Official Selections of the 2023 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival

The 13th season of AoBFF has been very lucky so far. We received our highest number of entries of films and screenplays from Brooklyn and around the world, and the level of talent out there continues to amaze and inspire. We're proud to announce our 2023 Official Selections... congratulations to them all, and thank you to everyone who entered.

The 2023 AoBFF runs June 1-12.
​Schedule and Tickets coming soon!

AOBFF 2023 OFFICIAL SELECTIONS

NARRATIVE FEATURES:

A Fleeting Encounter
85 Minutes | Switzerland | 2022
Drama, Romance
Grappling with a mid-life crisis, Sacha leaves his girlfriend and escapes to his grandparents’ Airbnb. He is surprised by the presence of Marjan, an Iranian woman who is facing her own marital crisis. They are both annoyed at having to share the apartment and rather than finding a place of retreat, tension builds. When Mina, a vibrant American, arrives, their mutual prejudices give way to curiosity and complicity. What began as an involuntary encounter becomes a moment of new possibilities.

Artist Unknown 
80 Minutes | United States | 2023
Juniper, an insecure martial artist, must find out the origins of a painting after two thieves try to steal it from her.

$ Broke Boi
73 Minutes  | United States  | 2022
Dark Comedy, Coming of Age, Satire
A weed delivery boy, with dreams of being an NYC Hustler, gets robbed of his stash and profits at the worst time. He was late with the payment last week, racked up some poor performance reviews, and the company’s Henchmen "Don't play no games". Now, this #Brokeboi and friends have twelve hours to make as much money as they can to pay back the supplier, while also trying to make it to the “Party of The Summer”.

Bones Of Crows
2 hours | Canada | 2022
Drama
​Removed from their family home and forced into Canada’s residential school system, Cree musical prodigy Aline and her siblings are plunged into a struggle for survival. Bones of Crows is Aline's journey from child to matriarch, a moving multi-generational epic of resilience, survival and the pursuit of justice.
  
Hakoniwa
71 Minutes | Japan | 2022
Sci-fi, Drama, Psychological 
To contribute to a better world filled with kindness, a young man named Makoto, joins a brain experiment to connect his brain waves with a female humanoid, Ageha, who has a human brain powered by general A.I. for Emotional Healing. As they learn to sympathize with each other, he begins mixing up his traumatic memory of childhood with his current reality. He desperately tries to quit the experiment, until Ageha asks him if he is truly okay with continuing to escape from his real problems.

Give Me Your Eyes
100 Minutes | United States  |  2022
"Give Me Your Eyes” is a breakneck action thriller movie that follows an agoraphobic young woman who must remotely aid a mysterious girl being pursued by a pair of seemingly unstoppable killers.
Agoraphobic voice actor Jael Jones volunteers for a video chat app that connects sighted individuals with visually impaired users. Need to know the expiration date on a can of soup? Want to confirm that your tie matches your shirt? Jael is here to help you out. But Jael’s feel-good service becomes a nightmare when Alejandra, a mysterious blind woman, wakes her with a chilling late-night call: “There’s somebody in my house. I need your help.” In an isolated location where the police are not an option, Jael must remotely guide Alejandra as she flees a pair of hooded killers... while unraveling the secret of the blind woman’s dark past, her savior the assassin, and her increasingly violent nature.

Mother Of All Shows
110 Minutes | Canada | 2022
In order for Liza to cope with the impending death of her estranged mother, she retreats to a 70's variety show in her mind where the all-powerful host is her own mother, Rosa, who leads a cast of people from Liza's past and present, all a jumble in her mind. After a lifetime of Rosa making everything in Liza's life about Rosa, Liza decided she needed to put up a boundary and go no contact. Rosa hasn't seen her daughter in 2 years. Rosa appears as the host of a 70s variety show in Liza's head with all the bravado and pizazz of Phyllis Diller, Bea Arthur, and Rosemary Clooney. She sings, dances, and yuks it up, all in Liza's imagination; the moments of their lives play out in sketches and songs since they can't seem to connect at all in reality without the conversation blowing up or falling apart.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURES:

The Forgotten Occupation: Jim Crow Goes to Haiti
106 Minutes | United States | 2023
The documentary opens with Filmmaker Alain Martin reading a letter to his deceased grandfather. In that letter’s opening, the filmmaker recalls a morose conversation between his grandfather and another familiar member in which they bemoan the chronic troubles of their country, Haiti. They find themselves desperately hoping for an American intervention, seeing it as the only solution for their ravaged nation. Alain reminds his grandfather that the United States had already occupied Haiti and only left it more impoverished. As the letter continues, the brutal decades of the Occupation come to light, betraying the complicated history of a people who, a century ago, looked to the United States for guidance only to find themselves enmeshed in violent clashes of race, culture, and class, resulting in the wholesale theft of their homeland.

