The Norwescon Speculative Film Fest is back for another year. The festival is a great way to see some of the best cutting edge science fiction, fantasy, and horror short films from around the world. This year we will be showing you 37 films, from 14 different countries. Running on Thursday and Friday evenings, each session will contain four hours of film, split into two blocks, with a brief intermission in between. If we are lucky some of the filmmakers may even show up for a brief Q&A session after each block.
Norwescon’s Speculative Film Fest embraces and fosters new voices in Speculative Fiction, including those of BIPOC, women, and LGBTQ+ creators. We have judges who represent these voices, and we waived entry fees for BIPOC directors.
Awards & Prizes
Filmmakers of the films selected to play at Norwescon’s Speculative Fiction Film Fest have been invited to attend Norwescon 45. Attending filmmakers will be able to speak to the audience directly through Q&As following their film screenings.
Selected works can win in several categories:
- Jury award for Best Short Film
- Audience Choice Award (voted on by attendees)
Winners will be announced on the last day of the convention.
The Films
#tresdancing
- Director: Hingman Leung
- Country of Origin: Canada
- Description: The sudden shift from in-person to online classes due to COVID 19 has led to increasingly invasive surveillance technologies in education, including the use of problematic online proctoring software purportedly aimed at addressing academic integrity. #tresdancing, the fourth film in the Screening Surveillance series, speculates on the effects of escalating surveillance and control through educational technology. In this near future fiction narrative, a young person has little choice as they are forced to ramp up their engagement with a new, experimental technology in order to make up for a failing grade.
A Blaster In The Right Hands: A Star Wars Story
- Director: Richard de Carvalho
- Country of Origin: Australia
- Description: On the trail of a crashed Imperial Shuttle, two bounty hunters collide over a valuable cargo, only to discover they’re not the only hired guns around. “A Blaster in The Right Hands – A Star Wars Story”, is a non-profit unofficial fan-film that is not intended for commercial use produced by Lunacraft Productions. Star Wars is owned by Lucasfilm/Disney and this fan-film is not connected in any way to said companies.
A Dream of Hawaii (Drømmen om Hawaii)
- Director: Thomas Smoor Isaksen
- Country of Origin: Norway
- Description: In a world covered in plastic, Pete leads a nomadic life where he dreams of the pearly white beaches of Hawaii. Will his long journey bring him to a place not covered in plastic waste? A tale about plastic pollution stretched to the extreme and human hope for survival in a desperate situation.
Abducted Anonymous
- Director: Ben Schwartz
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A fugitive on the run is forced to blend into an A.A. meeting, but soon discovers this is no ordinary fellowship.
All Is Well
- Director: Elaine del Valle
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: Three women come to terms with their world ending.
At the End of the Canyon
- Director: Stephen Folker
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: When an earthquake exposes an ancient buried secret, geologist Hannah Mason must decide between revealing the discovery of a lifetime and risking humanity’s existence.
Betty and Barney
- Director: Dan Sellers
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A couple undergoes hypnosis to recall a horrific alien abduction.
Can’t Go Home Again
- Director: Anthony J. Cook
- Country of Origin: United Kingdom
- Description: Temporal Enforcement Agent Elliott Young (Victoria Smith) breaks protocol and returns to her own past. There she comes face to face with her 8-year-old past self, Ellie (Sophia Waterton), and Justin (Ian Mairs), her seemingly kind father. During the encounter Elliott explosively confronts Justin about a tragedy that will occur in only a few hours’ time. ‘Can’t Go Home Again’ has been an official selection in 111 film festivals and has won 56 awards. It has also received 10 honourable mentions, been a finalist in 12 other film festivals and been a semi-finalist in another 4.
Detox (디톡스)
- Director: Elena Trofimova
- Country of Origin: Republic of Korea
- Description: Kim Seohee, a job seeker who is a smartphone addict, mysteriously gets into a Digital Detox Simulation. In this detox there are no digital devices or ways of distraction, therefore Seohee is forced to connect with nature and the practice of activities like reading books, playing music, doing sports etc. Besides that, she will share this experience with a stranger, a man named Gang Seongwoo who is also addicted to smartphones. While slowly getting closer to each other Seohee finds a way out of this simulation.
Erden
- Director: Celina Schmidt
- Country of Origin: Germany
- Description: When the Earth is about to end, Raya and Kaii are planning to move to an exoplanet together. 100 years later, an android ghost drifts through space, remembering their past love.
