Jaeron, whose birthday is the Fourth of July, celebrates every year watching the fireworks with his family. However, on his 12th birthday, a serious thunderstorm upsets familiar plans. Jaeron holds out hope, but doubt creeps in, and he begins to question whether his family still cares about him now that he's older- intensifying what will become his most defining birthday yet.

A mischievous moment from childhood comes vividly—and hilariously—back to life when a young boy talks back to his mother and learns just how far a frying pan can fly. Mother’s Flying Frying Pan: A "That’s How I Remember It!" Tale is a fictionalized retelling of a true childhood memory—one that has grown funnier, stranger, and more meaningful with time. As kids, moments like these feel enormous. As adults, they become stories we tell at dinner parties, reshaped by nostalgia and affection. This film lives in that space between what happened and how it’s remembered. The details may be exaggerated, the tone light, but the emotional truth remains: family memories aren’t static—they evolve as we do.

Amid a pandemic and a failing marriage, a woman retreats into obsessive fantasy. A film star becomes her companion as the boundaries between reality and reverie blur. Lost in a frozen Antarctic landscape inspired by Frank Hurley's 1914 Endurance expedition photographs, escapism becomes a path back, a mirror revealing how far she's drifted from herself, and a space where she can begin to heal.

At her aunt’s wake-keeping, Des wears the wrong color, a quiet sign of how far she’s drifted from her family’s culture. After a charged therapy session with her mother, silence materializes into spoken resentments, leaving her unsure if healing is possible or if some distances can’t be crossed.

Mixed-race Izzie sees her new camp friends’ true colors when she discovers she has been unknowingly passing for White all summer.

In the wake of her sister’s passing, AZUL catches sight of The Lady Lowriders. Enamored by their energy, she finds respite on her first cruise in LA.

James, a disgraced preacher exiled after a city scandal, is assigned to build a new church in a distant rural community. However, the land bought by the church is occupied by Chirongoma, a revered traditional healer. As a fierce rivalry breaks out between James and Chirongoma over the land, God Sleeps on Sundays presents a timely critique on the imperialist nature of religion in displacing Indigenous communities and eroding ancestral traditions.

Two young Somali sisters in Minneapolis have to balance rebellion with their reputations when their secret matchmaking business attracts a client a little too close to home.

Post-screening conversation with filmmakers Katrina Jackson & Catherine Bobalek (Aromcom), Matthew Herst (Halifax Pier), Whitney Chitwood (Sam Wants Her Sweater Back), and Yasmin Yassin (Woman Land). Moderated by our Director of Programming, KJ Mohr, alongside the MdFF Programming Team (James A. Burkhalter, Garrett Stralnic, Samantha Mitchell, Aishat Abiri, and Jasmine Patrick).