New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) is proud to announce the projects selected for the 8th Annual NYWIFT Online Shorts Festival, presented in partnership with iWomanTV.
NYWIFT was founded in 1977 by a handful of women who saw a pressing need in New York for a networking and education forum for women in the entertainment industry. Nearly 50 years later, NYWIFT’s diverse membership is made up of professionals who work in all aspects of television, film and media, from behind-the-scenes to in front of the camera to the executive suite. We are thrilled to showcase some of our established and rising stars through the Online Shorts Festival!
The selected films and webisodes are available to stream on:
(Please note you will have to sign up for a free account with iWomanTV to watch the films.)
The film with the most views at the end of August will be awarded the Audience Choice Award from iWomanTV!
First Place (Most Watched Film) – $1,000
Second Place – $500
Third Place – $250
How to create an iWomanTV account
Here are important instructions to help you create your iWomanTV account so you can watch this year’s selections!
Thank you to our friends at iWomanTV for offering this incredible opportunity to the NYWIFT community.
Watch the films online now:
#1 Bad Dad
NYWIFT Member Shakera Robinson
(Executive Producer)
After spending time behind bars, jaded superhuman Sal Cortez tries to live life quietly by leaving his criminal life in the past. But when Holly, his estranged superhuman 12-year-old daughter, comes to him for help, he is forced to take her under his wing and reopen old wounds.
#exercises/in/fertility
NYWIFT Member Robyn Greene Arrington
(Director, Writer & Producer)
An eclectic, driven, jet-setting, zillennial wellness guru, Ryn Wright Negron has manifested almost everything she visualized for a charmed life: “Mr. Right,” a fulfilling career, the perfect haven, and sojourns to exotic places all over the planet. The only thing Ryn hasn’t been able to actualize is bearing a child.
Complicating the burden Ryn bears is her husband’s apparent apathy about her enduring maternal quest. Rubbing salt into Ryn’s wounded womb is her lifelong BFF, Cree Bowen’s cavalier attitude about her unwanted pregnancy.
This threesome will learn the meaning and the miracle of life through their individual rebirths.
5 Ways I Didn’t Marry You
NYWIFT Member Christine Stoddard
(Creator, Lead Actor & Line Producer)
In five parallel universes, Bernadette does not marry her lover. Watch her relate with a different lover in every universe and navigate a relationship that does not end in marriage. The film wrestles with questions like, what is the value of marriage? What makes for a happy, successful marriage? Or a happy, successful relationship? How do our smaller choices impact the outcome of a relationship? How do our relationships shape the people we become?
A Pickle and a Coke
NYWIFT Member Alex Kokenis
(Writer, Director & Editor)
Through multiple visitations with her father in prison, a teenager is faced with a difficult decision that will affect their relationship.
Airborne Abyss
NYWIFT Member Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar
(Producer)
As the world suffocates, a helpless father fights desperately to keep his family breathing, despite the rising cost of quality air, now going to the highest bidder.
Angel
NYWIFT Member Anna Koukouli Born
(Writer & Director)
The two adult kids of an alcoholic retired Navy Officer maneuver their way through his funeral preparations and grief by trying to put his unfinished last beer in the coffin, so he won’t get sober in the afterlife.
Appraisal
NYWIFT Member Anna Koukouli Born
(Director & Writer)
The appraisal meeting of a successful Associate Creative Director becomes a battle between her and the male-dominated working environment, but even worse, between her and her inner voice of doubt.
Aviva
NYWIFT Member Rachel Eskin Fisher
(Producer & Writer)
A trans woman of Hasidic background has a bittersweet reunion with her sister in a Brooklyn laundromat.
Bastard
NYWIFT Member Isabella Jane Schiller
(Writer, Director & Executive Producer)
Upon discovering a box of decades-old letters from her distant father, Julia’s naive understanding of her never-married parents and, by extension, her sense of self, is flipped on its head. A love letter to the moment we finally see our parents as fallible, fellow adults.
Bible Camp
NYWIFT Member Hyon Jung Lee
(Executive Producer & Writer)
Young Korean immigrants assimilate to baseball, burnt hot dogs and hostility at a discount daycare. An afternoon discovering vinyl records in the garage has unintended consequences. A traumatic memory, based on a true immigrant story.
Choices
NYWIFT Member Jess Jacobs
(Writer & Actor)
An unexpected pregnancy forces 27-year-old Zazie Clarke to make a choice… or in this case, both choices. In parallel universes, Zazie’s decisions to bring her pregnancy to term and to have an abortion force her to finally face adulthood. As she navigates confrontations with her single mother and her childhood best friend in the 24 hours between her first pre-natal and her abortion appointment, Zazie finds vulnerability and a deeper connection to the women in her life than she ever knew was possible.