When I Go Outside
70 Minutes |  Canada  | 2022 
Told through his painting, this is the story of Syrian-born, Kurdish artist Bîstyek. With no knowledge of Western art or any formal training, his work speaks to the multi-dimensional aspects of his experience and his voice. A unique portrait of a "refugee" who refuses to be seen through only one lens.

FILM AS ART - Experimental & Non-Linear Shorts:

300 Hours
11:18 Minutes  | United States | 2022
Experimental short
Inspired by hip-hop and trap music, 300 hours is a vertical film directed, shot, and edited by 3 young black men from brooklyn, new york. This creative expression is made by and for black youth at the center of the ongoing art movement taking place in New York city. 300 hours is set in Binghamton, New York within the multi studios apartment shared by Robert Provilus and Jabari Brxwne. The film follows Robert through his tentative journey as he constructs and completes 3 masterful paintings- whilst being filmed by two close friends. 300 hours features 3 different visual mediums (super 8mm, VHS & digital) and is a culmination of an entire year's worth of footage (july 2021- september 2022). 

A Day Longer Than A Day
4:25  |  Germany  |  2022
Experimental Short
“A day longer than a day” (2022) is a cinematic reflection on the irregular currents in the Euripus Strait, a narrow tract of water running along the coast of Chalkida (Greece). On six days during the synodic lunar month, three days after each squaring of Sun-Earth-Moon (90-degree constellation), the regular tidal forces weaken and the currents become so unpredictable that they violently change direction up to 14 times in 24 hours. This unique natural phenomenon and the associated historical process of understanding it, which begins with Aristotle, is used as a mirror for contradictory forces within the human soul.

Agita
16:59 Minutes | United States  | 2022
Horror, Drama, Fantasy
A mother and daughter living in a seaside town fall prey to the mischievous coercion of a grief demon in this experimental short film.

Demi-Gods
5:33 Minutes |  Germany |  2022
Animation, Music Video, Experimental
What is the human experience of war, narcissism and ecological destruction? Demi-Gods addresses these three dark aspects of humanity in the form of a musical and visual essay. It shows our worship of these dark forces, which have now become normalized and fetishized. A furtive look from us mortals at the mechanics of the dark demi-gods of our time; turned into a surreal sequence of sonic and visual transformations.

Reveal
5:22 Minutes | United States  | 2022
Horror, Comedy, Animation
A pregnant woman senses something is amiss when her sister throws an unwanted baby shower.

Stillness
6:05 Minutes  |  United States  |  2022
Experimental, Music
The calm after the storm, the quiet reflection on stillness in winter. About how time can pass and while some things change, others remain the same.

Time’s Ticking
5 Minutes | United States | 2022
Experimental
An experimental short film exploring the movement of fast vs. slow time and my identity.

DOCUMENTARY SHORTS:

Garden Ministry 
9 Minutes 50 Seconds |  United States  | 2023
A joyful portrait of Reverend Dallas Conyers–how she survived environmental racism, became a climate organizer out of necessity, and her passion for healing the climate crisis through community organizing and her front yard garden.

Handwritten
8 Minutes 48 Seconds |  United States |  2022
After discovering old diaries and notebooks, artist Jaime Sunwoo examines her shapeshifting penmanship and wonders why she's never had a consistent style. Through playful paper puppetry and animation, she reflects on what handwriting means to her personally, its significance throughout history, and its relevance in our computerized world.

Joyous 
23 Minutes | United States |  2022
Justin is your typical kid with one very distinct exception. He’s grown up as global classical music superstar. By the time he was in pre-k, he had played in stadiums and cathedrals, but now he faces his biggest challenge yet; becoming a teenager. Justin attends a music school run by his father, Julian. His father also happens to be one of his music teachers and the manager of the classical music group, Joyous String Ensemble. His father runs a tight ship and is a respected composer in his own right. He believes classical music is the most pure expression of music. Justin and the group want to move more towards Pop covers and mixing in dance numbers but Julian wants them to stay more traditional. Can Justin convince Julian to add a hip hop number in time for their Times Square performance or will they continue to just stick to the classics.

