Films I watched at Palm Springs ShortFest 2014

For 50 years, Michael and Betty have been united by one guiding principle: no secrets. But when a provocative Tom of Finland doll triggers Michael's long-buried desires, Betty discovers that secrets have been part of their life all along.

In the tradition of classic westerns, a narrator sets up the story of a lone gunslinger who walks into a saloon. However, the people in this saloon can hear the narrator and the narrator may just be a little bit bloodthirsty.

Alice, already a woman, wakes up in a foreign land. She does not remember her name neither how she got there. Evil forces are at work and Alice will have to fight to survive Wonderland and get back to her daughter.

Somehow, an unforeseen malfunction in a man's spectacles blurs the frail bounds between reality and parallel reality, allowing instances of a dark and dystopian future to seep into his world.

On the verge of aging out of foster care, 17-year-old Mercedes Harper needs money, and she needs it now. She manipulates Denver Thomas, a former high-school classmate who happens to have a massive crush on her, to help her plan and execute a bank robbery.

A simple, domestic love story about a man who takes his skin off for his girlfriend, and why it probably wasn't the best idea...

A grieving Chicana mother confronts an uninvited family member before her Día de los Muertos celebration.

EN LAS NUBES (In the Clouds) explores the complicated, and often comedic, space between how we think romance should work and how it actually does. Set all around Buenos Aires during one momentous week in the lives of Mariela, an Argentinean illustrator, and Oliver, an American dog food executive working abroad, the film takes a look at conflicting cultural disagreements about intimacy and the way the once-simple idea of a marriage proposal has taken on an increasingly public, and sometimes ridiculous, weight in this golden age of YouTube.

An alternative family drama about life and death.

Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter make a reluctant pilgrimage to the old fairground yard where their friend Sam went missing when they were boys. Both men's' lives are colored by what happened the day their friend was sucked inside the Ghost Train, never to return. This year, Michael has something to tell Peter that will cast fresh light on the incident, something that will change their lives even more than that fateful day 30 years ago...

Mia is eight years old and wants to do anything but hang out at her dads house trying to sell a car that doesn't run. Her father, Joe has real concerns he's grappling with. The Hero Pose is a story about Joe and Mia, father and daughter, and those precious moments when two people are able to pause and connect.

A young girl's spirit is tested.

During the German invasion of Soviet Russia, a humble farmer and his wife must protect a crate of five priceless paintings evacuated from Leningrad while waiting for news from their son, a soldier fighting on the Eastern front.

A dark comedy about how a life can be ruined in 140 characters.

Trapped in a dull and loveless marriage, a few magical letters turn Theo's darkest fantasies into reality. Suddenly, the elderly couple is playing a board game of life and death.

Leading United States legal expert on China, and the first American lawyer there after normalization of US-China relations, Jerome Alan Cohen, tells the harrowing tale of how and why his China studies prepared him to rescue his college classmate, Jack Downey, from 'behind enemy lines' after Downey's CIA mission to infiltrate communist China went awry in the 1950s.

A conflicted African priest wrestles with his conscience.

A teenage boxer searching for self-definition gives in to his true colours at the risk of losing everything.

Two strangers receive test results from the hospital: A young, up-and-coming sports agent has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, while a grim old loner, anticipating his own death, is sentenced... to live. We follow these two men as they are forced to leave behind their old lives and face the deep yearning in their hearts. By chance, they each confide in the same woman. She is the mother of one of the men, and the salvation of the other. Then the hospital calls again, with some unexpected news.

Ten-year old Finn takes a mystical journey into nature and discovers a whole new world.

Alexander, a lone cosmonaut, is adrift in orbit around Earth. He has lost communications and life-support systems are dwindling fast. At the same time in Italy, a radio engineer is working the night shift. He discovers a voice amidst the empty static. It is Alexander's emergency transmission, carried across space from his dying capsule. Over one night these two men are bonded, but their new found friendship, might not last the night.

Obsessed by a mysterious voice message, astronaut Meredith will face its paradoxical condition in order to stay connected to his humanity.

Prospect is the unusual coming-of-age story of a teenage girl on a toxic alien planet. She and her father hunt for precious materials aiming to strike it rich. When the father is attacked by a roving bandit, the daughter must take control.

When discovering a deep space distress call from his estranged brother, Marshall must choose to save himself or venture into the unknown for a chance at redemption.

A simple test drive turns sinister when Sadie gets trapped in the back seat of her own car, captive to two volatile brothers whose relationship is set to explode.