Short Films from the 2009 Sundance Film Festival

Selected from the 91 short films screened at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, this lively program of ten shorts covers a variety of genres, styles and cultures. In Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve's darkly humorous Cannes award-winner Next Floor, an opulent banquet filled with attitude quickly loses altitude in the most physical way. In John and Karen, British animator Matthew Walker depicts a touching reconciliation between two lovers, a polar bear and a penguin. A young man attempts to warn his community of an impending alien invasion, in Spanish filmmaker Chema García Ibarra's Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5. Directed by Sam Taylor Wood and written by Patrick Marber (Closer), the sexy British short Love You More depicts two teenagers drawn together in summer 1978 by the Buzzcocks' single of the same name. In Bulgarian filmmaker Nadejda Koseva's Omelette, a woman illustrates how difficult it is to make ends meet. Animator Don Hertzfeldt's I Am So Proud of You (a sharp stick-figure sequel to his prize-winning Everything Will Be OK) explores dark family secrets, and Sarah Phelps' Western Spaghetti is a dazzling stop-motion treat with everyday objects as ingredients. Eva Weber's short documentary Steel Homes looks at self-storage units as windows into human histories. In Madeleine Olnek's satirical Countertransference, a woman with assertiveness issues finds her problems multiplied in therapy. Destin Daniel Cretton's Short Term 12, winner of Sundance's 2009 Jury Prize in U.S. Short Filmmaking, stars Brad William Henke as the supervisor of a teenage residential facility who begins to realize that he's no better off than the kids he's trying to help. The program is suggested for mature audiences and runs approximately 115 min.

The Rafael's exclusive Bay Area presentation of this program is part of its participation in Sundance Institute Art House Project, a national alliance of theaters across the country supporting Sundance Institute's mission to discover and develop independent artists and audiences.