HollyShorts Offers Oscar-Qualifying Home to New Films From Bill Plympton, Matthew Modine, and Jenn Shaw
The HollyShorts Film Festival has today unveiled its official lineup of in-competition short films for its 13th edition. As LA’s biggest shorts film festival, HollyShorts routinely screens exciting new work from big names, while also offering a glimpse at the short film stars of tomorrow, all with the added sweetener of being an Oscar-qualifying festival.
This year’s festival received an all-time record of 4,000 submissions from 65 countries. This year’s lineup include 400 shorts, which will compete for the Best Short Film Prize and Grand Jury Prize, Best Director, among other top categories. The 2017 official selections have been rolled out via posts on the HollyShorts official Instagram, and all of the 400 officially accepted short films that will screen at the festival can be found by visiting here.
Highlights from this year’s selection include films that offer up major star power both in front of and behind the camera, including: “The Walking Dead”s Emma Bell’s directorial debut horror short “Scratch”; Matthew Modine’s comedy “Super Sex,” starring his daughter Ruby Modine, Kevin Nealon, Elizabeth Perkins, Ed Asner and Efren Ramirez; John Stamos’s short “Ingenue-ish”; Julia Barnett’s “Chasing Grace,” produced by Connie Britton and starring Christopher Backus; Joshua Shultz’s “Strobe,” starring Sammi Hanratty; Brett Gursky’s “Graffiti,” starring Cassie Scerbo; and Erin Elder’s “Penny Sucker,” starring James Paxton.
Beloved animator Bill Plympton will screen his animated short “Cop Dog,” while Spike Lee’s Lil Joints will bow Jenn Shaw’s “$15 Dollar Kicks.” VR will also be well-represented at the festival, thanks to Tye Sheridan and Nikola Todorovic, co-founders of VR production company Aether, who will oversee the first-ever VR Experience at this year’s HollyShorts.
As IndieWire previously announced, Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam war masterpiece “Full Metal Jacket” will open this year’s HollyShorts Film Festival, care of an opening night celebration on August 10. The opening night festivities will coincide with the iconic feature’s thirtieth anniversary — the film first bowed back in June of 1987 — and star Matthew Modine will be on hand to participate in a special post-screening Q&A.
The festival takes place August 10 – 19 around various locations in Hollywood.
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