Films Accepted for RIFF 2019
3 Days
Narrative Short | USA | 11:31 min | Director Julie Sharbutt | Filmmaker in Attendance
When three women friends sense danger on a camping trip, they keep each other laughing until a horrible twist makes them feel more alone than ever. Read more…
A Fresh Perspective
Documentary Short | USA | 11:38 min | Director Aaron Hose | Filmmaker in Attendance
In 2018, a group of African-Americans create the nation’s first-ever black beer festival, a historic event aiming to reshape the future of craft beer. Read more…
Born as a Girl
Documentary Feature | Poland | 61 min | Director Marek Klosowicz
Pregnant girls at the age of 13 or grandmothers at the age of 26 are of no surprise in Colombian slums. In the poorest social class, violence against women is especially striking: rape, sexual abuse or sex trafficking of minors happen on everyday basis. Read more…
Discharged
Animated Short | USA | 30 min | Director Major Jas Boothe | Filmmaker in Attendance
A mismatched quartet of not-so-honorably discharged veterans unleash the good, the bad and the dark side of patriotism on Hollywood. Read more…
Emotional Tourist – Raising a New Generation
Documentary Short | USA | 3:44 min | Director Alvaro Letelier
Highly personal in its approach, but global in its vision, Emotional Tourist explores ways we can increase peace and create nurturing, creative spaces for future generations. Read more…
Forest On Fire
Documentary Short | USA | 29:50 min | Director Reed Harkness
The Eagle Creek Fire ravaged the Columbia River Gorge, causing communities to evacuate, and stranding 150 day-hikers who dramatically had to hike nearly 20 miles to safety. The fire was set by a 15-year-old boy who threw a lit firework into a dry ravine on the Eagle Creek Trail. This film includes accounts from an eyewitness who saw the boy start the fire, the stranded hikers, and people from the communities that persevered. Read more…
Future Self
Narrative Short | USA | 7:03 min | Director Sean Lewis
Jeffrey has a crush on Teegan. Teegan doesn’t know who Jeffrey is. Luckily VHS tapes keep showing up in the local mini-libraries around town to tell Jeffrey how to change that fact, for better or for worse. Read more…
Here’s Your Flag
Narrative Short | USA | 6:06 min | Director Jon Lewis
An Army officer shows up at Mrs. Cavanaugh’s front door with a flag to replace her dead son—who isn’t dead yet, because he only enlisted yesterday. She’s pretty upset, until she learns that Eddie’s going to die a hero, and that makes it all better. Read more…
Hudson
Narrative Feature | USA | 73 min | Director Sean D. Cunningham
A man embarks on a trip with his estranged cousin Hudson to spread his late mother's ashes. They meet an unusual woman along the way and their simple road trip turns into a dysfunctional adventure. Read more…
Icarus Stops for Breakfast
Narrative Short | USA | 13 min | Director Abigail Zealey Bess
Icarus Stops for Breakfast is a magical story of love and the relationships that exist between humans and the landscape in which they live, based on the story Eating by Rick Bass. Read more…
Is This Ok?
