Franklin Brewster, a detective fired from the Chicago PD following the loss of his wife and love affair with the bottle, now struggles performing private work tailing errant spouses and plugging retail theft. Then one day a rich widow begs him to solve a cold case murder. Will he take the case? Why weren’t the police successful? Is there an international element? Will his probe bring even more death?

CAST LIST:

Narrator: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
Wallace: Hartley O. Gyamfi
Laura: Jennifer Misiorowski
Robbie: Joseph Ferrari
Swanson: Sheldon Graham
Franklyn: Shawn Devlin
Barbara: Lada Darewych

—

Producer/Director: Matthew Toffolohttp://www.matthewtoffolo.com

Festival Moderators: Matthew Toffolo, Rachel Elder

Casting Director: Sean Ballantyne

Editors: Kimberly Villarruel, Ryan Haines, John Johnson

Festival Directors: Rachel Elder, Natasha Levy

Camera Operators: Ryan Haines, Temitope Akinterinwa, Efren Zapata, Zack Arch

A man finds himself in a strange world, in a strange form. He cant remember anything and must journey to find himself.

Project Links

• Website
• Facebook

Born, March 22, 1996. Ryan Jolly started animating in early middle school. Always planning film ideas and character designs on the sides of notebooks. He loved to create stories and shared them on YouTube. After graduating college he took a job as a tutor, helping young animators with the same classes he had taken.

Project Links

• Website
• Facebook

A red thread connects your destiny, but perhaps not the only one you find.

Project Links

• Website

News & Reviews

• “VAALA PRESENTS VIET FILM FEST 2019 || RED THREAD”Viet Film Festhttp://www.vietfilmfest.com/movie/red-thread/
• “2019 Voices Heard Films: Red Thread by Yijun Pan & Anh Vo”Milwaukee Short Film Festivalhttps://mkeshortfest.blogspot.com/2019/07/2019-voices-heard-f

I believe in the power of storytelling with a camera. Before I came to the United States, I was a full-time fashion photographer. Still, I want more, which makes me decide to pursue a new education at DePaul University with a cinematography concentration to prepare myself to understand and tell a better human story through visual storytelling.

Director Statement

The Red Thread of Fate (also referred to as the Red Thread of Marriage), is an East Asian belief originating from Chinese legend. According to this myth, the gods tie an invisible red cord around the little finger of those that are destined to meet each other. The two people who connected by the red dread are destined lovers, regardless of place, time, or circumstances. This myth is similar to the western concept of a soul mate or a destined flame.

Through stages of the relationship, the concept we want to…

As the viewer follows a joyful trip to the beach by a family with three young children, innocence and happiness give way to the unthinkable. While the day unfolds on-screen, the audience comes to realize, through subtle audiovisual cues, that a tragedy has occurred: one of the three children has drowned. Decisions are made in a state of shock, and the blurred lines between the rational and irrational interrupt and fragment the journey back home. The parents opt to bring their dead son back in the same car with the two other children pretending as if he is sleeping.

Project Links

• Website

Pegah Pasalar (born in 1992) is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist currently based in Chicago.

She received her bachelor’s degree from the Art University of Tehran majoring in cinema editing.

She is a full-merit scholarship awardee at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she is pursuing a master of fine arts in studio with an emphasis in film and video.

The theme of her work is centered on the position of women in the family and society,social criticism of childhood and immigration,and the transitions and effects within interpersonal relationships.

Pegah is currently continuing to work on a series of short films, each titled after a day of the week. With the completion of the short film Sunday, she is now working on Saturday. Each of these works take place over the course of one day.

Director Statement

A family vacation ends in grief and unanswered questions…

Over View

Neil needs his co-worker BBQ to go off without a hitch in order for his boss to entrust him with the warehouse club membership. Then he will choose the SNACKS!

Project Links

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

rnst

Brian Ernst has spent the majority of his professional career in journalism and freelance videography but has found his greatest success in short form comedy.

He and his fellow producers, Mitch Brinkman & Nathan Hennenfent, made their festival debut in 2015 with their short web series “Dirty Laundry”, a one room, single camera narrative featuring a blossoming friendship.

A DePaul University graduate and former Chicago Tribune video producer, Brian has trained in writing at the Annoyance and iO Theaters, most recently participating in the latter with a Monty Python style sketch revue. During his tenure at the Tribune, Brian spearheaded several series, including the Theater Loop Showcase which aimed at recreating and documenting the theater scene in Chicago.

Brian received an Emerging Cinematographer award for his work on “Ludo”, a short documentary showcased at the Cannes Film Festival, but aims at focusing his efforts on episodic and feature length…

“We Were Hardly More Than Children” is an epic tale of a friend’s traumatic abortion; a deep hurt not remembered, but poignantly visible in her paintings.

Project Links

• Website

• Film Type:Documentary, Experimental, Short
• Genres:Experimental, Women, Narrative, Documentary
• Runtime:8 minutes 45 seconds
• Completion Date:March 7, 2019
• Production Budget:1,000 USD
• Country of Origin:United States
• Country of Filming:United States
• Film Language:English
• Shooting Format:Digital
• Aspect Ratio:16:9
• Film Color:Color