Selections from the 2026 San Francisco Short Film Fest
Plus a Q&A with festival programmer Jason Wolos.
Dear Moviegoers,
We continue to follow San Francisco's contributions to the independent cinema scene with a look at the 2026 SF Short Film Festival.
For information on screenings, streamings, and more, check out the official website and peruse their lineup. The event takes place between 10/15 and 10/22.
To kick things off, here's a Q&A with festival programmer Jason Wolos:
How do film festivals best challenge the stigma of short films being somehow lesser in importance or urgency than features?
JW: We don’t feel there’s a stigma around shorts at all being of lesser in importance than feature films. Maybe there was a time in the past, but never in our hearts and minds. They’ve always had a place of equal importance in this art form/medium space. And now, with the rise of the internet, social media, streaming sites dedicated to short-form, etc., the short film is everywhere and even more ubiquitous than feature films. Also, with all the accessibility to short-form content, if there was any stigma due to the economic feasibility of shorts, that has been or is being dissolved because there are many filmmakers, content-creators, and artists being able to maximize their short films for some sort of gain, however measured. For example, on streaming sites dedicated to the short form and social media platforms, millions of views, or likes, or algorithmic reach, can equate to some sort of monetization or beneficial gain.
We see them as a distinct, rigorous art form. That’s why we've had this festival for so long… 7 days of shorts, live and virtual, for over 20 years. And that’s why audiences come out... they want to watch short films!
Several festivals secure Academy Award-qualifying status for their short film categories. We have applied for this status too, and hope to receive it. The fact that we have been hosting a whole 7-day festival for 20 years just dedicated to short film programs says to audiences and press that these short films deserve equal attention.
With many years under its belt already, what will the SF Shorts Fest bring around this year that could be considered as different or challenging?
JW: Well, it’s not that what we’ll bring around to our fest specifically is anything different or challenging; we’re still bringing diverse, creative, imaginative, excellent short films from right here in the San Francisco Bay Area and from around the world. It’s the Filmmakers… with their wonderful, imaginative, fun, daring short films, that bring new & different voices, new & different POV’s, skills, techniques, technology, etc., to us and our audiences that attend the San Francisco short film festival, challenging the way we look at the world and ourselves
Name 3 past short films from the festival that stand out as classics to you, and why.
JW: Just pick 3?!! Impossible. Too hard of a question. Hate this question. It’s like the “What’s your favorite movie?” question… I don’t know about you, but we can’t do it. And then we had sooooo many great short films play over the years. But here’s 4 random ones that just come to mind for no particular reason, other than they come to mind… out of dozens and dozens of classic shorts that have played our festival over the years.
Foreign Narrative- I Am Not a Robot
It won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 2025, becoming the first Dutch short film to do so.
Documentary: By My Side
How service dogs restore war veterans' sense of safety and family connection. We had a sold-out full house on opening night for this film and “TAILS OF THE CITY.” The audience was completely present for this doc of three military veteran families in Northern California struggling with severe, treatment-resistant PTSD. Doc filmmaking at its best, capturing life moments and community.
Narrative - Ball and Vase
A sweet and tender film that touches upon the universal themes of aging and loss… an old magician that struggles to reconnect with the world--and himself— on his last Christmas. Starring Austin Pendleton.
Lessons My Hair Has Taught Me - A self-conscious young man laments his hair loss and walks through the five stages of a bald man's grief. A uniquely personalized short film that I can’t forget how it had our full house thoroughly engaged.
And just a couple, of many, coming up in this year’s fest that have classic potential:
Dérive- a reclusive person embarks on a Surrealist odyssey (a dérive) across New York City, experiencing a series of spontaneous connections along the way that inspire her to engage the world anew.
Mall Video Store - about the owner of Static Tape Video, an independent video store located inside a Michigan shopping mall… explores the enduring appeal of physical media and the connections forged through a shared passion for film.
Rolling Film Rocking History, Al Maysles Captures The Beatles - Al Maysles tells the story of how he shot the Beatles coming to the USA for the first time.
Are short films stepping stones to a greater career in filmmaking, or, in this current viral social media landscape, are they now pinnacles of the industry?
JW: They are now both. They still remain the ultimate calling card. They still are “stepping stones” as they were years ago, before the viral social media landscape. And they now can allow independent filmmakers to not wait to get “in the Industry.” A filmmaker or creator can build direct community equity, reach audiences directly, maximize, and retain creative ownership.
