The Don't-Miss Picks of the 10th Annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival: 2020 Digital Edition

10th Annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival: 2020 Digital Edition
June 1-12

Schedule, Film Guide & Tickets

There's a lot that makes AoBFF unique, including our commitment to diverse points of view. To ensure no single perspective dominates our curation process, we work with a different Guest Director every season. Alan McLane Alejos took on the role for the festival's 10th Annual edition, June 1-14, 2020. Alan divides his time between León Mexico and Brooklyn, and has 15 years experience curating and programming film festivals including IndieBoom, Cinema23, and Jaipur International Film Festival in India. He currently works as a Film Program Associate for Cine Las Americas International Film Festival in Austin, TX.

Here are some of Alan's personal favorite films of #AoBFF20!

Narrative Features

The Subject
World Premiere
1hr 58min | United States | 2019
Drama, Psychological Thriller
Directed by Lanie Zipoy 
A successful documentarian (Jason Biggs) deals with the moral fallout from his last film, which caught the murder of an African American teenager on tape. Now, someone else is videotaping his every move, threatening his idyllic life. INFO & TICKETS

Permanent Collection
1hr 31min | United States | 2019 | Feature
Drama, Comedy
Directed by Michael Irish 
After a catastrophic accident leaves one of them paralyzed; misanthropic, aging New York City transplants are forced to outgrow their cynicism while the other forges a friendship with a Brooklyn native who is just discovering it. INFO & TICKETS

Documentary Features

Born Just Now
1hr 24min | United States | 2018 | Feature Documentary
Directed by Robert Adanto
A sensitive, steadfast Belgrade-based visionary struggles to cope with the abuse and violence that ended an eight-year marriage. Through provocative acts of endurance exploring intimacy, motherhood and the trauma of the Balkan wars, artist Marta Jovanović seeks to confront, release and liberate her own pain in the name of art. Robert Adanto's BORN JUST NOW is an intimate look at a charismatic woman, a brilliant outlier, who dares to live on her own terms. 
INFO & TICKETS

Forgotten 
1hr | United States | 2018 | Feature Documentary
Directed by Adam Gell
The story is a documentary film about a journey across time in search of a grandfather erased from his family's memory. A young Brooklyn boy is shown photos, told stories, and with the help of his grandmother's diary is able to piece together a past of tragedy, loss, and heartache. This now NYC school teacher goes in search across time to discover the fate of his biological grandfather.  INFO & TICKETS
 
Narrative Shorts
 
Bad Furniture
9 minutes 59 seconds | United States | 2020 | Drama
Directed by Randall Maxwell - US Premiere 
A man insists on being furniture for his wife. INFO & TICKETS

Brooklyn Baby
19 minutes 20 seconds | United States | 2019 
Drama/Comedy
Directed by John M Wager
Lucy, a young professional white woman who lives alone in Brooklyn, leads a rather self-serving and predictable life... until one night when a stranger suddenly shows up at her doorstep. We quickly learn that she is an illegal Syrian refugee and she’s bearing a child that will be born within days. A collision of cultures ensues and a heartwarming drama unfolds — at times tense and at others comical — putting Lucy’s ethics and character to the biggest test of her life. INFO & TICKETS

Cambio
15 minutes 28 seconds | United States | 2019 | Drama
Directed by Bob Giraldi
Gisela, working at a laundromat in Brooklyn, comes across a five dollar bill with a very personal message written on it. As she becomes obsessed with finding the owner and understanding the history behind this token of luck and love, her own secrets begin to unravel. INFO & TICKETS

Cosmic Playtester
8 minutes 30 seconds | United States | 2019
Drama/Horror/Thriller
Directed by Arthur Vincie
Two board game playtesters get together after the death of their best friend, to figure out what it all means. Oh, and one of them is an alien. INFO & TICKETS

Lesson #9 by Alberto Ferreras
5 minutes 34 seconds | United States | 2019
Drama/Comedy
Directed by Alberto Ferreras
The office holiday party got a little frisky, and when two colleagues decide to complain about each other, they learn that the Human Resources director is more human and resourceful than they ever thought. INFO & TICKETS

Lonely Hearts
16 minutes 30 seconds | United States | 2019
Horror/Thriller
Directed by Dennis Cahlo
Alone and down trodden, a woman tries to find a connection online only to get much more than she bargained for. INFO & TICKETS

R4CH43L
14 minutes | United States | 2018 | Drama
Directed by Noah Bewley
Five year old Bob, finds out that his Ukrainian Catholic family is hiding Jews from the Nazis in the barn that overlooks the Kiev Jewish cemetery. He is witness to the routine murder of his neighbors and friends. Fifty years after his family is punished for their acts of humanity, Bob has a chance encounter with the Nazi executioner. He has never forgotten the face in his nightmares. Based on the memoirs of Robert A. Kramarczuk, PhD. INFO & TICKETS

Ruby Red
8 minutes 38 seconds | United States | 2019 
Drama/Horror/Thriller
Directed by Emily C. Chang
In a dystopian future where blood has replaced currency for the working poor, a woman goes on the run when she finds out there's a price on her head due to her rare blood type. INFO & TICKETS

Withdrawals
12 minutes | United States| 2020 
Directed by Jorja Hudson
Four friends quit their antidepressants together and all experience very different side effects. INFO & TICKETS

Short Documentaries
 
Falling Forward
19 minutes 46 seconds | Canada | 2019
Documentary
Directed by Caroline Macfarlane
Caroline Macfarlane sets out to make a documentary about Jane Marx, a wildly eccentric New Yorker. Marx has worked as a Manhattan tourist guide for thirty-eight years, and she’s no shrinking violet. Her offbeat sense of humor and larger-than- life personality are front and center as she guides Caroline through New York City in the opening scenes. But when the filmmaker and subject sit down for their first on-camera interview, they discover that they have a sadness in common. They both lost brothers to whom they were very close. Jane’s brother, Paul, died of AIDS in 1989; Caroline’s brother, Blake, died of leukemia in 2018, and this shared tragedy becomes the basis of their friendship and the subject of the film. INFO & TICKETS

Flux 1
37 minutes | United States | 2020
Documentary
Directed by Christoph Green
Flux.1 is an intimate portrait of T. Wise, a Hebrew teacher living in Brooklyn, who quits his job and gives up his apartment to follow his dream of pursuing a career in comedy just one year after beginning his gender transition from female to male. We follow T through the ups and downs of comedy as he performs at open mics in unfriendly dive bars; at parties for friends; and at comedy clubs in Times Square. We spend time with T’s loving, supportive parents, a rabbi and an educator, as well as his sisters, friends and girlfriend. We are with T. as he struggles to keep his spirits up to perform in front of potentially hostile strangers; and as he experiences a painful reminder of his former body when he finds that, even as a man, he has to go to the doctor for a pap smear. T. is open about his sexuality, his emotional life and every other aspect of life as a trans man. INFO & TICKETS

Orville + Bob
39 minutes 58 seconds | United States | 2019 
Documentary
Directed by Alan Griswold
The story of how an unlikely couple met and have remained together, despite seemingly insurmountable differences and societal pressures, for over forty-eight years. INFO & TICKETS

Under The Paving Stones, the Beach
16 minutes 9 seconds | United States | 2019
Documentary
Directed by Amanda Katz
On Brooklyn's East River waterfront, a new park built on tenuous ground, a new residence converted from a formerly industrial shell, a promise of lives of convenience. A film that circles around rhythms of labor and leisure. ​INFO & TICKETS