Sometimes all you need is 30 minutes or less to tell an impactful story, and that’s exactly what these six shorts at the 27th Brooklyn Film Festival did.

We’ve decided to give you a little sample platter of the offerings that were shown, with this year's theme being “immersion,” requiring the viewer to explore beyond what is shown to them at face value. Through this, the festival's goal was to open people’s minds and start a conversation about the current state of the world and political climate.

The Brooklyn Film Festival took place between June 1-9, and featured many narrative, documentary, experimental, and animated shorts, ranging on a variety of subjects and perspectives. Being that BFF is an international film festival, films were not just contained to the United States, which furthered the variety in point of view.

Knighlights and Teddy Bears,
Directed by Mackenzie K.

Animation can often be thought of as frivolous, however there is a talent in figuring out how to tell a moving story that’s never been told before, and has the ability to affect a range of generations. In Knighlights and Teddy Bears, a “knight” light and teddy bear come to life after a little boy is put to sleep by his parents. The duo fights off monsters that come out of his closet and from under his bed, and stop them from giving him bad dreams.

This action, fantasy short plays with a thought we’ve all had before: what if our stuffed animals came to life when we weren’t there to see them? I’m sure I can’t be the only one who has turned to my teddy bear and said, “you can talk to me, I promise I won’t tell anyone!” Whether it be a blanket, a stuffed animal, or a night light, we develop attachments to objects as children that we find comfort in and use as armor to protect us from anything bad. However, when you’re vulnerable and not able to protect yourself, will those who you rely on still be there to keep you safe?

Take Me To The Ocean, Directed by Ilana Barkusky

Take Me To The Ocean follows Erena as she explores her relationship with the water and the ocean, following a car accident that left her with a brain injury and fractured her body, almost costing her her life. Instead, she lost her father, and is left with the guilt of the accident, knowing that their roles could have been reversed had they not switched who was driving.

As a child, Erena would go to the ocean with her father, jumping in without a second thought, and as she grew older dark water urged a sense of fear. As we age, there’s an awareness that takes over our childlike wonder and unabashed bravery, and sometimes experiencing something traumatic can revert us back to that blank and vulnerable childlike state. For Erena, water then became meditative, it was no longer a fear, but instead a saving grace. She realized that spending time underwater made everything slow down. This led to her taking photos of people underwater, and noticing how they became someone new through the process, and in helping them, she helped herself.

Mama’s Fatteh,
Directed by Alia Carita Tompkins

Food is central in many cultures; cooking together, eating together, sharing recipes. These are all symbols of love.

Starring Nasma and Nada Kublawi, Mama’s Fatteh shows a daughter recreating her family’s fatteh recipe, while being guided by her mother’s voice from miles and miles away. The short is interwoven with old family photos that hold memory the same way a family recipe does. We pass down traditions and stories from generation to generation in order to keep our stories alive. Kublawi states, “There is a distinct warmth to the Palestinian people, a radiance that will never dim. Mama's Fatteh is a reminder to nurture the humanity of Palestinians: rooted in mighty olive trees withstanding centuries, the oud's melody, threads of tatreez, and our grandparents' tales of resilience.” Shot on Super 8 makes it feel all the more personal and timeless, as if you have been given the honor of getting a glimpse into a family’s keepsake.

Make You Feel, Directed by Starr Nathan

Throughout life most of us fall in love and have our heart broken, time after time. It’s easy to blame the other party in these situations, but it takes real effort and strength to go on a journey of self-healing and self-discovery in order to figure out how to not end up in the same situations.

The film takes us through different vignettes, labeled “date,” “love,” “break up,” “heal,” and “repeat.” The vignettes are separated by a scene of a woman whose heartbreak is literally represented by a wound on her chest and an anatomical heart outside of her body. It reveals the truths that we sometimes fail to come to terms with when going through the stages of a relationship, and the physical pain that sometimes comes with the emotional. In the “heal” section, the woman wonders, “how could the same person who hurt me, heal me?” when asked if she’s okay with not having closure from her last relationship.

She’s taken the time to put herself first and not rely on anyone else to begin her healing and growth. But will that be enough to not repeat the same patterns that are so easy to fall back into?

One Day You’re Not Here,
Directed by Nancy Ma

Ma describes her short as a daughter attempting, “to comfort her immigrant dad about the ways he’s failed as a father. In the process, she sees his panic and fears for the first time.”

The breaking of the fourth wall of who your parents truly are is something many children one day experience. As you get older, you start to realize that your parents aren’t just your parents, they aren’t the super heroes you thought they were or expected them to be. They’re just people, experiencing life for the first time the same way you are. That doesn’t excuse their actions, but it can often make them easier to come to terms with.

Ma touches on the immigrant experience of a parent finding work wherever they can get it, and in turn that work becoming their life. She reflects on her father not spending a lot of time with her as a child and how she was afraid of him, and even considered running away on multiple occasions. He doubts her recollection in the way that only parents can when their reality of us suddenly doesn’t line up with our own.

“We don’t need this story,” Ma’s father says at one point in the short. However, it’s exactly these stories that we need more of to help us realize that a lot of our lives and experiences don’t differ as much as we think they do.

Gorgeous, Directed by Morgan Gould

Gorgeous explores the toxic relationships that can develop between mothers and daughters when the mothers reflect their own insecurities onto their daughters. In this instance, we see a fat woman having to deal with a mother who doesn't love herself enough to see her daughter's beauty before her wedding day.

36 hours before her wedding, we see Beth and her sister reflecting on their childhood and the traumas they’ve experienced, while their mother makes it clear that she’s not willing to hear them out, sarcastically responding by letting them know how bad of a mother she is.

Convinced by her sister to try on her wedding dress, Beth’s mother walks in on the scene and squeezes her arm fat before Beth runs out of the house and towards a pier. Still talking with her sister, her mother says, “people don’t look at us and see a bride,” and, “I wish someone had told me I looked like a cow on my wedding day.” Meanwhile, Beth looks out at the water, and imagines hugging her mother, also in a wedding dress, before starting to turn back home as two women cheer her on and tell her she looks beautiful. Gould explores the fatphobia rooted in our culture and makes it clear that being fat is not a problem, it’s that other people think it is.

We live in a world where the performance of being a woman often changes with passing trends. Generation after generation, toxicity about women’s bodies is prevalent, and sometimes its roots are buried too deep to be unlearned. However, Gould ends her short with hope and a realization that we don’t have to keep our own roots entangled with those that tried to poison them.

If you’re always on the search for new talented artists, the Brooklyn Film Festival is definitely something you’ll want to put on your radar, if it’s not already. These shorts barely scratch the surface of all the good that was available this year, but we’re already excited to be back for the next!

Article by Caroline Nycek, Contributor, PhotoBook Magazine
Tearsheets by Georgia Wallace, Graphic Design Intern, PhotoBook Magazine