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. To help narrow down your options, you could pick a theme — Most Dramatic, Black Lens, Animated or even Date Night. Those - and more - are all offered as part of the Film Festival’s Shorter Is Better program, of which WUWM is the proud sponsor.
Jack Feria is the shorts and Genrequeer programmer for Milwaukee Film, and he says that shorts are the heart of a film festival not to be ignored.
"So many folks will look at short films ... and they're like, 'Oh, these are the bonus features, this is the extra stuff.' No, this is a main course on its own," Feria notes. "You get to see between six and 10 short films from around the world, all about the same tone [and] it's so worth it. It's such a fun little package."
The Milwaukee Film Festival turned 18 this year, and to celebrate Feria programmed a new category of shorts. "[The festival] has graduated from high school, so I decided we're gonna give out some superlatives, so we have our very first ever Most Dramatic. These are films that have won awards at Sundance, South by Southwest, and are just acclaimed dramas. So you get all of the joy and pain of the human experience all wrapped into one little package," he explains.
Here are some shorts that Feria suggests:
The Oralce (from Shorts: Most Dramatic)
"The Oracle is such a ride! I want to say as little as possible about it, but there are so many fantastic character actors that you'll see in it. It's about a therapist who is kind of discovering that one of his patients might know the secret language that he and his brother spoke as six-year-olds and then the ride goes on from there."
We Were Here (from Shorts: Out of this World)
"This is a film from India about three dads who are realizing that technology, and in particular AI, is taking over all of the jobs. So they decide to take over the jobs of some robots. They decide that they are going to be satellite antennas for a week, that they're going to the microwaves - the way that that happens is hilarious. But it's a really great way to laugh at the horrors of AI taking over everything and some small ways we can perhaps fight back."
The Motive (from Shorts: GenreQueer)
"This year's [GenreQueer] program, you can tell that all these filmmakers grew up watching films like Clue, or Edward Scissorhands. There's so much in the visual style of all of these that's just so much fun. And in particular, there's a film called The Motive from someone who I've loved on Twitter for so long. His name is Jorge Molina. He's a programmer as well. But this is a short film that is a murder mystery that takes a bit of a turn, as all murder mysteries do. But there's a little bit of spice to this one, and very heartfelt. I'm excited to see the reactions to that one."
Paper Trail (from Shorts: Let's Get Animated)
"It's from two-time Oscar nominee Don Hertzfeldt. It's his newest film, and I gotta be so frank, I think it's his very best. It tells the story of a person's life through the paper that they left behind - from the very beginning to the very end. Ooh, there's gonna be sniffles in the crowd... I think that [it] will win the Oscar."
Three of the shorts from the 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival were Oscar-nominated, and one called The Singers won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.
"We had three films that were in the program last year that were nominated. We had Retirement Plan from Let's Get Animated, which was narrated by Domhnall Gleeson. Beautiful, beautiful film. And then two of the short films: we had Jane Austin's Period Drama which was in Date Night, which was the audience favorite from last year, and then The Singers was in Surprise! Surprise! ... Every year I watched between like 1,100 and 1,200 short films so when you find those ones that are fantastic and you're like this is the beginning of its life here at the Milwaukee Film Festival, all the way to the Oscar stage is just so beautiful"