Short films have and still occupy a space in a filmmaking career path, as a crucial stepping stone for the traditional Hollywood career, and for first-time filmmakers. But they’re no longer viewed merely as what beginning or first-time filmmakers do before making a feature film. Nowadays, many times, they are the means to an end, or the end goal. It’s a thriving, independent art form.
Many filmmakers, and we have repeat ones at SF Shorts as well that make a short film or films every year, submit and play our film festival. That is their sole intention. Realize their short film and get it before a live audience at film festivals. With no intention of turning it into a feature film or making a feature film next. They may make their living already somehow, like, say, as commercial video producers, or as brand content creators. The short film is their creative outlet.
And as we know, a short film on social media like YouTube or TikTok can capture tens of millions of views—an audience size most indie feature-length films will never achieve over their entire life. Still, the feature film will never disappear because it builds deeper emotional connections and escapism that you can only get with the feature-length movie.
And now, the reviews:
In light of some lesser-known independent films, like Moon Garden, I tend to take steps toward the oddball fairy-tale flicks of self-discovery and survival, like Chase Your Dreams. These kinds of movies often depict the classic "damsel in distress" as both victim and hero, seeing in them a flipped-script of trope and caricature. By marching through the dark forest, heading into the unknown all alone, these female characters witness danger coming at them, and power coming from themselves. And, in more ways than one.
Directed by Brandon Oldenburg and Limbert Fabian, this dialogue-silent trial through time and maturity features a young girl growing into her own woman, all the while running (or chasing) after a large muppet-ish being. This being holds ballet shoes, withholding them from her eager grasp, as she grows from kid to high schooler to adult. The film is one extended, titular chase, jumping over bystanders and avoiding obstacles through the dreams of others, all to reach their wanted destiny.
It's quite a trip, Chase Your Dreams. Beyond cute and before precious, this is a film of terrific dynamism, always on the move and always focused on the singular goal of ultimate fulfillment. The girl turned woman doesn't appear to be doing this for anyone but herself, going so far as to receive applause from an empty, but well-lit, auditorium. Indeed, her chase is an achievement, and not a selfish one. Living under a shadow? Not at all. She just wants to perform. Isn't that enough?
Her triumph is our collective victory, as the beast she follows, antagonistic by default, was part of her journey too. It takes a village, and we all play a part in this story. And other stories.
Moon Garden was much darker, yes. But must modern indie fairy-tales be scary or disturbing? Not at all. Give me an anti-damsel any day, send me on her adventure any week, and let me find out what happens when she gets those shoes. Chase Your Dreams is colorful in all the best ways, bright and well-defined. 4/5
Being hungry while in hospice. Wanting to watch the season finale of Survivor when you won't live to see it next week. A daughter who expects that traditional beat of heart-to-heart with a dying parent. The awkward comfort in understanding how that won't come, and things are mostly business as not-so-usual.
You Could've Been A Nurse takes its time in revealing its jokey hand, moving gracefully from our expectations of what this film will be about to what it actually is, to what we end up reacting to. It's about an Asian American family whose matriarch is in hospice care, and now finds that dialysis treatments are no longer viable. The devoted but exhausted daughter, perhaps feeling underappreciated, is there when the news breaks to the mother, who is more annoyed than sad.
Shouldn't she be behaving... differently? The daughter likely thinks this, as her brother gets to have the one-on-one moment that has been denied to her for so long. The mother isn't cold, but she has her own set of priorities. You Could've Been a Nurse isn't about emotional withdrawal or anything of the like, but instead finds the shine in the somber and the humor in the hopeless. It's a picture of, can you believe it, not expecting the unexpected from the obvious.
The mother and daughter don't need to say or do certain things to appreciate and love one another, mind you, and there is something funny in that. There's a lot of humor in how we deal or don't deal with the absolute inevitable, and interestingly enough, this revelation comes right at the movie's end. The rug gets pulled, and the credits begin to roll. 4/5
What can be said about Life Goes On has already been written about Groundhog Day and, more specifically, its many knock-off time loop films. I don't mean to be a bastard about this, but despite being very well-made and adorably performed, Life Goes On is, at least structurally, very much a cheat.
