed.
i want to go to moscow
Director: Sarah Baskin
US
MT Premiere
When disillusioned actor Mara is thrown into a classroom of kids rehearsing a sanitized version of Chekhov’s Three Sisters–her favorite play about existential longing–she swan dives into her own crisis of aging, nostalgia, and the loss of childhood dreams.
Beefmastor Inn
Director: Zach Strum
US
MT Premiere
Two siblings try to sell a mounted deer head. From Zach Strum, whose film Bicycle Thief played the 2023 MTFF.
The Other Girl
Director: Madeleine Coghlan
Producers: Madeleine Coghlan, Adam Stilwell
US
In the 1960s, a young actor gives her all at an audition. Directed by and starring Madeleine Coghlan, who appeared in the MTFF selection We Burn Like This.
The Pic
Director: Frances Chewning
Producers: Frances Chewning, Ralph Semilla, Sharon Mayo
USMT Premiere
Single mom Jen gets an unexpectedly provocative pic from her friend Steve. Through the course of a phone conversation, she discovers that context changes everything. From Frances Chewning, whose short film The Glasses screened at the 2023 MTFF.
Randy As Himself
Director: Margaret Miller
Producer: Natalie Metzger
US
MT Premiere
A Hollywood production crew comes to West Texas to recreate the grisly murder of a local woman. Using locals to re-enact the crime, reality TV meets reality in this bizarre romantic comedy about the (show) business of murder.
Followed by a Q&A with:
Lisa McElroy, co-writer and illustrator, The Callback
Madeleine Coghlan, writer/director/producer/actor, The Other Girl
Zander Hawley, composer, The Other Girl
Daniel Collins, co-director/writer, Trauma Bonds
Duration: 110 min