Remember The Children
22 Minutes 40 Seconds | United States | 2022
WSD Productions presents, "Remember the Children", a short film (23min) addressing Indian Boarding Schools in America. There were over 400 government funded, often church run, Indian Boarding Schools in the US. Thousands of children died at these schools throughout the 19th and 20th centuries… This is the story of the Rapid City Indian Boarding School. These stories have been kept alive through the elders… the grandmothers that never forgot and continued to share the stories of the forgotten children. They are no longer forgotten through the advocacy of historians and community members sharing the stories of the children. As a result of the community advocacy and partners that want positive change, the Children’s Memorial is now a reality.

Rose Salane’s Lost & Found
9 Minutes 25 Seconds | United States |  2022
Born and raised in New York City, artist Rose Salane has been fascinated by how found objects, such as rings lost on the city’s thousands of trains and buses, can be entry points into the lives of the commuters she’s ridden alongside for much of her life and into the city that is still her home today. This short documentary follows Salane as she consults an eclectic mix of professionals around the city about the value and significance of these rings, uncovering a series of often poignant micro-histories, as well as a much larger, overarching story of New York’s cultural and economic networks

Scrawn 
7 Minutes 44 Seconds | United States | 2022
Scrawn is a short documentary about baby pigeons growing up in the wild - which, here, means a fire escape in Washington Heights, NYC. Ever seen a baby pigeon before?

Song Dong:  生 /Sheng
8 Minutes 57 Seconds | United States/China | 2022
Internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Song Dong is known for collaborating with artist Yin Xiuzhen, his wife, on large-scale mixed-media chopsticks sculptures. For this ongoing series that was started in 2001, each of them creates one chopstick and only reveals their work to each other when exhibiting the pieces together as a pair. This short documentary tells the story of how Song’s family deeply influences his art, and how he is sharing his creative practice with his own daughter. Through artwork that honors the power of memory and our relationships with those closest to us, he attempts to hold the impermanence of life at bay.

Three Lessons (How to Shoot a Gun)
36 Minutes 04 Seconds | United States | 2019
Three Lessons (How to shoot a gun) is an essay film that examines the reproduction and naturalization of gun culture while deconstructing the notion of gun culture as monolith. It follows a young woman as she travels to New York, Illinois and Colorado in order to learn how to operate a firearm from three men of different backgrounds and ideological points of view. Incorporating instructional, interview and found footage the film presents a complex consideration of the multiple attitudes and approaches toward gun ownership in America.

NARRATIVE SHORTS:

Aaron With 2 A’s
16 minutes 59 seconds | United States |  2022
Drama, Comedy
Meet Aaron. He's starting his 2nd career at age 65... As an actor. What could go wrong? AARON WITH 2 A'S is a short comedy-drama about learning to get out of your own head.

Blue Square
28 Minutes | United States | 2022
Horror, Comedy, Satire, Psychological thriller
After discovering the lucrative business of contemporary fine art, Tim sets off on a get-rich-quick scheme to create the most simple, most valuable piece of art he can. But his desire to create may lead him down a dark path as he is consumed by the artistic process, and perhaps something even more sinister.

Clambake
27 Minutes 50 Seconds |  United States |  2021
Comedy, Drama
Three sisters reunite for a clambake on Cape Cod after their mother's death.

Events at Hemlock Manor
14 Minutes 15 Seconds |  United States | 2022 
Web Series, Television, New Media
At its core, this is a series about underdogs: a ragtag group of spooky weirdos with nowhere else to go. Hemlock Manor is not only a year-round haunted house with a terrible business model, it’s also a home.

Exposure Therapy
9 Minutes 50 Seconds | United States |  2022
Psychological Drama
A young woman struggles with thoughts of killing her best friend.

Floppies
14 Minutes | United States | 2022
Drama, Family, Disability
Floppies is an intimate glimpse into the complicated relationship between an artist's son and his dementia-addled father as they attempt to communicate by collaborating on a one-page comic. As they bring this comic to life, they recall flashbacks to key moments in each of their lives.

Fog Around August
11 Minutes 35 Seconds | United States | 2022
Drama
An intimate look at a young man's desires or the lack thereof.
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From My Package to Yours
6 minutes 48 seconds | United States | 2022
Comedy, Romance
Can true love be delivered to your door?

Good Girl
11 minutes 37 seconds | United States |  2023
Comedy, Romance, LGBTQIA+, New York, RomCom
After ending a six year relationship, a well-behaved, Jewish, OBGYN decides to turn her brain off and her body on by exploring BDSM; instances of which are popping up in the most unusual places.

Hold to Dash
15 Minutes 38 Seconds |  United States | 2023
Comedy, Drama, Dark Comedy
Neil Durst makes a living streaming his gaming skills to an audience of overstimulated, undersexed males. When he’s asked on a date by a female fan, Neil must leave his bedroom and take a plunge into the real world.