Eua-Lander
- Director: Erica Meus-Saunders
- Country of Origin: Canada
- Description: 19-year-old Tracey is living a charmed life; great adoptive-parents, college life and childhood bestie. On the eve of her 20th Birthday, she suddenly gets ill and undergoes a transformation, changing into an outer-wordly being. Her life makes a 180 degrees flip, one that she slowly adapts to.
Fetch
- Director: Sam Gill
- Country of Origin: New Zealand
- Description: Fetch is a heart-on-its-sleeve animated dramedy about a dog and his human, working together as the only maintenance crew aboard a colossal space station. They fill their days cleaning vents, rewiring fuses, and throwing well-worn tennis balls down dimly lit-corridors in games of fetch. Overwhelmed by the scale of scope of the job, the man slides into depression, causing the station to malfunction catastrophically! When the human realizes he can’t reach the last escape pod in time, he throws his tennis ball towards it… His dog, following instinct, chases the ball into the pod and is propelled to safety, inadvertently leaving the human behind! But the dog’s devotion is too much, so he resolved to journey back across the universe to either save his human… or die along aside him. ————————————— Hi! I’m Sam Gill, the Writer / Director of Fetch. Fetch is born from my own experiences with mental health, and is very much an ode to – and love letter to! – faithful hounds everywhere. In 2014, I had back surgery which left me bed-bound for nearly two years. I was very lucky to have family support, but most critically, I was very lucky to have canine support. Every morning, my dog George would wake me up with a nuzzle and a lick to the face. He’d drop a tennis ball by me, and we’d play fetch from my bed. He made sure I started every day with a smile. Without that, I’m not so sure I’d be here to type this to you now.
Food of the Future
- Director: Christopher P McManus
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A cyborg from the future tells us about the kind of food we can look forward to eating on a climate changed Earth. Food of the Future is a speculative PSA about the impact of climate change on food security. Done in the heavy handed style of the 1980’s “Brain on Drugs” tv ads, Food of the Future shocks audiences with its graphic style, clarion message, and slapstick silliness.
Horizon
- Director: Daniele De Muro
- Country of Origin: Italy
- Description: In the borderlands, crossed by climate refugees looking for safety, men face their primordial nature, in a bleak reality where the law of the strongest rules the world. Hidden in an underground shelter and resigned to his fate, the main character observes the definitive decline of society as it surrender to the evil nature of men, until a special encounter, interpreted as a divine sign of light, turns on his faith and hope for the future of humanity.
La Nueva (The Newcomer)
- Director: Ivan Villamel
- Country of Origin: Spain
- Description: Maria is the new teacher who arrives at an old religious school. On her first day, she will have to teach a group of rebellious kids who are part of a punishment class. An unexpected event will turn the classroom into a real hell.
Promised Land (La Terra Promessa)
- Director: Giuseppe Rasi
- Country of Origin: Italy
- Description: The story takes place in a very distant future where mankind is fighting for its survival and looking for new planets to colonize. Inside a spaceship is Stanley who communicates disturbing news to the project manager: David, his colleague who came down to carry out an inspection to collect samples on a promising planet, has been missing for more than a day.
Last Trial – A Star Wars Collateral Story
- Director: Marino Darés
- Country of Origin: Spain
- Description: 18 years after the great Jedi purge and the rise of the galactic empire, a lost padawan acting as a rebel spy and a rookie stormtrooper face the hardest and most important trial of their lives whilst surrounded by a storm of smoke, fire and thousands of blaster bolts. Last Trial is a nonprofit unofficial Star Wars fanfilm shot in El Teide, Canary Islands with the collaboration of the official administration of the Teide national park and the Star Wars fan group Fuerza Imperial de Tenerife. It is not intended for commercial use and it is not associated in any way to Disney or Lucasfilm. This fanfilm has not been premiered and it is not open to the public on the internet.
Midas
- Director: Ben Meyer, Mav Vitale, Lisa Qingyi Liu
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A fresh and hilarious take on the old Greek tale of King Midas. The story follows the King, as his daughter, Marigold, desperately attempts to get him to see past his boundless greed — until Dionysus makes his godly entrance, bestowing upon the old king the ability to turn anything he touches to gold, and to chase his greed evermore.
My Day // The Love Project
- Director: Jamie Kassler
- Country of Origin: Japan
- Description: With her daily routine down to a science, a young woman’s world gets thrown out of orbit by a glitch in the system. The Love 愛 Project // Stories of love told without words マイ ディ(私の一日) 日常ルーティンを完璧にこなしていた女性は、頼っていた管理システムの不具合によってその軌道から逸れてしまいます。 The・愛・プロジェクト // サイレントで語る愛のストーリー
My Little Creature (Mi Criaturita)
- Director: Álvaro Laguna
- Country of Origin: Spain
- Description: Flor and Guido’s quiet life in their cabin in the woods will change forever with the arrival of a strange creature.