C.I.R.P.I.
NYWIFT Member Chiara Padejka
(Writer, Director & Producer)
A C.I.R.P.I (A Currently-In-Recovery-Pseudo-Intellectual) undergoes the trials of a self-imposed eight-step program to rid him of his lack of originality and individual thought.
Come Find Me
NYWIFT Member Nela Wagman
(Writer, Director & Producer)
After a single car accident claims life of her baby sister, Sophia yearns for a connection to a mother now broken by grief and trauma. Her father too, is absorbed in his wife’s pain and his own, and cannot give Sophia the support she craves. As Sophia’s mother begins to recover, it seems all she wants is to start everything anew. Sophia sees herself as a part of the old, sad world being pushed away, and soothes her loneliness in a world of fantasy.
Doors
NYWIFT Member Gillian Fritzsche
(Producer)
Doors is a short horror/thriller film based on the story by Pamela Painter. A selfish empty-nester pressures his wife to downsize their beloved farmhouse, while planning to sell and move out with or without her consent. Taking him at his word that he wants a smaller house, each time he pushes his agenda, she locks a door to an unused room. Ultimately, he learns just moments too late that the power he thought he wielded within their relationship was never really his.
Driver
NYWIFT Member Gillian Fritzsche
(Producer)
Danny Ryan is an MLB pitcher turned rideshare driver. Through a series of tragic events, Danny loses his career, home, and family. A near-death experience transports him to a place where he is reunited with his wife and daughter. They convince him that there is more to life on Earth and that he has a purpose yet to fulfill..
Five Flights
NYWIFT Members Kathleen Kaan
(Executive Producer & Writer) and Vanssa Corwin (Producer)
‘I live on the fifth floor on Fifth Street. I climb it every day. Five flights to nowhere. I’ll grow up and run away.’ These haunting words of a 10-year-old girl set the scene for this tragic tale of domestic abuse and serve as a warning about the dangers of guns in the home.
Girls Aren’t Funny
NYWIFT Member Jasia Ka
(Director & Writer)
Based on true events, Girls Aren’t Funny is a fresh and daring dramedy that centers on Amamah, a young Pakistani-American comedian who leads a double life. On one hand, Amamah tries to please her traditional Muslim mother, who’s trying to set up Amamah on various arranged-marriage dates back at home on Long Island, and on the other hand, Amamah secretly pursues her real passion, stand up comedy in NYC. Amamah’s unrelenting ambition to achieve her dreams in the competitive male-dominated comedy industry coupled with her growing web of lies jeopardizes her relationship with her mother, her friends, and her sanity.
Gone Before Your Eyes
NYWIFT Member Cara Yeates
(Director, Writer & Producer)
Trapped in a surreal loop, an artist with Alzheimer’s struggles to paint.
Gravare
NYWIFT Member Ilona Molnar
(Director & Writer)
Leah, a retired English teacher, is warned by her wife Kate about the silent return of their estranged daughter.
This emotional drama explores Leah’s quest for closeness with her non-biological child and the letting go of her wife’s lingering ghost. A tender exploration of what defines grief and its meaning to life.
Hero
NYWIFT Member Sarah Ceballos
(Lead Actress & Executive Producer)
A woman struggles with trauma while trying to break into the world of acting, but resorts to unhealthy coping mechanisms. This is an inspiring & uplifting story about the willingness to persevere & overcome no matter what life can throw at us
Hey Ladies
NYWIFT Member Samantha Merrick
(Casting Director, Producer & Actor)
Imagine a world where privilege can be packaged, marketed, and sold like the latest infomercial gadget—a world where the frustrations of systemic bias can be solved with a simple product. Enter Secret White Man Weapon, Inc., a satirical corporation offering marginalized people the ultimate in privilege power-ups: a white man in a box. That’s right, with only 473 installment payments, you can have your very own “Secret White Man Weapon” to navigate life’s obstacles with the ease normally reserved only for society’s most privileged.
I’ve Always Loved Bonfires
NYWIFT Member Tal Shashoua
(Actor & Executive Producer)
In crisis, Teresa drags her long lost friend Elena out to the desert of Texas. Against the backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment and domestic abuse, the two friends navigate crime and secrecy to find their way back to each other.
Laundry
NYWIFT Member Okema T. Moore
(Director)
After his son’s tragic accident, a husband struggles to save his marriage and himself, until a chance encounter at a laundromat shows him that even in grief, hope and healing can all come out in the wash.
