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Nicholas ALVARADO

Bryant University (USA)

Video games are often dismissed as mere mindless entertainment. But there's more to the gaming experience than one might expect.

This limited docuseries highlights how video games create lasting memories, unite diverse communities, and challenge perceptions, proving their cultural significance.

Told through a combination of archival footage, interviews, social media, and day-in-the-life narration while visually mimicking the changing graphics of the games.

Alba ATENCIA GARCIA

ESCAC (Spain)

Estela is a Spanish 35-year-old truck driver from Murcia who lives in Elche.

She has been driving a truck for three years and she started because this job meant an economic improvement in her life.
Estela knew she could prove her bravery as a woman by working in a male-dominated industry, and now she embodies that strength in her daily life.

In the truck, she has found herself; she feels free on the road and has become very popular among her fellow drivers.
Despite her strength, the harsh conditions of her job take a toll on her: she starts driving at night and finishes at midday the next day.

She sleeps in the afternoon and has no time for anything else.

Jack BRZENK

Bryant University (USA)

How does trauma effect a family?
April 17, 2017.

David is attending the wake of his mother, Karen, and now has to help his father, Ron, move forward.
Two weeks later, David gets a call from an unknown number.
It’s his father, who's in the hospital from breaking his leg after standing up at his desk.
Days ago, Ron was perfectly healthy. Something is wrong. Without hesitation, David hugs his wife and son goodbye and drives three and a half hours to Upstate New York, where he will be spending the next five months taking care of his 68-year-old father who was just diagnosed with stage-four cancer.

This is a story about grief, and a story about hope. This is a story about my dad.

Lucia CANCINOS

Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina)

AÌda, a former ballet dancer at the prestigious Teatro Colûn and the director’s grandmother, faces memory loss due to senile dementia.
This documentary reconstructs her life, starting from the notebooks where she wrote what she wanted to remember, when she began to forget it all.
As the investigation progresses, the director rediscovers her grandmother, an introverted woman whose passion for dance is the only thing that still connects her to both her past and the present.

Ultra MARTINI

(Brazil)

Ultra, 30, is the writer and main character of this documentary, which delves into his complex relationship with his mother, Jaqueline, 45 ó a controversial and drug-dependent figure.

The film investigates the mother-son dynamic through an honest and raw lens, using artificial intelligence tools like Deepfake to recreate and explore fantasies and buried resentments.
The narrative unfolds in three main acts: the collection of footage and the motherís signature, the sonís creation of fictional scenes, and the outcomes of these experimental reenactments.

A fourth act unexpectedly emerges when the mother watches the film ó adding a new and unpredictable layer of reflection.

Lauren MCELRATH

(USA)

After Life tells the story of a young man's war to reclaim his life after incarceration and battling PTSD, stigma, and survival, until he rises to build a tech lifeline for others trapped in the cycle of reentry.

Nidya MERISIER

Bryant University (USA)

Logline: Eighteen-year-old Nia has always been the rock of her dysfunctional family but as she quietly begins to unravel beneath the weight of cultural expectations, she starts to question what it truly means to hold it together.

Synopsis: Holding It Together is a coming-of-age, documentary-style series centered around Nia, a soft-spoken yet sharp-witted 18-year-old eldest daughter in a chaotic household.
From the outside, she’s the responsible one: keeping her siblings on track, covering for her parents, and upholding cultural traditions with quiet grace.

But inside, she’s exhausted, mentally and emotionally drained in ways she doesn’t fully understand yet as she edges closer to adulthood.

Mika NIVOLA

Academy Of Design (AOD)
(Columbia/Sri Lanka)

My family history is marked by absent men: a father I never knew, a cousin raised as a brother lost to suicide.
To understand this legacy, I cast an actor to perform the role of the missing brother.

This documentary chronicles my attempt to script this missing family member into existence.
As the actor integrates into my life, blurring lines between reality and fiction, we confront loss, memory, and queer identity.

Using performance as an investigative tool, the film asks: Can we reconstruct what's missing, or do we just get lost in the attempt? Can performance truly heal absence, or only reveal its shape?

Julia ORTEGA GARCIA

(Spain)

Exploring the emotional and medical journey of children living with rare inherited metabolic disorders.
Through intimate storytelling, evocative visuals, and scientific insight, the film sheds light on the invisible realities faced by these families ó from the moment of diagnosis to the long path of adaptation, resilience, and hope.

Told from the perspective of the children themselves, capturing their inner worlds: their imagination, fears, dreams, and strength.

Alongside them, families and specialists share how they confront uncertainty and build new ways of living.
Focusing on storytelling from their own personal perspective, diving into the way they hear, see and feel.

Inès PRUSSEIT

Universidad Carlos III de Madrid/UCLA
(Spain/USA)

Following life at the UCHA or The Co-op, a student housing organization with a hidden society far from ordinary.
Following a former resident’s advice, a group or Spanish students move into a cheap student home hidden among frats and university apartments during their exchange year at Los Angeles.
Initially, they feel resentful regarding the state of the building however, they soon discover the micro-society that lives within its walls, where people from every possible culture and walk of life meet in a family-like manner, affecting everyone’s vision of the world as they pursue their personal goals.

However, both its strength and weakness is that such experience has a fleeting nature.
Everyone must eventually move out, move on.
This story follows a year of real events and people from the UCHA

Beau SHUGARTS

Bryant University (USA)

A series that shows the lives and relationships of several people who choose to experience life in the modern world, without the internet, for 30 days.

Nowadays, people have a lot to manage: their reputation, their job, finances, social presence, keeping up with the times, groceries, and many things outside of their natural reach.
The internet has become a common tool to manage all these things.
So common, that life without the internet may seem intense. Who are we without the internet?

Follow five people from across the US as they seek to answer this question and discover what it means to disconnect to reconnect.

Malachi STEEELE

Bryant University (USA)

What would you do to turn your dreams into reality?
Part docuseries, part animated dreamscape, this innovative show brings viewers through the emotional twists, turns, and challenges of turning dreams into reality.

This series aims to inform and inspire people in pursuit of their dreams by showcasing the deep mental, emotional, and spiritual battles faced during the journey.

The unique format combines fiction and non-fiction through a fusion of animated series and docuseries.
The animated storyline serves as a metaphor for their journey, with Teíashur, an intergalactic ninja warrior, narrating each episode.
Join us as we fall in love with process not just the result.

Mateo SIMUNOVIC

New York University (USA)

"You Just Had To Be There" is a short documentary detailing the journey to be first in line for the Nintendo Switch outside of Nintendo NY.

Directed by Mateo Simunovic, the film follows CND, an up-and-comer in the Nintendo YouTube sphere with the help of gaming legend TriForce Johnson; this documentary's purpose is to tell the story of the people who were there -- more importantly, why it was so magical and important to the greater Nintendo community.

CND and TriForce's month-long journey of waiting outside of Nintendo is used as a guide throughout to introduce the audience to other characters involved, events that transpired and the feeling of sleeping on the street.