Narrative Short | USA | 3 min | Director Dylan Bandy
A queer romance in public places Read more…
La Loche
Documentary Feature | Canada | 56 min | Director Les Stroud
After a deadly school shooting in a remote Canadian aboriginal community took the lives of four people and injured seven others, a caring teacher sought to present a healing opportunity for the students. She asked a TV celebrity that the students admired, if he would consider coming on a canoe trip with 8 boys directly affected by the shooting. Read more…
Last Requests
Narrative Short | USA | 18 min | Director Courtenay Johnson
The day before the expiration of the last meal request program in Texas, a widow who has worked in the Huntsville Death House for 30 years prepares to cook her last, last meal. Read more…
Lifelines
Narrative Short | Canada | 8:30 min | Director Coatharine Park | Filmmaker in Attendance
Overwhelmed by the trials and tribulations of high school, Arielle finds refuge in a dangerous habit – until her best friend discovers her secret. Read more…
Love Birds
Narrative Short | USA | 8 min | Director Ashley Mosher
An American woman travels deep into to the Amazon jungle discouraged with her marriage & on a quest for adventure, nature and a new sense of belonging. She unexpectedly meets Noe, an amazonian painter who teaches her what true belonging really means. Read more…
Mine Forever
Narrative Short | Canada | 8:30 min | Director Calum Smith
Lines blur between love and obsession, consent and manipulation, as loving couple Josie and Mike find themselves torn between two contrasting realities. Mine Forever is a romantic comedy gone wrong, and a psychological thriller for the post-#MeToo era. Read more…
Mossville
Documentary Feature | USA | 75 min | Director Alexander Glustrom
There once was a town called Mossville – a community rich in natural resources and history, founded by formerly enslaved people – where neighbors lived in harmony, insulated from the horrors of Jim Crow. Today, however, Mossville no longer resembles the town it once was. Surrounded by 14 petrochemical plants, Mossville is the future site of apartheid-born South African-based chemical company Sasol’s newest plant – proposed as a $21.2 billion project and the largest in the western hemisphere. Read more…
Mr. Sam
Narrative Short | USA | 29:35 min | Director Zeus Kontoyannis
Today is a big day for Mr. Sam. Not only is he going to reveal to his mother that he’s finally found the love of his life but he’s also telling her that he’s gay. And that’s just the start to his day because Sam is in for a huge surprise. Read more…
Olympia
Narrative Feature | USA | 90 min | Director Gregory Dixon
McKenzie Chinn stars as a struggling artist, navigating work and romance in the Windy City. When her boyfriend asks her to drop everything and move cross-country, she soon discovers that her biggest obstacle may be herself. Featuring quirky animation and a revelatory central performance, Olympia is a heartfelt story for anyone who’s ever felt adrift on the rough seas of adulthood. Read more…
FEPPS – Pathways After Prison
Documentary Short | USA | 9:46 min | Director Greg Westhoff
The Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) provides a rigorous college program to incarcerated women in Washington and creates pathways to higher education after women are released from prison. Read more…
Phoenix, Oregon
Comedy Feature | USA | 109 min | Director Gary Lundgren | Filmmaker in Attendance | Closing Night Film
A comedy of midlife reinvention and the redeeming power of friendship.
Defying midlife haze, two friends seize an unlikely opportunity to reinvent their lives, quitting their jobs to restore an old bowling alley and serve the “world's greatest pizza." Read more…
The Push
Documentary Feature | USA | 84 min | Director Grant Korgan
The Push is an inspirational documentary about the power of never giving up. Grant Korgan is a world-class adventurer, nano-mechanics professional, and husband. On March 5, 2010, while filming a snowmobiling segment in the Sierra Nevada back country, the Lake Tahoe native burst-fractured his L1 vertebrae, and suddenly added the world of spinal cord injury recovery to his list of pursuits. Read more…
Poor Greg Drowning
Comedy Feature | USA | 78 min | Jeffrey Scott Collins
Greg is a love addict whose girlfriend left him for their couples therapist. Depressed, heartbroken, and unemployed, Greg must find a roommate to help pay rent. Read more…
Reaching for the Andes
Documentary Short | USA | 27 min | Director Neal Barenblat
Tyler Armstrong, a fourteen year-old mountaineer, goes to Peru intent on climbing Artesonraju, an almost 20,000 foot peak prominently featured in the Paramount Pictures logo. Read more…
Return to Mount Kennedy
Feature Documentary | USA | 80 min | Director Eric Becker | Filmmaker in Attendance | Opening Night Film
In 1965 Jim Whittaker led Senator Robert Kennedy to the first ascent of a remote mountain in the Yukon named after the late president, JFK. Fifty years later, the sons of the original climbing team—a raucous band manager, a candidate for governor, and a young mountaineer—embark on an expedition to the mountain to celebrate the special bond that connects them all.
