Shorts 5: The Hustle

Shorts 5: The Hustle: Dark Comedy Shorts

Give us your tired, your jaded, your sellouts, and your characters making unintentionally hilarious career choices: this program finds the dark humor in “making it.” 84 min. Contains sex and violence.

TICKETS for SHORTS 5 at Roxie Feb 10, 430p HERE

TICKETS for SHORTS 5 at Roxie Feb 13, 7p HERE

Meryl Fuckin Streep

Ava Bogle

USA, 5 min

For two young screenwriters, a movie pitch takes a turn into the surreal.

Jeffrey

Josh Alward

UK, 14 min

Jeffrey is an exotic dancer who is in it for the art. But with art comes struggle, courage and cleaning houses between gigs.

Laurels

David Brundige

USA, 7 min

French director Pauline Sala’s sophomore film hasn’t had the same success as her first, and so her Los Angeles premiere falls to the fledgling L.A. Art Film Festival. To make matter worse, she learns that a strange short film director is sharing her hotel room in order to save the festival money. However, this strange woman has a secret that Pauline will soon learn, and won’t ever forget.

Funemployement

Emily Abt

USA, 12 min

Isaac is a sucky babysitter in Brooklyn whose true passion is comedy. Unfortunately for him, he’s not that talented and he’s a tiny bit of an asshole. When a tinder date brings a new hottie into his life, things are looking up but not for long. Isaac fills in at his roommates’ improv group and not only bombs but also offends everyone in the room. Will Isaac get his shit together? Probably not but maybe he’s not such a bad babysitter after all.

Valentina

Mary Molina

USA, 9 min

During the hottest day ever recorded in human history, a fastidious maid’s duties are interrupted when her vagina comes to life.

Pastries

Gianluca Manzetti

Italy, 17 min

Augosto, a typically self-absorbed actor, has a big audition coming up, so he enlists his girlfriend Annalisa in his usual good-luck ritual. But this time things don’t go quite so auspiciously.

The Poet and the Professor

Ariel Kavoussi

USA, 22 min

A dark comedic short about Ariel, an insecure writer tortured by her own desires. Ariel can’t seem to stop seeing “The Poet,” an older, volatile cinematographer who pursues his “art” while taking full advantage of his rich girlfriend’s beautiful New York apartment. Ariel also can’t stop herself from loving her own professor, a depressed, married, struggling adjunct obsessed with postmodernism and addicted to pills. In this short film, Ariel must overcome a proclivity for dysfunctional affairs to find a healthier, more sustainable relationship.