Virginia Film Festival

A series of short stories of escaping the mundane, life’s hardships, isolation, and being misunderstood. These beautifully crafted gems are told through the lens of fantasy, soaring imagination, and dream imagery conjured to heal and rejuvenate.

Program followed by discussion with director Sasha Waters Freyer (Ashes of Roses). Moderated by Joe Fab (VAFF).

Stories We Could Have Told You (19 min.) When her father suddenly takes his own life, a four-year old daughter must try to understand death, love, and loneliness through her mother’s colorful bedtime stories.

The Middle of the Garage (13 min.) The mysterious arrival of a huge trunk in the garage of Pierre’s house turns his life upside down.

Dreams of Home (5 min.) An experimental visual poem crafted from re-contextualized footage collected during the filmmaker’s everyday life. It follows a boy skateboarding through abstract landscapes and memories in search of a place he encountered in a dream.

Demon Box (14 min.) After festival rejections, a director revises his intensely personal short film about trauma, suicide, and the Holocaust, and transforms it into a painful, blunt and funny dissection of the film and his life.

The Pigeon of Waterloo (15 min.) When a man wearing a pigeon mask finally gets to spend time with his estranged teenage daughter, he becomes aware of how other perceive him and what he must do to accept himself.

The Old Young Crow (12 min.) Mehrdad, now an old man, reflects on his time in Tokyo as a boy after his mother’s passing. He recalls an encounter with an elderly woman named Chiyo at a graveyard near his school. Through his old sketchbook, he recounts the tale of her mysterious disappearance as his childhood memories come to life.

Ashes of Roses (11 min.) An essay film reflection on popular trash, football parties, older men, adolescent desire and the outrageous yet mundane humiliations of being a teenage girl in the 1980s.

Mine Mine Mine (20 min.) A bed-bound man reflects on his childhood as Peter Pan, and how sometimes everyone grows up without you.