While skateboarding, a kind hearted teenager, Dylan, crashes into a beautiful young woman who secretly turns out to be the World Famous Popstar, Bebe A. Love. Keeping her identity under wraps, Dylan takes Bebe to his best friend’s house for help. While he and his group of friends try to help this mysterious woman, unexplained events begin to occur within the home. And they only intensify when Bebe’s handler, Anton, shows up at their door and demands the teenagers return her immediately. When Dylan refuses fearing for Bebe’s safety, he unleashes a barrage of dire consequences that turns a fun graduation party into a night of living hell.
2020
Official Selection
Narrative Feature
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
29 minutes
Director:
Lee Cummings, Mitchell Altieri
REIFF 2020
Official Selection
Documentary Feature
United Kingdom
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
26 minutes
Director:
Various
REIFF 2020
In the middle of an environmental and humanitarian catastrophe a young poet raps in the forest.
My Blood Is Red is a music documentary with a very dark heart. It follows the fortunes of a young indigenous rapper as he tries to make sense of the violence being meted out against his people. His name is Werá and his lyrics are fuelled by the anger and sadness he feels, confronted by the state-condoned genocide of the disenfranchised indigenous of Brazil. On his journey he is adopted by Criolo – one of Brazil’s most famous music artists and godfather of Brazilian hip-hop. He’s also comforted and counselled by Sonia Guajajara, the internationally recognised indigenous leader and charismatic figurehead of the indigenous struggle.
Driven by beats and lyrics we descend into a world of official violence and end up at the largest assembly of indigenous people in Brazil – a demonstration against the government’s barbaric policy of arming farmers, loggers and miners. Thousands of painted and feathered indigenous people – men, women and children – hurl coffins at the Senate building and are repelled with tear gas and rubber bullets.
So actually, this is a film about genocide. And one young artist's response to it.
Because we present as a music documentary we are able to carry this message of the indigenous struggle to commercial and world-music audiences that otherwise might never hear of it. That is the power and the duty of the documentary form – to take an audience on an emotional journey that leaves them with a deeper understanding of the variety, and yet also the shared space of the human experience.
Like Werá says: “We are all Guarani Kaiowa”.
He’s still rapping in the forest today …
As it burns down around him.
Official Selection
Narrative Short
Iran
Runtime:
17 minutes
5 seconds
Director:
Siamak Kashefazar
REIFF 2020
Reza and Tooba are a young couple that are struggle to pay their home mortgage. Reza enters into a gambling game in order to make payments, but he loses his wife without knowing it. When he returns home and understands the depth of the tragedy of losing his wife, he looks for a way to escape, however it’s too late and his benefactors have come to collect their prize.
Official Selection
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
11 minutes
Director:
Thomas Southerland
REIFF 2020
A woman recalls a fateful road trip taken thirty years earlier with her first love.
2021
Best Animated Film
Animation
United States
Runtime:
5 minutes
15 seconds
Director:
Jo Meuris
REIFF 2021
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who fell in love with a beautiful horse named Aurora...
Expressively animated in a naive drawing-style that evokes children’s drawings and the texture of storybook illustrations, Aurora is a bittersweet story about love, friendship, and growing up.
Best Experimental Film
Experimental
Turkey
Runtime:
5 minutes
23 seconds
Director:
Ceylan Özgün Özçelik
REIFF 2021
A woman, released from prison, drifts between nightmare and reality.
Best Documentary Short
Documentary Short
United States
Runtime:
30 minutes
9 seconds
Director:
Melissa Armstrong, Jason Pidgeon
REIFF 2021
A film crew follows Amber for one day. During that day, she rescues 19 dogs. Some are dumped on the roadside and left to survive on their own. Others are living in unhealthy conditions at the unregulated and pitifully funded shelters. Watch as one woman saves these homeless animals from certain death.
Amber’s Halfway Home is an exploration of the conditions at government-funded shelters and the consequences of ignoring our country’s homeless animals. But, it’s also a celebration of a woman battling for change in her Southern community, a warrior who saved 2000 dogs in one year.
Best Documentary
Documentary Feature
United States
Runtime:
54 minutes
10 seconds
Director:
Chris Spencer
REIFF 2021
For years, members of the city leadership discredited findings of racial bias while continuously increasing the police budget. Advocating for raising taxes instead of laying off officers, the Vergennes Police Chief singled out a domestic violence victim in front of a packed hall to instill fear. After the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, discussions of police oversight turned personal, forcing the mayor and three city council members to resign; the city was left with no functioning government.
In the end, The Price of Safety stitches together a discussion about the issues facing Vermont’s smallest city through interviews with residents, scholars of race and policing, and elected officials. As conversations surrounding policing and racism evolve nationally, we watch a community reckon with a vital question: what does it mean to be safe?
Best Narrative Feature, Best of the Fest
Narrative Feature
Germany
Runtime:
1 hour(s)
20 minutes
56 seconds
Director:
Katharina Ludwig
REIFF 2021
Actress Charlotte is struggling with her craft and even more with herself. She has messed up yet another audition and even her self-written apple tree monologue seems to be working against her. Frustrated by the realities of an artistic career and her fear of failing, Charlotte escapes on a camping trip to sunny Croatia with her boyfriend Georg. But the trip’s dynamic changes when their plans of a fun-filled couples vacation misfire: While Georg spends his time at a music festival in the hope of scoring a DJ gig, Charlotte is left stranded in the middle of nowhere. She embarks on a journey of her own, encountering happy campers Benno, a self-proclaimed shaman, and mysterious dropout Tami, to whom Charlotte feels an attraction. Both of them quickly become close companions on Charlotte's journey of self-discovery.
Best Narrative Short
Narrative Short
United States
Runtime:
10 minutes
29 seconds
Director:
Drake Shannon
REIFF 2021
Past and present are blurred by a horrifying transgression as a female soldier faces the aftermath of a military patrol in the Middle East. RAW exposes military sexual trauma through the eyes of a soldier struggling to readjust to everyday life.