Ward

Student director Zack Williams has something to say in Ward, an involving story about a freshman in college who suddenly finds herself committed to a psychiatric unit. The young woman's problems with anxiety and depression are excruciating. At the same time, other college-aged patients on her floor are dealing with even scarier issues. Trapped in an agonizing environment, she wants to heal and go home, but first she'll need to sort through the many crosscurrents in her mind.

Mental illness has long carried a stigma, and that's tragic because the many people who suffer from it are, in fact, not substantially different from anyone whose illness centers around an organ; in this case, that organ is the brain. Williams does an excellent job of dramatizing the psychological tension that must accompany anyone who has been committed to a mental institution, and by presenting his story through actors who reveal different layers of problems in their roles, he subtly suggests that everyone struggles with mental illness on one scale or another. You can watch the trailer here: Ward Trailer

Of Knights and Slaves

First dates are nerve-wracking experiences for teens, but parents are hardly immune from the jitters. Such is the setup for Of Knights and Slaves, a short dramedy that might leave you nodding from personal experience.

Director Adam Carr zeros in on a father's reluctance to accept his daughter's emerging maturity while also highlighting her date's lack of couth. Honking your car horn from the driveway instead of ringing the doorbell and introducing yourself to the parents is not the best way for a young man to make a first impression. The father feels he can artfully handle his daughter's date, having once been on the other side of the equation, but there is a decided lack of confidence in the air.

Independent films often explore unfamiliar territory, so it can be refreshing when a filmmaker creates something with a more universal spirit—especially when you're not quite sure how the story will play out. You can watch the trailer here: Of Knights and Slaves Trailer

Tonight and Every Night

In this tender short film by New Jersey native Christina Eliopoulos, an aging gentleman named Yianni lives inside a colorful world of make-believe. Challenged by dementia, his mind drifts between an ever-darkening reality and a fantastically lively TV talk show where he is the host and the people from his life are the guest stars.

One day, while wandering the streets of New Jersey beach town Asbury Park, he stumbles on a lost local boy, who sees in Yianni a kind of grandfatherly savior. They strike up an unlikely friendship. Despite the urgency of the situation, Yanni has trouble summoning the memories he needs to help the kid find home, and the pair only gets further lost.

The stakes of Yianni's illness have ratcheted exponentially higher. Can he right now find the shred of reality he needs to extricate himself and a helpless neighbor from this predicament? You can watch the trailer here: Tonight and Every Night Trailer

Heavy Nimbostratus Clouds

In this atmospheric student short by Newark, New Jersey-based filmmaker Michael Turner, foster siblings fall back into each other's company after their mother passes away, an awkward situation that dredges up painful memories and highlights personal differences. Yet Turner places little emphasis on conflict and traditional narrative. Instead, he employs long camera shots, soft lighting, brooding music and philosophical vignettes in service of a lyrical and dreamlike mood.

Given the inferred and emotional nature of the work, one could say this is a difficult film to comprehend completely on the first pass. However, thoughtful editing gathers the poetry of Heavy Nimbostratus Clouds into a cohesive whole and the excellent cast makes Turner's characters highly relatable. An altogether fine effort from a talented, emerging filmmaker and his team.

You can watch the trailer here: Heavy Nimbostratus Clouds Trailer

Zen Dog

Take a trip of imagination and adventure in this vivid new indie feature from LA-based producer, director and writer Rick Darge.

The film centers around two friends, one who's life is enclosed and tormented by what one might call his limiting cognition, and the other a freethinker at a level that could be hazardous. Together, they spark a journey across wide open, American spaces, conveying freedom in a cinematically resplendent way while driving that thin line in the road between liberation and self-delusion. The lead character travels with the help of an exotic potion and a Volkswagen, but the film suggests that getting to a truly blissful place might require no more transportation devices than a will of mind and cognoscenti other than one's self.

There's a touch of surrealist painting in Darge's film, his first feature, as he unveils a kaleidoscope of sights, and with them, liberating truths, that lie beyond what the routine mind perceives. With periodic narration from British philosopher, writer, and speaker Alan Watts, whose background in theology and Asian Studies led him to cutting-edge ideas of mysticism and aesthetic fusion in the 1950s and 60s, the film also conveys a sense of intelligentsia, with Watts as both participant and otherworldly observer.

Zen Dog isn't a drug film or a pitch for LSD. It's something else, and that something else, lying just beyond the conscious mind yet paradoxically within your grasp, is what makes it so good. You can watch the trailer here (parental discretion advised): Zen Dog Trailer

Surviving International Boulevard: Domestic Child Sex Trafficking

Witness the testimonies in this searing and profoundly heartbreaking documentary, and you'll know, if you didn't already. Child sex trafficking is a saddening reality in the United States, and brave activists in child advocate organizations such as MISSEY.org and S.H.A.D.E. Project are doing everything in their power to stop it.

The sight of a mother patrolling a dangerous, urban street at night to find her teenaged daughter, as you'll see in this film, is beyond description. The idea of young girls cruelly exploited by their so-called "boyfriends" is so raw, and so painful, that society might tend to look the other way instead of act, but director Sian Gowan puts these hard, bitter truths on film for all to see, making action a moral imperative.

An unflinching expose and a powerful cry for help, Surviving International Boulevard is aimed at rescuing vulnerable members of our society who are too young to understand their exploitation and who don't even have a voice.

To contribute and otherwise help this most worthwhile cause, please visit the Surviving International Boulevard website. You can watch the trailer here: Surviving International Boulevard Trailer

D-Love

A couple with longstanding marital issues lands at LAX after a getaway in Europe. For a few years now, Stefania has been working a job she detests and Dan hasn't worked at all. Their palpable strain is only made worse when a vagabond, Ditlev Dharmakaya, asks for a ride to the busiest freeway in Los Angeles and Dan, much to his wife's horror, offers to take this total stranger home.

Ditlev is a ragamuffin in every sense of the word, and now that he's a third wheel, too, he has quite a challenge ahead of him because he's likely to be homeless again real soon. But Romanian-born director Elena Beuca has plenty in store for the childlike, wandering soul.

Although it's home to the only member of the Romance language family spoken in Eastern Europe, Romania's Slavic influences are manifest. It's not entirely surprising, then, that Beuca lends qualities to Ditlev reminiscent of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's characters Alyosha and, perhaps to a lesser extent, Prince Myshkin. That is, Ditlev is a pure spirit who acts as a conduit for something far beyond the material world. In further pursuit of this spiritual theme, Beuca also utilizes the motif of the wandering Buddha made famous in the West by German writer Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel, Siddhartha.

It's worth exploring such literary undertones to appreciate better what is less a dramatic film than a meditation on what is takes to banish conflict from your life and achieve nirvana. Fans of spiritual literature and grassroots independent film alike will find much to love in D-Love.

You can watch the trailer here: D-Love Trailer