Hologramme
9 Minutes 29 Seconds | Canada | 2023
Drama

I Didn’t Mean To Go Mental
30 Minutes |  United States |  2022
Television
When two women crash their cars into each other in a school parking lot, they are forced to spend the weekend in a psych ward together.

It’s a Dog
7 Minutes 30 Seconds |  United States |  2022
Comedy
He's bald. Well, no, he's *going* bald. He still has hair. On like, the sides. Does that count? It counts, right? Maybe? Either way, he’s pathetic. And he’s getting old.

Jared & Daughter
19 Minutes 52 Seconds | United States | 2022
Drama Comedy Fantasy
When an aging table wiper faces a grim diagnosis, his underappreciated daughter must step forward to save the family business.

Larua
20 Minutes | Italy | 2022
Drama, Mystery
During a mild morning of Autumn a mother has been called by her daughter's primary school teachers who are worried because the 10-year-old Francesca obsessively draws the same empty, ephemeral ghosts silhouettes.Thus we enter the world of little Francesca, where her daily life flows parallel to the world surrounding her: a mother, a brother, a boyfriend and their precarious presence.

Little Yellow Flower (小黃花 ) 
29 minutes 55 seconds | Taiwan | 2021
Experimental, Short
Photo Retoucher A-nan returns to the old house that saddens him. The eerily beautiful yellow flowers on the loofah trellis attract a whole nest of ants. As a child, A-nan accidentally killed all these yellow flowers when spraying insecticide on them to kill the ants. In a rage, his father beat him lame. This caused a lifelong conflict between them. The elderly and paralyzed father, now wrapped in diapers and covered with ants, evokes the painful memories of A-nan’s youth. A-nan sprays and kills the ants again. But how will A-nan unravel this knotted relationship with his father, entangled for so many years? How will he restore the loving beauty of the yellow flowers that once bloomed in the courtyard?

Martyr of a Forgotten Dream
23 minutes 35 seconds | United States | 2023
Neo-Western, Western, Action
In a small town somewhere in the Rust-Belt, Leon is forced to surrender his Family home to foreclosure. On eviction day he must decide, to leave or go down fighting.

Misprint
19 Minutes 58 Seconds | United States | 2022
Thriller, Drama
When a reformed criminal receives a cry for help from his former partner in crime, he finds himself back in the game with no way out but through.

On Slauson
9 minutes 5 seconds | United States | 2023
Student Film, Drama
This fiction short film follows a young man, Miguel, who leads a double life as an East LA gang member, and beloved son. He becomes a waiter in hopes of finding some form of identity, only to discover that a terribly perfect coincidence will lead to detrimental effects on the relationship with his mother.

Rear
20 Minutes 22 Seconds | United States | 2022
Drama
When a teacher leaves bruises on a child, an objecting mother unintentionally starts a debate on the use of school corporal punishment in her southern black community.

Simone
6 minutes 30 seconds | United States | 2022
Student Film
One hectic morning, a young mother attempts to navigate the New York City subway to get her baby to daycare on time.

​Snail Mail
6 minutes 28 seconds | United States | 2022
Comedy
Clara is tired of getting mail, but her mail carrier is very dedicated to the job. Let the battle begin!

Steel Forest / 钢铁森林
7 minutes 37 seconds | China  | 2021
Drama, Children, Family, Fantasy
A 10-years old left-behind boy in China secretly follows his poet father to the city, trying to find the poetic and fantasy outside world written in his father's poems, but in the end, he discovers his father is a liar and a construction worker.

The Auditions 
4 minutes 17 seconds | United States |  2023
Comedy
A series of fake auditions based on REAL events.

The Button Game
7 minutes 20 seconds | United States | 2022
Experimental 
A brutal display of a life in isolation.

The Invite 
10 minutes 59 seconds | United States |  2022
Comedy, Drama
As his wedding day approaches, an Indian American man realizes his turban must be tied for his wedding and has to decide whether to invite his father to be a part of the biggest day of his life.

The Prisoner’s Ransom
12 minutes 40 seconds | United States | 2023
Psychological Thriller, Drama, Coming of Age
Twenty-two-year-old Jaime Wilson has become the prisoner of his own mind. He's being held ransom by a deranged criminal doppelgänger, the double, who demands Jaime's father pay $25,000 for his release.

Wednesday Night
18 Minutes 27 Seconds | United States | 2022
Coming of Age, Mumblecore, Slice of Life
With the assistance of his high school best friend's visit, college senior Mac comes to terms with the rapidly approaching transition he has been avoiding.

