Description
Tallahassee Filmmakers (TFM) and the Tallahassee Film Festival have joined forces to bring you a shorts program featuring the nominees from the Tally850 short film competition celebrating independent filmmaking in the 850. Each team had 90 days to make a film – and you get to be the first audience to see it!
Tally850 Awards will be announced at the Awards ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 11 at 5:45 p.m.
Red Herring
Team Lead & Director: Pearl Hogan
Aster Blackberry gets ready for an inspector to arrive while being questioned by the Mayonnaise Man, their strange semi-imagined roommate. They are hesitant to disclose why they are hiring the inspector. When the investigator finally arrives, Aster confesses they’ve been receiving mysterious packages of red herring every day for a month — with no idea who’s sending them. The investigator asks questions, Aster grows impatient, and the strange visit builds to an unsettling reveal.
7 mins | Surreal, Comedy
Best Movie Extras
Team Lead & Director: Charles Pate
The gang tries their best to make a career-defining movie and endure obstructions like summer heat, budget and scheduling issues, and creative differences. Meanwhile, aliens are invading Earth to take our wheat.
9 mins | Comedy, WTF
The Poker Game
Team Lead & Director: Jamia V.M. Wright
Mr. Blackwell hosts an invitation-only poker game where some of the city’s most influential players gather to compete for money, power, and reputation. As the night unfolds, alliances shift, tempers flare, and players are eliminated one by one. Every hand raises the stakes, and every decision carries consequences beyond the cards on the table. But beneath the game is something far more dangerous — by the final deal, the last player standing discovers that winning was never the only thing at stake.
9 mins | Drama, Suspense
Last We Spoke
Team Lead & Director: Brian K. Vagnini
A man reconciles the death of his girlfriend.
3 mins | Drama
Lights
Team Lead & Director: John Childs
When the power goes out, a teenager goes down to the basement to reset the breaker, but he fears he isn’t the only one down there.
5 mins | Horror
The Other Side
Team Lead & Director: Dennis Brewer
A woman named Claire returns to an old bridge for the first time in years to leave behind something connected to her late father. The bridge becomes an emotional threshold — a place she has avoided because it holds pain, but also a place where she once felt connected to someone she loved. As she confronts her grief, a young photographer and her brother gently challenge her to see the bridge differently, and Claire ultimately chooses to walk forward, embracing the uncertainty of her future.
9 mins | Drama
Rules of the Game
Team Lead: Chipper Beal | Director: Spencer Doster
After a heist gone wrong, the one remaining survivor of the crew is left to reckon with the crime. With a bag of money and the body of his dead brother, he sets out on a revenge plot against the person responsible.
7 mins | Crime, Thriller, Action
WITSEC
Team Lead & Director: Ferlonda Gaines
WITSEC (Women In Trauma Surviving Every Challenge) follows Rhonda Carter, a young expectant mother whose life is shattered during a violent home invasion that claims her husband’s life. Forced into witness protection, she gives birth under heartbreaking circumstances, leaving behind a legacy that forever shapes her daughter, Ferlonda. As years pass, hidden truths, family bonds, and the lasting effects of trauma begin to surface, revealing a powerful story of faith, sacrifice, survival, and purpose.
7 mins | Drama
Invasion of the G-nats
Team Lead & Director: Stacy Brown Jr
When a mysterious meteor crashes outside the small town of Sopchoppy, Florida, it brings with it a deadly swarm of alien G-Nats that begin terrorizing the local community. As residents disappear and panic spreads, FBI Agent Jack Rourke arrives to investigate alongside the town’s skeptical Sheriff Buford Tibbs. With the help of the eccentric Doc Bunsen and a handful of unlikely locals, they discover the insects are controlled by a monstrous queen hidden within the meteor’s crater. Racing against time, the group devises a desperate plan to destroy the hive before the invasion spreads beyond Sopchoppy.
9 mins | Sci-fi, Comedy