Like Clockwork
NYWIFT Member Janet Oh
(Writer & Producer)
In this contemporary reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, a young woman stands at a crossroads in her life. Set amidst the frenetic pace of New York City, Like Clockwork follows Ali, a grad student confronting a life-altering career opportunity and the resurfacing of an unresolved past romance. As time seems to stall around her, Ali must navigate the illusion of choice, the weight of ambition, and the haunting question of whether moving forward means leaving parts of herself behind.
Meeting Mr. Oscar
NYWIFT Member Toni Short
(Executive Producer, Director, Writer/Actor & Producer)
Audrey, a middle-aged woman sleepwalking through her life, encounters an elderly eccentric stranger, Mr. Oscar, who challenges her way of thinking and daily routines. Their unexpected friendship becomes a catalyst for her to step out of her comfort zone and move forward in a new direction.
Negotiating With The Dead
NWIFT Member Brigette ReDavid
(Producer)
Newlyweds Gunter and Lily’s sexy time is interrupted by the angry ghost of his mother, and she’s not going anywhere until he makes good on his deathbed promise.
No Know Nothing
NYWIFT Member Elizabeth Indianos
(Director & Producer)
In the story, the Goose-stepping bully, WARMAN, aims to extinguish
self-expression and pull the plug on all our cultural artifacts—but can he? Cave Girl knows, that even if all were destroyed, we will go on, continue to create, it’s in our human nature to do.
Octopus
NYWIFT Member Shoshana Ehrenkranz
(Director)
Jordan is a young art school grad living in LA, still impaired by her overwhelming NYU student loan debt. After an unsuccessful day of selling on-the-spot portraits at Venice Beach, she heads to her more successful classmate’s art gallery opening, which only reinforces her internalized feelings of inadequacy. Jordan turns to the internet to sell art. She finds there’s a rich market in drawing tentacle porn to online creeps. Meanwhile, a middle-aged man reignites his lust for life when he discovers tentacle porn.
Order My Steps
NYWIFT Member Kathryn Grant
(Producer & Writer)
After serving two decades in an Appalachian prison for stabbing a state senator, Peg Rives is on the brink of parole—and desperate to reconnect with the daughter she abandoned. Through a prison reunification program, Peg reaches out. The virtual meetings start cold: Dorian refuses to show her face, speaking only through text. But it’s something. Hope flickers—until Peg dares to ask for a letter supporting her release. Dorian abruptly signs off and Peg is left reeling. Has she shattered her final chance to redeem herself with her daughter?
Pennies
NYWIFT Member Mary Beth Warner
(Producer & Writer)
When a quiet bookstore owner from Washington, DC gets called back to his rural hometown after the death of his mother, he is faced with the bullies from his childhood who now run the town and conspire to deprive him of his inheritance.
Roommates
NYWIFT Member Beatrice Alda
(Co-Director & Producer)
After completing lengthy prison terms, two women forge a strong bond within a nursing home catering to the formerly incarcerated. Creating a positive present tense in the wake of complicated pasts, these survivors cling to simplicity, routine, and each other.
SLOWGRRL
NYWIFT Member Isabel del Rosal
(Composer, Director, Editor & Writer)
A worlds-within-worlds narrative short, I Already Went is a pitch-black satire set in a not-so-distant future, where our craving for convenience has reached an all-time high. The side effects can be a bit uncomfortable, sure, but there’s a pill for that.
Stalling
NYWIFT Member Jasia Ka
(Director & Writer)
When two women decide to bond over a shared cheating ex, an unlikely queer love story unfolds as they connect year after year in the same bar bathroom. Their chemistry reaches a climax between clusters of glitter-dusted friends and a clutter of graffiti, until a final moment of intimacy reveals that they can’t stall any longer. After four years, it’s time to face the elephant in the (bath)room — can they see each other beyond the hurt that brought them together? Or is all of this just a really, really bad idea?
The Demon of Dumbo
NYWIFT Member Stefanie Kay Sparks
(Writer, Director, Actor, Editor & DP)
Things just haven’t been the same since the pandemic, especially in NYC, but what else is new?
Under the One-Time Sky
NYWIFT Member Susan Jennifer Polese
(Writer, Director & Producer)
A blustering, celebrated journalist seeking redemption, is idealistically determined to free his childhood friend from the effects of sexual abuse he silently witnessed when they were kids. Under a sunny sky in the backyard where the two once played, he confronts her on the very spot where the abuse happened. What is the responsibility of memory? How are we held in one place due to the events of the past?
Dwight, the writer and Christine wrestle with this as they spar about the future, past and present. They revisit a childhood friendship that has held them hostage, beginning to heal.
Welcome to Theatre
NYWIFT Member Annetta Marion
(Director)
Two slightly lovable, mediocre white theatre producers (think Archie Bunker and Meathead!), try to revive their festival and save the theatre from financial ruin in a post-pandemic world.