Wendy
10 minutes 13 seconds | United States | 2022
Romance, Young Adult, LGBTQ, Coming of Age
A quiet but imaginative eighth grader attempts to find the courage to approach her secret crush while working on a middle-school production of Romeo & Juliet.

2023  SCREENPLAY COMPETITION
 
FINALISTS:

Cuffe  - Written by Anita Allison
Godfor  - Written by Pablo Torroella
Once When U Were Mine – Written by Richard Dane Scott
Outer Bankers – Written by  Diann Ducharme
Snake Oil – Written by David Salisbury
The Wrestling Show – Written by – Julie Harrison-Harney
 
SEMI-FINALISTS:

5 Sandwiches – Written by Michael Puzzo
Another Will Come – Written by Kevin J. Howard
Bog Water – Written by  Jonathan Weisbrod
Gloves – Written by  Michael Clifton
Greetings from the Floodgates – Written by Mary Von Aue
Here Goes Nothing – Written by Hanna Gerlander & Marky Hinojosa
Into the Dark Wood – Written by – Benjamin Rummans
Libertaire – Written by Elizabeth Indianos
Man Up Fairy Dust –Written by Christopher Schwartz M.D.
Moksha – Written by  Saurin D. Lakhia
Rumspringa –Written by Finnegan Haid & Jake Haddock
Superstition - Written by Jeremy St. Romain
Taste the Road, Jack – Written by Stefan Alexander & Eric Williford
They Saved Rippers – Written by Jared Warner & Eric Schmidt
 
QUARTERFINALISTS:

Ars Gratia Artis – Written by Stefan Alexander
Air & Noise – Written by Edward  Tadross
Cathedrals on the Warm Surface – Written by Colin Dodds
Critters of Run Amok Gulch– Written byCharles Tucker
Dark Matter – Written by Olga Holtz
Do Unto Others – Written by Joseph Leone
Golem – Written by Michael Levine
Graven – Written by Michael Clifton
Grounded – Written by Martin Tylicki
Guessing – Written by Sharon Spell
Happiness Therapy – Written by Ornella Ohayon
Her Seventh Death – Written by Virginia Austin
How Do You Spell Ransom? – Written by Jonathan Isshak
I Am the Dragon King– Written by Storm Choi
In The Dark– Written by Stefan Mannes & Anthony Guilanti
Johnny Jump Up – Written by Shiva Ramanathan
Josh – Written by Maria Carolan
Maddie and Frannie – Written by Virginia Austin
Metal Box – Written by Brayden Dalazzone
Montezuma’s Treasure – Written by Hal Streckert
No Address – Written by Julia Verdin & James Papa
Otherworld, NJ – Written by Matthew McLachlan
Solice – Written by George Basiev
The Bad Poet – Written by Michael Clifton
The Lost Camp – Written by Conner Etter
The Twin Portraits – Written by Eva Everett Irving
The Voice of Holiday Brown – Written by Cheran Rush
 
OFFICIAL SELECTIONS:
 
A More Perfect Union – Written by Jonathan Weisbrod
4N6(Not Dead Bodies) – Written by Melissa Aquiles
Abstract of Love – Written by Scott James Cook
Black Inks – Written by Zaric Reed
Brooklyn-Country – Written by Wayne Nuessle
Chitlin – Written by Michael Clifton
Coop – Written by Joseph Leone
Damaging People – Written by Laura DeBar
Doctor-ish – Written by Benjamin J. Stevens MD
From Greenpoint with Love – Written by Bob Canning
Gallows Hill – Written by Cory Rowe
Girls Night – Written by Austin Roe
Kate’s Ballad – Written by Rory O’Connor
Killing Cherry Jane – Written by Cassidy Rose Layton
Ladykiller – Written by Brian W. Smith
Macho – Written by Francisco Solarzano & Anthony Guilianti
Off His Meds – Written by Luis Ortiz & Tsunami Ortiz
Pet Peeves – Written by Denai Carrillo
PTSDee – Written by Hannah Petosa
Sheepwolf – Written by Arlene Bogna & Zi R. Lem
Show Your Work – Written by Andre Paul Thierry
Superheroish – Written by Andre Paul Thierry
The Age of Blood – Written by Alexa Salimpour
The Big Eighties – Written by Betty Ouyang
The First Christmas – Written by Matthew Trudeau
Typhoid Mary – Written by Rachel Ward
Under The Shadow – Written by Jim Wurst
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot – Written by Matthew Domenico
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