What makes a place feel like home? These documentaries follow family ties, cultural heritage, music, and community, revealing the connections people carry across borders and generations.

SELECTED FILMS

• Connecting To Your Roots — Burny Seme + Sarah Camille

• Search for Identidad — Mateo Sosa

• The Man Who Redefined Music — Ayan Iftikhar

• The Nest — Nathan Bovell

• Sacrificio — Luis “Snyder” Cortina

The gap between how we appear and how we feel takes center stage in this mix of documentary and narrative shorts. Beauty standards, overthinking, mental health, and the search for an original voice invite audiences to look beyond first impressions.

SELECTED FILMS

• 67 days — Teona Gorbyleva

• Más Allá Del Espejo — Angelica Gordillo

• UNREAD — Maya Barlow

• OUT OF FRAME — Laila Nesbitt

• MATERIAL — Louis O’Connor

Grief, family expectations, anxiety, and ambition take unsettling forms in four narrative shorts. From a creature that feeds on fear to an audition with an otherworldly agenda, these films use suspense and imagination to explore the pressures beneath everyday life.

SELECTED FILMS

• MARY — Chloe Lathrop

• RESONANT FREQUENCY — Sophia Li

• CREAK — Dylan Bessler

• CALLBACKS — Kaden Evans

Personal stories meet larger questions of change in a program spanning protest, family harm, resilience, immigrant identity, and mortality. These films ask what we inherit, what we challenge, and how we move forward.

SELECTED FILMS

• A Dissenting America — Neve Drimmer

• Unlearn Me — Nathalia Melendez

• Journey of Life — Angelica Kenscoff

• Melting Pot City — Wen Chen

• I WILL MISS YOU FOREVER — Violet Schumacher

Across languages and generations, five documentaries explore culture, family, memory, and the people whose lives shape our own. Stories of inheritance and lived experience bring the meaning of legacy into focus.

SELECTED FILMS

• Inherited — Catherine Balboa

• Legacy — Mirian Menchu

• Hard Workers Life — Nikolai Tunarrosa

• Multifaceted — Emily Vaamonde Beria

• Bess(ie) — Noa Stember

Animation and imaginative storytelling open up worlds of family, play, discovery, and belonging. This program brings together work from Reel Works’ Animation Lab, Fellows, In-Schools, and Supported programs.

SELECTED FILMS

• FY26 Animation Lab — Animation Lab ensemble

• THE BOX IN THE BASEMENT — Zhihui (Michael) Chen

• Attack on Pine — In-Schools

• Sail to Greed — In-Schools

• Stop Motion Animation Compilation — In-Schools

• Honeybee Lyric Video — Amy Zhao

• Life in the Box — Robin Fuller

Young filmmakers and student reporters bring their communities and lived experiences into focus. The program pairs a collaborative Broadcast Journalism production with shorts exploring ADHD and phone use, an immigrant soccer trainer’s journey, teen mental health, and disability experiences.

SELECTED FILMS

• Broadcast Journalism — collaborative student production

• Digital Minds — Ella Schoenburg

• Ardi — Emiliano Dietrich-Jiménez

• Teen Mental Health — In-Schools

• Interview with a Disabled Person — Allen Williams

Three narrative shorts explore loneliness, mortality, and the need for connection. Encounters at a bus stop, in purgatory, and on a bridge ask what we owe one another and what remains after we are gone.

SELECTED FILMS

• THE FINAL STOP — Ki’ah Rembert

• DEBATE OF THE UNLEARNED — Ana Nieves

• EMMA AND I — Zachary Darpoh