Phase 9
- Director: Souliman Schelfout
- Country of Origin: France
- Description: Pietro struggles at online poker so much that he gives in to the worst idea. He installs an artificial intelligence supposed to make him unbeatable.
Play the Game of Thrones
- Director: Leigh Roberts
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: In this parody music video, two down-on-their-luck teachers from Valyrian High try to recruit their former classmate and movie/TV star Peter Dinklage (aka Tyrion Lannister) to help them with their ill-conceived high school musical version of the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones”. Music derived from the classic Queen song “Play The Game”.
Present
- Director: Gavin T Briggs
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A couple’s romantic Christmas getaway that goes horribly wrong when it’s time for presents.
Prisoner 818
- Director: Alban Imeraj
- Country of Origin: Switzerland
- Description: With no idea why or how he got imprisoned, he has to figure out what he did to be in this situation, and how he can remedy it.
Reformat
- Director: Jesse Pickett
- Country of Origin: Canada
- Description: After the body of an AI student is found on school grounds, an investigation into the last 7 people who interacted with the student takes place.
Respirations
- Director: Rémi Tournier
- Country of Origin: France
- Description: In a burning world, wrecked by pollution, a survivor is heading toward his final destination.
Ro Ninja (老忍者)
- Director: Atsushi Ikeda
- Country of Origin: Japan
- Description: Is the world we live in really real? Are your memories real? Mr. Kikuchi may have made a choice to lose his memory of his wife in order to have a hope of living.
Sonar
- Director: James Hughes
- Country of Origin: United Kingdom
- Description: A swimmer detects an unusual sound late at night and she decides to investigate.
The Forbidden Fruit (Fructul Interzis)
- Director: Vlad F. Dumea, Sebastian Andro
- Country of Origin: Romania
- Description: A devoted family man uncovers the truth about the Original Sin.
The Forgetting Device
- Director: Chris Remerowski
- Country of Origin: Canada
- Description: A man begins to suspect that something strange and sinister is responsible for his recent memory loss. “The Forgetting Device” stars Jarod Joseph one of the stars of the hit CW series “The 100”. The film also features Anand Rajaram, from the hit PBS series “Odd Squad”. “The Forgetting Device” features an unforgettable original score composed by the CSA winning duo of Rob Carli and Kristjan Bergey (“Murdoch Mysteries” and “Frankie Drake Mysteries”).
The Interrogation
- Director: Marisa Cohen, Peter Issac Alexander
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: Set several decades in the future, The Interrogation is a cat and mouse game between a corporate media executive performing a “loyalty test” and a savvy news director harboring a potentially game-changing secret. The Interrogation explores a mind-bending and often-psychedelic world where an all-powerful media company sets all the rules and demands religious like devotion from its employees. In just 6 minutes, this short animation takes the audience on an unexpected ride full of twists and turns. Based on the award-winning The Cloaked Realm Universe created by Peter Issac Alexander and Marisa L. Cohen, The Interrogation features hand-drawn animation, an original score by John Baxter, and sound design by Dara Crawford.
The Operator
- Director: Matt Riley
- Country of Origin: United Kingdom
- Description: The Operator follows Michael, a client contact associate as he starts another dull day of business as usual. Connecting long distance intergalactic calls from a remote satellite (not as exciting as it sounds); a bleary eyed and coffee fuelled Michael receives a distress call. No one ever receives a distress call. They barely touch on distress calls during the induction day.
The Post
- Director: Antonio Souto Fraguas
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A family visits a monumental structure in a national park when tragedy unfolds
The Stuck Ones
- Director: Kirk William Murray
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: After stopping in for a quick bite at an odd sandwich shop, a Father and Daughter reunion quickly descends into a nightmare as they learn the terrifying truth of why the mannequins that inhabit the shop seem so lifelike.
The Wreckers (Les Naufrageurs)
- Director: Julien Fontaine
- Country of Origin: France
- Description: A young man names Jacques, blended in a group of wreckers in order to wreck and harvest a specific ship. But the night might take a stranger turn than expected and certainly not at all restful for any of our three protagonists.
Wasteland
- Director: Conner Von Kuetzing
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: A bounty hunter in a post apocalyptic wasteland is hired to track down an outlaw. But he’s not the only one out looking for her, and the job is nothing like he expected.
When It’s Your Turn 2 – Surprise Birthday
- Director: Stephanie Alecia Rose, Marquis Smallwood
- Country of Origin: United States
- Description: Oh… It’s a surprise!!!