A crabby old man in hospice care shares a hospital room with others with similar ailments and time allotments. The man is almost Scrooge-like, only lifting his unhappy veneer when his daughter comes to visit, for which all he can muster is a kindly but held-back sentiment. When the time loop happens, he goes through the motions of the grief stages, eventually coming around and saying the words that he's always wanted to say.
It's just too manufactured and too derivative - words that I REALLY don't like to use in reviews. Technically well done, finely acted, and everything, just too familiar. Too sappy. Too much and not enough. 2.5/5
Somehow, I'm left with moments of blubbering tears at the end My Dog: The Paradox, despite already understanding the end thesis of the animated film. Of course, it's never really about the ending, but rather how we make it to that point that matters. Unless the movie in question is The Dark Knight Rises.
A dedication to a dog named Rambo and an elegy about the relationship that we have with our pets and that pets have with time, My Dog: The Paradox is at once tender and average, and at other times profound and relatable. Its style reminds me of the older days of flash animation, and the free-wielding writing that came from the freedom of that new form. There's plops of poop, there's vulgarities, and there's love. Juvenile? Sure, and that's par for the course with the era that I'm thinking about.
Another softened spoonful of sweetened confections and pursed-lip sourness, there's no question about the effectiveness of the emotional mess viewers will become upon watching My Dog: The Paradox. It sticks its landing, but the film prior was stuck differently. Fetch the stick, Rambo. Get going and get this moving movie more momentum. 3/5
Another documentary about VHS collecting? Yes. More of the same? No. Mall Video Store doesn't succumb to the trappings of those easy-to-find flicks about physical media, a feat that can be almost impossible to overcome. It's easy to tell a tale of nostalgia and movie love, but it's difficult to sell to the world a story that helps to further define the act of collecting as both a hobby and a thriving if niche business.
Out in Michigan, a mall stands operational. There's also a video store that features an ever-growing collection of VHS tapes and DVDs that brings in customers from all over the region. It's not about loving movies or appreciating them, but filling a space in our homes and in ourselves. It's about taking that space and making something out of what otherwise would be a waste of air.
Mall Video Store follows a young man's hobby turned shop, as he prepares to grow it into another retail space at the mall. Amazingly, in our kind of post-COVID world, collectibles and tangible media represent a somewhat missed experience of holding something again. Of experiencing something once more. Of not taking things for granted.
It's in Mall Video Store that collectors can find themselves shining the most. Traders, swappers, buyers, and sellers. Not a movie about nostalgia, but of the moment. This moment. The one we can feel right now. The one we can love immediately. 4/5
Her Pockets is the perfectly absurd PowerPoint presentation that I didn't know I'd been waiting for. An absurd but truthful pamphlet-in-motion, Her Pockets is made up of a few talking-head interviews and plenty of public domain media that tell us about the history of pockets and how more women's clothing should be made with them in mind.
Was this a prank? Not at all. It's real, and it's honest. Her Pockets gets in on the comedy of making such a film by not just acknowledging the very silly subject matter in hand (get it?), but playing it back into the argument of how women can and deserve to have pockets.
Why just for men? Why accessories for women over practicality in fashion? No girl is an actual Barbie, and nobody puts baby in a corner. A pocket? That might be ok.
Her Pockets is not unlike a Tom Goes to the Mayor gag, only it's more genuine and meant for real-world application. This is almost impossible to rate, but I'll try. 3.5/5
From capturing Grey Gardens to covering The Rolling Stones, filmmaker Albert Maysles saw it all so clearly, and was there so promptly. Being a cameraman must mean always being at the ready with a camera and with patient attentiveness. Maysles got this, capturing and cutting together not just great films, but greater times. The kind of times that become our memories of what happened, when they happened, and how we all felt and feel.
In Rolling Film, Rocking History: Al Maysles Captures the Beatles, the master maestro himself, as interviewed roughly two decades ago, tells his side of riding with The Beatles as they prepared for their Ed Sullivan Show appearance. For a critic like myself, it's Crystal Pepsi-clear that I'd be a sucker for enjoying this movie. It's only Maysles, all Maysles, his footage and commentary. The best bits here and there from an old interview, over clips from his films, to create a new piece of pristinely presented preservation.
There's so much more to learn about this young art called film, and this exhibition of what we know as movies. I could watch it over and over, and learn something new most times. When a film makes you want to watch other films, you find yourself in a beautiful cycle.
I love that.
I love this.
5/5