KAFFNY 2025: Opening Shorts

Kodak Blues by Caleb Jiyong Chong 24:47

After being left in an empty house by her parents, a Korean-American college girl must find what to do for the rest of her summer break and perhaps, the rest of her life.

Eid Mubarak by Isabel Ahmed 11:50

Eid Mubarak explores the tension that arises between belonging and autonomy when some Muslim women decide to remove their hijab. The film follows Aya on the holy holiday of Eid as she grapples with her desire to make her own decisions about expressing her identities, while also longing to stay connected to her Arab community and family, which sometimes demands conformity.

Beside Myself by H. Paul Moon 3:00

“BESIDE MYSELF” is a poem/film that engages the reader/viewer to trade places with the poet for a generative new thing that can, with your help, change the world.

Step outside yourself, look back at yourself, whom do you see? That’s the question Bob Holman asks in “BESIDE MYSELF.” Fighting the metaphorical with the literal, H. Paul Moon's film captures a small band of Bob's friends voicing the poem in alternating identities, scored by composer David T. Little, for this meditative reflection on A.I. and the life cycle of the creative process.

Hyeree Ro's Precesise Ambiguity by Andrea Yu-Chieh Chung 11:13

This documentary short follows artist Hyeree Ro as she mines memories of road trips with her father and processes his recent passing through a new body of work, Niro (2024), a sculptural installation and series of performances that universalizes her own personal experiences of estrangement, loss, and memory.

Sometimes I Wish I was a Fish by Yeajoon Cho14:47

A depressed, male sex worker learns how to open up — the hard way.

Small Hair Halmeoni by Audrey Song13:18

A filmmaker attempts to piece together who her grandmother is through family memory and archives.

Yellow Balloon by Summer Luu 13:42

In 1996, a Vietnamese-American kid named Ái Vân from San Jose, California is adopted by their paternal immigrant grandparents in Vancouver, Washington. On their journey, Ái Vân processes their identity, the unspoken rules of complex social dynamics and discovers the reality of letting go.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher KAFFNY Infinite Cinema