The Milwaukee Film Festival is in full swing, but you may be finding yourself overwhelmed by the hundreds of options of films to see during the festival.
How about picking a theme? Categories like Surprise, Surprise, Black Lens, programs for kids, and animated shorts are all part of the festival’s lineup. Milwaukee Film shorts programmer Jack Feria breaks down what’s being offered and suggests a few recommendations.
As Feria says, "The benefit of the shorts program is that you get more films for your dollar. Just straight up, you get to see between five to nine films from around the world. I've been calling it the festival's buffet. Without a shorts program on your festival plan, you're not getting the full festival experience."
Here are some shorts categories that Feria suggests:
"Film festivalgoers love documentaries. These are our documentary shorts that we have," Feria says. "You get fun documentaries that explore unique subjects that are really wild and kind of hard to believe."
"If you're a big fan of Hacks, Meg Stalter is the lead of this really quirky comedy about a woman who ends up calling her boss and accidentally says, 'I love you.' And she races around town to try to delete the message from his phone, and obviously hijinks ensue," Feria explains. "Surprise, Surprise is all about joy and laughter and twists."
"You get wacky comedies, some disturbing animation — stuff that will keep you up at night, whether it's laughing out loud, how outlandish," Feria says. "It is the highlight of the festival for me. I love the midnight shorts."
Feria says, "This is the perfect place to start. This is where you see the best of the best and films that couldn't fit into the programs that we have If we have too much of something, it can live in grab bag and these are where you'll find audience winners. I truly believe that every filmmaker that's in the grab bag program is someone that we're going to see an incredible feature from in like five years."
"They range from our size, small — best fit for 3- to 5-year-olds — and go all the way up to 10 or older," Feria says. "You get adorable anime and fun little stories. And then as you grow up, that's where you get some films that are dealing with big emotions and stuff."
"These are locally made short films. You'll get to have a really unique festival experience because, typically, the audience is full of folks that worked on those films. So it's a really fun atmosphere," says Feria. "Each film has a guest or two that goes up for a Q&A after a block or two of films, and it's really great to get to hear from these emerging filmmakers, or these established filmmakers, because we have a great film scene here in Milwaukee. They're incredible filmmakers in our city."
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