THE BEST Short Films

(PG-13: Language) Lizzy Jo leads a painfully boring life. She has a dead end job, she lives with her mother, and she has a jerk for a boyfriend. So on her lunch breaks, she puts on a cowboy ensemble and robs banks. Peter Lee’s short film is based on a true story.

Animator Juan Pablo Machado’s short film is a fresh and visually impressive take on the classic Grimm Brothers fairy tale Rapunzel. In this thrilling version of the story, a group of mercenary knights arrive at the tower to rescue the long-haired princess from her captor.

Freediver Guillaume Néry shares this soothing and stunning short film that seamlessly edits his dives in different seas around the world – one amazing shot after another. The film reaches its peak when he encounters marine life.

“I am an artist, with the paperwork to prove.” In 2016, animator Rory Waudby Tolley got to be the Artist in Residence for an international law firm in London. But he didn’t know what kind of art the lawyers liked, so he asked them. This is what he ended up making.

A man falls asleep while watching Jurassic World, only to find himself face to face with one of the movie’s dinosaurs. Jurassic Park fan Mason Drumm and his friends spent over 90 hours making this tense stop-motion short film.

“What if I don’t want a hand? What if I want a tentacle?” The Guardian spoke with amputees as well as experts about the present and future of prosthetics and bionics. Research on technology such as brain-machine interfaces raise both possibilities and dilemmas.

Director Ridley Scott returns to his roots of commercial directing with this short film he made for Turkish Airlines, in which a mysterious woman follows illustrated clues to tail another in what ends up being a beautiful travel promotion for Istanbul.

“…90% of the day’s work must be done before customers are served.” Chef Nozomu Abe owns and runs Sushi Noz, an 8-seat restaurant in New York that charges $300 per person. Tasty followed Abe and his staff for a day to see what it’s like to run such a high-end operation.

Peter Henderson’s animated short film imagines the world behind the endless stream of social media posts we scroll by each day is fabricated along some sort of vertical assembly line that just remixes and regurgitates food and pet pics, selfies, and memes.

(PG-13: Language) An astronaut speaks about the complexities and challenges of living in space. Raphaël Bluzet’s animated short has a light start, but a dark ending. If the voice sounds familiar, that’s Gary Dourdan, who played Warrick Brown on CSI.

(PG-13: Language) “When we weren’t playing, we… We were almost always playing.” Jonas Odell’s thoughtful short film features three recovering video game addicts talking about their experiences in the guise of their old video game avatars.

(PG-13: Language) Filmmaker and editor Fabrice Mathieu has outdone himself with this epic movie mashup, combining The Blues Brothers and Men In Black into an thrilling new adventure about two ex-cons on a mission from god to take down the alien scum of the universe.

Xue Enge’s quirky animated short envisions a world in which everyone has a Rubik’s Cube for a head. Our protagonist wanders about in his tighty whities desperately seeking to make a connection in his puzzling and conformist universe, and makes a heartening discovery.

Ringling College of Art and Design students Sagar Arun and Rachel Kral’s lighthearted animated short pokes fun at the sometimes vast differences between a superhero’s comic book origins and their modern-day versions, in this obvious jab at a certain DC Comics hero.

A hilariously weird, darkly comic short film about two soccer moms living in a surreal world where superficiality and nonchalance lead to some very strange outcomes indeed. From the warped minds of Upright Citizens Brigade alums Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe.

Wo Guo Jie collects polystyrene foam boxes in Shanghai and resells them to other markets. What little money she earns sometimes go to the cops if they catch her. She’s one of the hundreds of millions of rural workers in China who have migrated to the cities.

Dreamworks TV presents a charming animated short about a funny looking blue creature trying to survive on his own in the deadly Australian outback, when he meets up with an adorable and puffy bird who he ends up having to protect from just about everything in sight.

Max Mörtl & Robert Löbel’s short film takes us to a strange island when unusual creatures dwell. The stop-motion and 2D animated clip charmed us with its endearing character design, and David Kamp’s clever sound design brought it all together.

A delivery man and his two helpers arrive at an old man’s house to deliver a spa. When they get there, the old man refuses to take the tub. The three buddies find out the reason behind the old man’s behavior and have a decision to make.

All in Pixel’s fantastic 16-bit style animated short shows off the capabilities of a high-speed delivery service in a Blade Runner-esque Japanofuturistic society. It starts out looking all intense and serious, but there’s actually a great punchline in the end.

In Jared Lee’s intriguing short film, the job of grim reaper is held by everyday Joes. As one of these soul collectors gets used to his gig, he starts having strange dreams which may provide clues to the demise of his clients. The post-credits scene clarifies the twist in case you missed it.

(PG-13) “I do get asked every now and then, “How did this happen?”” A family in Mumbai have a pet chicken. They all wish they didn’t. Rishi Chandna’s documentary is surprisingly fascinating for its star and the ping ponging reactions of its masters.

Animator Jan Elsner’s short film ÖBST envisions how nature’s sweet treats might move around if they were more like animals. The CG animation was achieved without keyframing, and instead relied on physics simulations and procedural noise functions.

(PG-13: Language) Jake & Sandy Honig’s short film takes us inside of a little-known secret division of the United States Postal Service designed to make sure parcels get delivered to their recipients even if they’ve been sitting around for decades.

Artist Oscar López Rocha aka LOROCROM created this amazing short film which combines live-action backgrounds with CGI elements. The way the virtual light bulbs and tubes illuminate the natural surroundings is amazing. The track is Serotonin Diode by BLÆRG.

Set after Star Wars Episode 3, Vader is Star Wars Theory’s fan-made series about the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. In the first episode, Vader is sent on a mission to defeat a powerful Jedi while he’s still grieving from Padme’s death.