This Top Pick was written on special assignment for The Ticket through the TeenTix Press Corps, a teen arts journalism program run by TeenTix, a youth empowerment and arts access nonprofit organization.
📆 Showtimes thru Saturday, January 27th
🎟 $7 – $14
📍 Northwest Film Forum: 1515 12th Ave, Seattle
Calling all film lovers! It’s January, which means it’s almost Sundance Film Festival time over in Utah—but here in Seattle, we get a taste with the annual Sundance Short Film Tour at Capitol Hill’s Northwest Film Forum.
The short films, spanning genres from animated to documentary, each bring a unique flavor to the cinematic dinner table. The tour offers a 90-minute program of seven short films from last year’s Sundance Film Festival—including two award winners, Rest Stop and When You Left Me On That Boulevard.
The opening short, Help Me Understand, centers on a group of women brought together by strange circumstances: They’re judging for a laundry detergent ad. They passionately debate which detergent smells less like feet while also trying to remember the value of empathy.
Midway through the tour’s program, Pro Pool reminds us why getting a history degree is pointless: There’s no future in it. The short follows the life of a history major turned pool shop worker as he reckons with where his past choices brought him.
The penultimate film, Take Me Home, draws from director Liz Sargent’s experience of “reflecting on the past but trying to control [her] fear of the future,” as she told the Sundance Institute recently. It follows Sargent and her intellectually disabled sister’s struggle to communicate after their parents’ deaths in an emotional roller coaster that somehow feels universally relatable.
Upcoming showtimes 🍿
⏰ Wednesday, January 10th @ 7 pm
⏰ Thursday, January 11th @ 7 pm
⏰ Friday, January 12th @ 7 pm
⏰ Saturday, January 13th @ 4 & 7 pm
⏰ Sunday, January 14th @ 4 pm
⏰ Saturday, January 27th @ 6 pm
These shorts are only screening in person, so if you go, note that masks are still required at NWFF. Tickets are available online, with discounts for students, seniors, and children.
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