11 documentaries join the 2025 Sundance Film Festival line-up as the festival announced the shorts slate for next year’s event. The short docs offer a global reach with over half the titles representing filmmakers outside the USA with films hailing from Algeria, China, Cuba, France, Ivory Coast, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Canadian films are also well represented on the fiction front. The Sundance shorts include Amanda Strong’s stop-motion animation short Inkwo for When the Starving Return, the story of a gender-shifting warrior protecting their community. Bec Pacault’s Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail?, meanwhile, offers a drama centred on a character named Mad who, while recovering from top surgery, confronts their relationship with their mother. In Jorge Thielen Armand’s Pasta Negra, a Canadian-Italian-Venezuelan Colombian co-production, three women cross borders in search of noodles. Juan Frank Hernandez’s Platanero, meanwhile, follows who brothers in a Haitian shantytown surviving day by day. And in the Argentinian-Canadian co-production Luz Diabla, directors Gervasio Canda, Paula Boffo, and Patricio Plaza tell the story of a raver who meets a chance encounter.
Sundance previously announced the feature docs for the 2025 festival, including Seth Scriver and Peter Scriver’s Endless Cookie and Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s Cutting through Rocks.
The documentary shorts announced today for Sundance 2025 are as follows:
Deadlock / France, Algeria (Directors: Lucien Beucher, Mahdi Boucif, Producers: Germain Robin, Myriam El Mounsif) — Stuck in their Algiers neighborhood, Sifou and Mahrez gaze at the sea while thinking of their brothers who left for new lives. As uncertainty lingers on the horizon, they wonder if they can break the deadlock. Available online for Public.
Death Education / China (Director and Producer: Yuxuan Ethan Wu) — In China, a high school teacher has introduced a death education class for young students. On the traditional Tomb Sweeping Day, they bury unnamed ashes at a public cemetery where they contemplate and contextualize the meaning of death. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Entre le Feu et le Clair de Lune / U.S.A., Côte d’Ivoire (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Dominic Yarabe, Screenwriter: Hyacinthe Houphouet Yarabe, Producer: Carlo Nasisse) — An Ivorian father and his daughter set out to continue the book he never finished about a war he experienced as a child. With children in his village today, three generations create timelines, dreams, and memories. Available online for Public.
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing / U.K. (Director: Theo Panagopoulos, Producer: Marissa Keating) — When a filmmaker of Palestinian descent based in Scotland unearths a rarely seen film archive of Palestinian wildflowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. North American Premiere. Available online for Public.
Hold Me Close / U.S.A. (Directors and Producers: Aurora Brachman, LaTajh Simmons-Weaver) — A chronicle of the power and complexity of the relationship between Corinne and Tiana, two Queer Black womxn who experience cycles of life’s joys and pains together in the home they share. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Hoops, Hopes & Dreams / U.S.A. (Director and Producer: Glenn Kaino, Producers: Michael Latt, Alexys Feaster, Afshin Shahidi) — The untold story about how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and an all-star team of civil rights activists took to basketball courts to rally young voters while winning hearts of communities, and how their strategy has echoed in contemporary politics. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
The Long Valley / U.S.A. (Directors and Producers: Robert Machoian, Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck) — Documenting the people and landscapes of the Salinas Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in California. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Miss You Perdularia / Cuba (Director: Manu Zilveti, Screenwriter: Stefano Lopes, Producer: Cynthia Deus) — At a Cuban high school, a group of girls who call themselves “Las Perdularias” find ways to deal with the absences on an island that is becoming increasingly empty. North American Premiere. Available online for Public.
The Reality of Hope / U.K., Sweden (Director and Producer: Joe Hunting, Producer: Max Willson) — Virtual reality creator Hiyu is facing kidney failure. His online friend Photographotter travels from New York City to Stockholm to be a live donor to Hiyu. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
Tiger / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Loren Waters, Producer: Dana Tiger) — A portrait of award-winning, internationally acclaimed Indigenous artist and elder Dana Tiger, her family, and the resurgence of the iconic Tiger T-shirt company. World Premiere. Available online for Public.
We Were The Scenery / U.S.A. (Director: Christopher Radcliff, Producers: Cathy Linh Che, Jess X. Snow) — In 1975, Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che fled from Vietnam by boat and docked in the Philippines, where they were utilized as background extras during the filming of Apocalypse Now. World Premiere.