This beautiful film is about family, friendship, loss and discovery. It’s raw, real and inspirational. Bobby Whittaker will be joining us for a Q & A after the film. Read more…
Riplist
Documentary Feature | USA | 67 min | Director Mike Scholtz
A group of friends meets once a year to draft celebrities they think might die. But while playing the game of death, they learn the value of life. Read more…
Sac de Merde
Narrative Short | USA | 13:27 min | Director Greg Chwerchak
Based on a true story, Sac de Merde tells the tale of Mazel Mankewicz, an unlucky-in-love yet irrationally optimistic New Yorker who thinks her luck has changed when she spends the night with the man of her dreams. Read more…
The Sacred Place Where Life Begins
Documentary Short | USA | 24:45 min | Directors Kristin Gates & Jeremy La Zelle
It's best to experience what you're fighting for. When two adventurers embark on a dangerous four-month expedition documenting the world’s longest land mammal migration through the Arctic Refuge of Alaska and Canada, they soon discover an incredible ecosystem protected by the Gwich’in Nation for more than 25,000 years, yet held on the precipice of collapse by resource development corporations. Read more…
Sayéik
Documentary Short | USA | 24:01 min | Director Luke Holton
A documentary film which discusses the importance of place names (toponyms) in the preservation of Alaska Native languages. The burning of Douglas Indian Village in 1962, and construction of Gastineau Elementary School over Tlingit graves in 1953. Read more…
The Second Session
Narrative Short | USA | 13:07 min | Director Michael Ward
An immersive virtual reality therapy for confronting a stressful situation at work brings Meredith to some dark places. Read more…
Sombra City
Narrative Short | UK | 10 min | Director Elias Plagianos
In the year 2037, a corporate assassin revisits a city lost in time and the love he left behind. Read more…
The Son, The Father
Horror Short | USA | 13:11 min | Director Lukas Hassel | Filmmaker in Attendance
The event on a young boy’s birthday has consequences far into the future for himself and his family. Read more…
Stand/Still
Thriller Short | USA | 5:38 min | Director Shawn-Caulin Young | Filmmaker in Attendance
A psychological thriller about the dark underbelly of America’s highway system where a seemingly average middle-aged couple take desperate measures to have a child of their own. Based on terrifying true events. Read more…
Suncatcher
Narrative Short | USA | 12 min | Director Parker Croft
For months Kira has been living out of her car in Venice, California. Today that changes. Read more…
This Being Human
Documentary Short | Iraq Turkey USA | 14 min | Directors Aimie Vallat, Guido Ronge
A portrait of a young Iraqi who left everything behind at 15, in a solo quest for a more peaceable future; Hameed's salvation is education in the US bound by a big altruistic dream. Read more…
The Quiet Force
Documentary | USA | 37:05 min | Directors Hilary Byrne and Sophie Danison
Through individual experiences in tourism-driven mountain communities, The Quiet Force explores social and economic impacts of the Latino immigrant workforce relating to national immigration policies. Read more…
Welcome to the Ball
Narrative Short | USA | 4:53 min | Director Adam Vincent Wright
A child learns sign language in hopes of making a new friend. Read more…
White Noise
Narrative Short | USA | 5:47 min | Director Frida Perez
At the end of a tipless shift at a local diner, a young black waitress, Dolores, stumbles on a flier for a paid psychological study seeking diverse participants. Read more…
Wildland
Documentary Feature | USA | 77 min | Directors Alex Jablonski & Khalil Hudson
Epic and intimate in the same breath, Wildland tells the story of a single wildland firefighting crew as they struggle with fear, loyalty, love and defeat all over the course of a single fire season. What emerges is a story of a small group of working-class men, their exterior world, their interior lives, and the fire that lies between. Read more…
