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Shorts 5: Future Realities
September 27, 2025 @ 5:45 pm – 7:30 pm EDT
Escape into a program of short films that blurs the lines between reality and artifice, from an urban food co-op’s technological experiment gone awry to a sci-fi thief’s journey in a dystopian colony. Other tales include a noir story of a memory-battling agent, a surrealist disruption of an American sitcom’s reality, and a poignant Midwestern story of grief. The collection concludes with an absurdist tragedy set in a repressive society where affection is forbidden.
Filmmakers and artists from a selection of these shorts will be attendance at the screening for a post-film discussion. Please see details for individual films below.
About the Program
- Fresh Values (12m)
- Wizdom (13m)
- Mandatory Bathroom Break (11m)
- There Is No Antimemetics Division (17m)
- Living Reality (16m)
- Two People Exchanging Saliva (35m)
Theater #2
*Individual tickets available for purchase the day of the show at door. Seeing more than a few films? Buy a pass!
A film by Drew Durepos, Isaac Brooks
In the near future, a struggling urban food co-op adopts AR technology to save their store. The strategy proves too successful.
2024 | 12 mins | US | Color | Experimental, Sci-fi, Comedy
The filmmaker Drew Durepos is expected to be in attendance for a post-film discussion.
About the Filmmakers
Drew Durepos is a Chicago-based filmmaker and educator. His films have screened at festivals such as London Short Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, Athens International Film & Video Festival, Drunken Film Fest Oakland, Washington DC International Film Festival, FIDBA International Documentary Film Festival (Buenos Aires), and Onion City Experimental Film Festival (Chicago). In 2018, he received his MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He teaches at Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University and is a member of the Nightingale Projects programming collective.
Isaac Brooks is an artist, educator and collaborator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Working primarily in film and sound design, his work examines facets of transient youth, insular media culture, and rural social landscape while referencing personal and familial history. Often working in the 16mm motion picture format, Isaac’s work has included much collaboration as a cinematographer, providing distinction and perspective through lighting design and the development of film narratives with other artists. Isaac holds an MFA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where he is currently an Arts Technician and Lecturer in the Department of Film, Video, Animation & New Genres.
A film by Layne Marie Williams
In a world where daylight is scarce, humans live with bionic implants in a colony called WIZDOM. Eos, a professional thief, is saved by a strange character, Carbon, who has a higher purpose for Eos and their younger sibling Vayle.
2024 | 13 mins | US | Color | Sci-fi, Fantasy
About the Filmmaker
Layne Marie Williams (LM or LMW) is a film, television, commercial, and music video director located in Los Angeles, CA. She is originally from Montgomery, Alabama. Layne Marie directed feature film The Christmas Pitch premiering it internationally at Festival de Cannes Film Market and the film was then distributed on cable and on streaming platforms including but not limited to The CW, Amazon Prime Video, Redbox, and Vudu. She directed the pilot and season one of Zen Room starring, executive produced, & co-written by SNL legend, Cheri Oteri. Some additional credits include Wizdom, Land of Forgotten Echoes, I Didn’t Mean to Go Mental, Veiled Tractate, Blanche, Scutly, and Golden Voices.
A film by Alyssa Sue Borkowski
A dedicated employee awaits the most important phone call of his life while continuing to work from the back of a moving truck. A charming and humble tale of productivity, grief, and the Midwest.
2024 | 11 mins | US | Color | Drama, Comedy, Animation
About the Filmmaker
Alyssa Sue is a filmmaker, writer, painter, fibre crafts artist in Milwaukee, WI. As a director, she hopes to tell stories that will inspire humor, impress many with her attention to detail, and draw you in with her bombastic approach to collaborating with actors. Alyssa’s previous work Stuck Somewhere (2023) received a Brico Forward Fund Grant and premiered at the MKE Film Festival. She even went on local Milwaukee news to talk about her senior thesis, Fishnap (2021).
A film by Adria Marie Lang
Marion Wheeler is called in to a routine meeting with her boss, a high ranking suit at the shadowy SCP Foundation, only to end up with a gun to her head and her identity in question. These are the perils of being the organization’s Chief of Antimemetics, a division dedicated to fighting memory consuming entities. Marion must convince her superior and his trigger happy assistant that she’s not a spy before gettting dragged off to Xi-3 in this atmospheric sci-fi noir short starring Jasika Nicole, Neil Napier, Mateus Ward and Syd Kilroy.
2024 | 17 mins | US | B&W, Color | Sci-fi, Suspense
About the Filmmaker
Adria Lang has been a television writer since 2012 writing and producing on such shows as Sons of Anarchy, American Gods, You, Berlin Station and The Terror among others. She has since been bitten by the directing bug and is excited to present her first short film to the world. Adria lives in LA with her two kitties, Buggy and Artemis.
A film by Philip Thompson
A tonal shift occurs inside the world of an American sitcom resulting in the disruption of the show’s rhythm. As it evolves, a looming presence of banality casts a shadow on the show’s bright lights and bubbly personalities.
2024 | 16 mins | US | Color | Comedy, Satire, Experimental
About the Filmmaker
Philip Thompson is a Brooklyn based filmmaker, named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2023, and listed as a Sundance Institute Ignite Fellow and NYFF Artists Academy Fellow in 2024.
His body of work explores the emotional impact that media consumption has on an audience, revealing a world of dark and unspoken emotions often overlooked in on-screen portrayals. He is interested in the one-sided “looking” relationship between viewers and image subjects, and uses cinema as cognitive examination of the medium as a whole.
Philip’s films have received the Audience Award for Best Experimental Film at Brooklyn Film Festival, as well as the jury grand prize at the 32nd Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival. In 2022 he won Best Experimental Film at the world’s largest undergraduate film festival, Ivy Film Festival, along with receiving the festival’s Storyteller Grant for Emerging Young Artists.
His work went on to screen at Chicago Underground Film Festival, Bushwick Film Festival, & Athens International Film+Video Festival. In 2023, he co-founded and co-programmed the Ithaca Experimental Film Festival.
Philip was raised by his mother, his father, and his television.
A film by Alexandre Singh, Natalie Musteata
An absurdist tragedy set in a repressive society where kissing is punishable by death, and people pay for things by receiving slaps to the face. Angine, an unhappy woman, shops compulsively in a department store. There, she becomes fascinated by an ingenuous salesgirl. Despite the prohibition of kissing, the two become close, raising the suspicions of a jealous colleague.
2024 | 35 mins | France, US | In French | B&W |Drama, Comedy, Romance
About the Filmmakers
Alexandre is a Franco-Indian visual artist whose work has been collected by the MoMA and Guggenheim Museum, New York, and CNAP, Paris. Natalie is a Romanian-American writer, curator and filmmaker, with a PhD in art history and film.