Paag won Best Drama at the 2018 LA Shorts Fest. It is a subtle short film and a bit of a slow-burner, but it is very nicely made and worth sticking with. It centres on Mandeep, an American with a wife and young son. It is July 4th and a racist shooting of a member of his community has left Mandeep contemplating how he is treated in his homeland - from people avoiding him on the subway to outright racist abuse. How will Mandeep react to a day full of racism?
City Lights is a romantic comedy about a nighttime security guard who finds a unique way to gain the attention of a cleaner in an opposite tower. But with his job on the line, will he be able to invite her for an early morning coffee? An almost entirely dialogue-free short film, with seemless visual effects, City Lights invites us into a secret world inhabited by London shift workers. It premiered at the LA Shorts Fest in 2016 before playing at many more major international festivals and picking up some awards along the way.
The Landing takes place over two timelines, with most of it set on a secluded American farm during the height of the Cold War. The young Edward lives there with his alcoholic and war-weary father. When something falls from the sky, the boy watches his father drag something living from it, which he keeps hidden in the barn and proceeds to torture. The second timeline sees Edward some forty years later when, having just lost his father, he digs up the alien spacecraft.