Watch film: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-mind

Directed by Cindy Sophie Solombrino

Sound & Music: Tom Paley-Menzines

A Young girl travels down into the underground, where lack of caution may not be warranted…

Director Statement
As a director, I strive to have as much fun as I can with my work and to show emotion and vision within the actual style of the film.

Watch film: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-in-your-hands

After a traumatic event, Hanna begins therapy to make sense of what happened. When her therapist introduces an alternative treatment, she’s plunged into a hypnotic journey through the memories that shaped her—each more unsettling than the last. As the boundaries between healing and influence begin to blur, Hanna must confront the stories she’s buried to reclaim her sense of self.

Directed by Cassandra Isabelle Hedberg

Written by Axel Österholm

Cast: Disa Blom, Fia Adler Sandblad, Ebba Canvert, Andreas Luukinen

Director Statement
I use animation as a way to give form to the invisible—what is felt but not always seen. In Your Hands (2025) explores personal themes such as mental illness, substance use and violence, and shows how animation can hold fragile, complex stories with both precision and emotional depth. I’m especially interested in narratives about power and control, and how violence can be disguised as care. Animation, with its ability to bend reality and visualize the subconscious, offers a unique space to explore these tensions—where emotional truth can be expressed beyond the limits of realism.

Watch film: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-rat-trap

Rat Trap follows Sarah, who wakes after a drunken night out to find herself abducted and imprisoned in a grim, windowless dungeon, watched constantly through a security camera. Disoriented and terrified, she soon discovers she is not alone. Sharing the space with her is another captive, an eerily quiet and scarred man whose behaviour suggests he knows far more about their situation than he is willing to say. As the hours pass, fragments of a horrifying truth begin to emerge. The dungeon is governed by brutal rules, and survival is tied to a choice neither of them should have to make. With paranoia mounting and trust eroding, fear turns inward as much as outward, forcing Sarah to question the limits of morality under extreme pressure. Claustrophobic and relentless, Rat Trap explores power, guilt, and desperation, examining what happens when survival itself becomes a weapon.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt39330338/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk

https://www.instagram.com/rat_trap_film

Directed by Emilia Stevens

Produced by Mia Scudds

Starring: Chloe Lavine, William Parsons

Watch film: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-ring-a-bell-documentary-film

Ring A Bell has been officially selected for 5 international Film Festivals.

Jon has devoted his life to battling landfills, reducing carbon footprints, and combating greenhouse gases. He champions healthy lifestyles and re-mobilizes substance abusers, prisoners, and asylum seekers with the help of a German invention known as the Velocipede, or more commonly, the bicycle. Does that ring a bell?

Directed by Ravi Ranjan

https://imraviranjan.wixsite.com/storyteller

https://www.instagram.com/avbyravi

Director Statement

Ring A Bell, It’s a feel-good, positive film, about being passionate and dedicated to the work of Jon in recycling. It would also educate the viewers that no person or platform is small or big enough to bring a positive change to society or ecology.

Watch film: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-summoning

A weekend getaway takes a terrifying turn when four friends Olivia, Daniel, Maya, and Ethan discover an old Ouija board in the attic of their rental cabin. What starts as an amusing game soon spirals into a waking nightmare as the board unlocks a sinister force that preys on their fears and hidden traumas. Liv, the skeptic, refuses to believe at first, but when the entity begins manipulating their reality, she is forced to reconsider everything she knows. Dan, the eager believer, finds himself drawn to the board in ways he cannot explain. Maya, with her deep emotional sensitivity, becomes the entity’s primary conduit, making her both an asset and a liability. Ethan, the rebel of the group, laughs it off until he vanishes without a trace. As the supernatural occurrences escalate, the group must band together to solve the mystery behind the board and the force it has unleashed before they become its next victims.

https://www.instagram.com/sachinmaddumahewa

Watch film: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-irreplaceable

The spirit of a recently deceased pet must get his owner’s attention before she throws away all the memories of the life they had together.

Directed by Samantha Lauren Reyna

Produced by Wen Tong Everitt, Samantha Lauren Reyna

Lead Animators: Katia Antablian, Fiji Simon, Tsolin Kadian

https://www.instagram.com/samreyna

Watch film here: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-do-clay-fish-dream-of-wool-cats

A clumsy cat dreams of being a great chef, causing hilarious cooking disasters—until it wakes up and realizes it was all just a dream.

Directed by Xinyi Nie

Voice actor: Joey Liu

https://www.instagram.com/xinyinieok

watch film here: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/watch-eons-alone

An astronaut lives on an unspecified planet. She lives her same, repetitive life before seeing a flashing red light in the distance. She looks at this light for many days, before realizing that someone or something is out there. Desiring to not be alone anymore, she finds a way to leave her planet, and explore. She jumps and gets blown into the air by a geyser. While she floats, she watches as her planet slowly fades further and further away from her line of sight. Suddenly, she sees a strange red being reaching its arm out for her. She hesitates, but slowly reaches up to grab the extended arm. She is reaching towards the unknown, and who she could become. The things that keep us safe are often the things that keep us alone.

