Voices With Impact's 10 short films from the 2025 cohort, with playback from the world premiere in Vancouver.

Looking Glass is a narrative short film that illustrates how invisibility is often intimate, personal, and impactful to mental health. Blending elements of dance and Afro-inspired rhythms, this journey to self-love invites the audience to examine the true cost of our inner-critics. Inspired by personal experiences and West-African trickster god Anansi, this film has been crafted with a mirror to our human experience. In Looking Glass, Anansi uses cunning creativity and wit to remind Asha of who is, and should be most important to her - herself.

English

Looking Glass

After an encounter with a mythological African being, an aspiring dancer loses the ability to see herself in the mirror.

"A Town Called Needville" chronicles filmmaker Audrey Lane’s personal experience at an inpatient mental health treatment center in Needville, Texas. Through a collection of photographs and journal entries from her time there, Audrey takes us through her challenging four-month stay, offering an unflinching look at the long, arduous, and at times humorous process of healing.

Depiction of in-patient mental health care, self harm scars.

A Town Called Needville

Through a personal collection of 35mm photos, a young woman explores the complexities of healing by reflecting on her four-month journey at an all-women's mental health facility in Needville, Texas.

Grey's life is quite ordinary. He goes to work, spends time with his partner, watches his TVâ¦ Grey also has depression. A constant stream of negative thoughts and feelings that clouds his vision. But he manages with the help of a strange creature, the Spinner. It spins and spins Grey's thoughts into golden thread, but when the thoughts become too much and the Spinner's wheel breaks... it's clear that Grey must make a change.

The Spinning Wheel

A strange bug-like creature spins Grey's negative thoughts into golden thread - until it's spinning wheel breaks.

A personal exploration of toxic masculinity, consent, and mental health, following James, a high school student grappling with the realisation that he crossed a partner’s boundaries during an intimate encounter. Through flashbacks, the story examines moments in James’ adolescence—locker room banter, familial double standards, and peer pressure—that shaped his understanding of power and manhood. As his friend Mark demands accountability, James resists, leaving the story at an abstract turning point that signals the beginning of a deeper reckoning.

Animals

A coming-of-age drama following Lucas as he is confronted by his best friend, exploring how societal factors shape young men's understanding of boundaries and consent.

Mai Mizuno had been preparing for years to testify in the criminal trial of ex-USC gynecologist George Tyndall, until Tyndall died and his criminal charges were dismissed. Although Mai will never see her day in court, her healing journey continues. In UNFOLDING, we follow Mai Mizuno as she reflects on her world being upended as a college freshman, and the trauma that she continues to carry with her. She shows how her family ritual of folding origami cranes brings stillness and healing. With her mother's help, Mai nurtures a springtime garden that represents a new season of growth: Mai finally voicing her needs and defining life on her own terms.

Unfolding

One year after ex-USC gynecologist George Tyndall's death and criminal case dismissal, Japanese American alum and survivor Mai Mizuno breaks her silence to find healing beyond the courtroom.

I Bathe with Moths is a stop-motion psychological drama about a woman in the military struggling with anxiety in the form of an infestation of moths in her room. The film is an autobiographical fiction exploration of the Director's own struggles with anxiety when she was in the military, portrayed through a fantastical swarm of moths.

I Bathe With Moths

A woman in the military struggles with anxiety in form of a moth infestation in her room.

Through a series of real voicemails, Sorry I Missed Your Call guides us through a woman's journey as she revisits the emotional turmoil of caretaking for her grandmother as she develops Alzheimer's. This mixed media film addresses themes such as caretaker burnout, guilt and shame, and the complexity of love.

References to caregiver burnout & Alzheimer's 

Sorry I Missed Your Call

Through a series of real voicemails, Sorry I Missed Your Call guides us through a woman's journey as she revisits the emotional turmoil of caretaking for her grandmother as she develops Alzheimer's.

Diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa at the age of eight, Dan Pembroke knew his sight would gradually fade. As a Paralympic javelin champion, he reflects on the pressure to succeed before darkness sets in—and the emotional toll of living with an invisible disability. Blending intimate archive with metaphorical visuals and sensory distortions, the film mirrors the shifting way Dan sees the world. Focus Throw is a meditation on resilience, identity, and the quiet strength it takes to keep moving forward when the path ahead is unclear.

Focus Throw

FOCUS THROW explores Paralympic javelin champion Dan Pembroke’s journey through progressive sight loss, resilience, and self-discovery. Blending real-life archive with metaphorical visuals, the film reveals how Dan navigates the invisible struggles of mental health while chasing meaning beyond his achievements.

Confronting the man in the mirror for the first time, Omar's body dysmorphia comes to life through the use of mixed-media animation in a colourful and chaotic representation of what it feels like to not be in tune with your own body.

i absolutely hate this place

After a string of romantic misfires, Omar confronts the unsettling possibility that his own body may be a barrier to love.

In My Skin is a lyrical documentary short that weaves together intimate reflections from women on aging with striking imagery that blurs the lines between skin and Earth. Using natural sound, tactile textures, and poetic visuals, the film reclaims aging as a sacred, embodied experience rooted in the cycles of the earth.

In My Skin

A visual poem exploring the parallel metamorphoses of women's bodies and the earth: Mother Nature reimagined

VWI 2025 Premiere Playback

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