Shorts #2: Times Like These
Click Showtimes to Purchase Tickets
Shorts #2: Times Like These
Just when we think we have it all figured out, everything changes. Life is a puzzle with no solution. There’s no user manual, and if you ever manage to get a handle on how it all works, they change the rules on you. What are you going to do? You learn to live again.
My Favorites
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
Vertical Valor
Directed by: Alex Kavutskiy
USA, 2023, 15m
Three-time FFF alumnus Alex Kavutskiy (“Ear Ache,” 2020) returns with this tale of burnt-out skateboarders (including Clay Tatum, The Civil Dead, FFF 2022) who are recruited into a casualty notification unit at the outset of World War III.
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
Kissy and the Shark
Directed by: Lola Blanche
USA, 2023, 13m
In English and Spanish with English subtitles
A young girl eking out a grim existence with her ailing mother on Terminal Island stumbles upon a wounded shark—and perhaps a chance for hope—mired in the garbage off the shore.
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
Black Santa
Directed by: Travis Wood
USA, 2022, 10m
Henry and his son Otis used to love performing as a mall Santa and his elf, but now that Otis is a teenager, his embarrassment over being seen by some schoolmates drives him to lash out at his father.
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
Day Jobs
Directed by: Stevie Wain and Auri Jackson
USA, 2022, 30m
Shortly after coming out as gay, a struggling comedian looks for a job as a nanny to pay rent to her overly understanding ex-boyfriend, but she agonizes when offered an opportunity to work with the married woman she’s in love with.
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
SAM
Directed by: Jen Stafford and Ryan Thielen
USA, 2023, 12m
A ten-year-old “tomboy” exults in roughhousing with her older brother and his friends, but she finds herself in a showdown against society’s expectations when the boys take a dip in the lake.
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
Variations on a Theme
Directed by: Peter Collins Campbell
USA, 2023, 7m
Mark and Sam are presented with a unique opportunity to examine their own relationship when clones of themselves start popping up around them in this wry science-fiction tale.
Shorts #2: “Times Like These”
Yokelan, 66
Directed by: Tang Yi
USA, 2022, 10m
In English and Cantonese with English subtitles
From Florida Film Festival alumna Tang Yi (“Black Goat,” “All the Crows in the World”) comes the story of a widowed ballroom dancer who puts on a nice dress and steels herself to reenter the dating scene.