Bentonville Film Festival

Shorts: Unexpected Connection

Expired June 28, 2025 4:00 AM
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6 films in package
A Stupid Man
Amy Frear makes narrative short films, music videos, and experimental video art. Her work has screened at film festivals and galleries around the US and UK. She has taught at Temple University's School of Theater, Film, and Media Arts as well as at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA.
Broken Flight
Erika Valenciana is an award-winning Chicana filmmaker from Chicago. Her work has been supported by Tribeca Film Institute, Kartemquin Films, Stowe Story Labs, Cine Qua Non Lab, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Illinois Arts Council, Puffin Foundation, Ragdale Foundation, Allied Media Conference, DC Environmental Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Full Spectrum Features, and Mezcla Media Collective. Valenciana shares underrepresented stories to build towards a media landscape where diverse experiences are uplifted. Mitchell Wenkus is a documentary Director / DP whose love of the outdoors has shown up in his work. For 5 years, he was a Video Producer at Greenpeace USA where he created numerous advocacy videos. Mitchell graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Film and Video.
Fishtank
Wendi Tang is a Chinese filmmaker with a passion for telling character-driven stories that delve into diverse female perspectives. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and Stern School of Business dual-degree program, Wendi’s directorial and producing work has been showcased at internationally renowned festivals such as SITGES, SXSW, Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Norwegian Short Film Festival, deadCenter Film Festival, St. Louis IFF, HollyShorts, and more. Her short film [Fishtank] is the Tribeca Chanel THL Women Filmmaker's Program Winner and the Film Pipeline Short Script Competition Winner in 2022. It recently won Best Short Film at SXSW Sydney and Best AAPI at HollyShorts. She’s a Sundance Cultural Impact Residency fellow, Sundance Uprise Grant finalist, NYC Women’s Fund recipient, SFFILM Rainin Grant finalist, and BAFTA member. Currently, Wendi is developing her first feature film.
Newbies
Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence + Megan Trufant Tillman are a filmmaking duo hailing from New Orleans and Honolulu known as FLYPAPER. Their distinctive voice draws on their backgrounds in music and theater to compose tender cinematic portraits that explore the vast inner worlds of subjects who are rarely seen on screen. Their films are distinguished by lyrical visual language, intimate character portraiture, lush cinematography, and original scores composed by Tillman – who is also half of jazz/hip-hop outfit Magna Carda. Their duo directorial debut, NEWBIES, premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival, where it received the Texas Short Competition Special Jury Award.
Closed captions available
Thin Places
Brit Hensel is an Oklahoma-based director, writer and award-winning filmmaker whose work has been featured at Sundance, imagineNATIVE, Hot Docs, and Full Frame. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she is the first female enrolled member of the tribe to direct a film selected by the Sundance Film Festival. Her films explore themes of the environment, Indigenous women’s experiences, language, and her people’s deep ties to the lands of Oklahoma and North Carolina. In 2022, her short film ᎤᏕᏲᏅ (What They’ve Been Taught) premiered at Sundance, was nominated for Best Short Documentary at the 38th IDA Documentary Awards, and was selected for the inaugural L.A. Times Op-Docs. Brit is currently in production on her first feature documentary film, What She Carries.
Witness
Radha Mehta (she/her) is an award-winning filmmaker with an MFA in Directing from American Film Institute. Her film "DOSH" won the Slamdance Spirit Award in 2024, and her film "SŪNNA" is a winner of the CAPE Julia Gouw/Janet Yang Short Film Challenge 2024. Saif Jaan (he/they) is an emerging writer who grew up in a Muslim Yemini and Pakistani household in Saudi Arabia. "Witness" won funds from Tasveer+Netflix, Islamic Scholarship Fund, and InsideOut for RE:Focus.

Winding through the maze of downtown Chicago, the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors work alongside the Field Museum and Willowbrook Wildlife Center to rescue birds that collide with windows, and study the birds that are killed during their annual migrations.


Filmmaker Bio: Erika Valenciana is an award-winning Chicana filmmaker from Chicago. Her work has been supported by Tribeca Film Institute, Kartemquin Films, Stowe Story Labs, Cine Qua Non Lab, Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Illinois Arts Council, Puffin Foundation, Ragdale Foundation, Allied Media Conference, DC Environmental Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Full Spectrum Features, and Mezcla Media Collective. Valenciana shares underrepresented stories to build towards a media landscape where diverse experiences are uplifted.

Mitchell Wenkus is a documentary Director / DP whose love of the outdoors has shown up in his work. For 5 years, he was a Video Producer at Greenpeace USA where he created numerous advocacy videos. Mitchell graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Film and Video.

  • Language
    English
  • Country
    USA
  • Social Media
  • Director
    Erika Valenciana; Mitchell Wenkus
  • Screenwriter
    Magdalena Hernandez
  • Producer
    Erika Valenciana; Mitchell Wenkus
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