Directed by Kai Lee Conrath

David and Lucia’s perfect life is a lie. She hides an affair with Rick. He loses everything to drugs and gambling, then vanishes. Alone with their daughter Taso, Lucia must choose: run to Rick, or face the wreckage David left. As they spiral, a stranger appears with one clue. One clue. Two lives. A truth that could either save them—or destroy them for good.

Review by Julie C. Sheppard:

I Am Yours is a heart-wrenching film that depicts a faltering marriage. The sombre, moving screenplay allows the viewer to imagine potential reasons for the original relationship discord, which is a more intriguing narrative decision than spelling it all out. Such reasons could have been workaholism, domestic violence or dissatisfaction, which result in such vices as drug abuse, gambling and infidelity. These problems are addressed with both realism and sensitivity, while the ingenious storyline provides two potential endings, depending upon choices – – one of relief and second chances, and one of tragedy. This filmic convention truly sets the piece apart. 

The cast members play their roles with such gravitas and believability, especially the two leads who show deep frustration and remorse for their detrimental choices. The cinematography is, for the most part, naturalistic which suits the tone, where common lifestyle vices have serious ramifications. The plaintive soundtrack is often infused with echoey and mournful piano, in addition to the attempts at blues music by the fireside homeless man. This tale spares no one, as it depicts the possibility of hope followed by a stern warning about the pitfalls of going down the wrong road.

This independent micro-short documentary captures interviews with two trailblazers changing the narrative discourse in the area of disability in Australia, Tim Cahalan and Joanne Hatchard, through the sharing of their ‘proudest moment’. Tim, born with Crouzon syndrome and diagnosed with hydrocephalus at 3 years old requiring a shunt, brought about awareness in 2019 of being a victim to the Government’s robodebt scheme, putting a ‘face to the name’. Joanne, an award-winning neurodivergent therapist with lived experience, parent and founder of Better Being Me, champions the power of seeing neurodivergence as a meaningful, legitimate way of being. During sharing their ‘proudest moment’, an artist drew their portrait capturing a moment in time as their authentic selves.

Review by Parker Jesse Chase:

Pride is rarely categorized as an act of resistance, yet Mannik’s latest micro-short documentary proves it is exactly that. By profiling two Australian disability advocates, Tim Cahalan and Joanne Hatchard, the film moves beyond the familiar narratives of survival to explore a more radical possibility: that showing up as your authentic self is a defiant choice. As the subjects share their “proudest moments,” an artist sketches their portraits in real-time, capturing fleeting, vulnerable slices of time that reveal the human spirit beneath systemic friction.

The film’s most striking asset is its central purpose: a recurring extreme close-up of art supplies. As we listen to the interviewees, a piece of charcoal dynamically sketches their portraits on canvas. Charcoal is a raw, messy medium that requires friction to leave a mark. A perfect mirror for the systemic friction the subjects endure. By intercutting the interviews with the progression of the drawings, Männik treats identity as an active process of becoming. When the charcoal is finally returned to its case at the end, it underscores a profound truth: the subjects haven’t fundamentally changed, but through self-advocacy and bringing that to their community, they have forced the world to finally see them clearly.

Through this artistic framing, we meet Tim Cahalan, a man living with hydrocephalus who has endured numerous brain surgeries. Tim’s narrative rejects Western hyper-individualism in favor of collective care. His fierce advocacy culminates in a triumphant 2019 address to Parliament to defend disabled citizens from unjust government policies, driven by a desire to smooth the road
for the next generation. Tim pairs this heavy political weight with delightful, radical authenticity. Whether fighting systemic persecution or finding unapologetic comfort in a bunny onesie, he refuses to compromise his true self to make others comfortable.

Then we meet Joanne Hatchard, a neurodiverse family therapist whose late dyslexia diagnosis brought clarity to a lifetime of unexpressed thoughts. Joanne directly targets the grueling physics of “masking” and what comes with the exhausting energy required to fake normalcy in a world built for the neurotypical. Her proudest moment is pure cinematic joy: smiling and twirling on screen in a blue floral dress as years of research finally align with her self-understanding. Joanne challenges the audience with a stark ethical baseline for society: if community and accessibility structures don’t exist to support everyone, “in a sense, you are doing it wrong.”

Männik’s film is short, sweet, and remarkably precise. By chipping away at societal noise until the beautiful, authentic core of her subjects is revealed, she reminds us that the disability community is meant to be actively embraced, not merely accommodated. By capturing these peak moments of alignment and joy, this short film forces a profound connection, not just within ourselves, but with the collective world around us.