Still from The Creative Process by Nick Zweig.

Here is the 2025 New Jersey International Film Festival Animation Film Panel featuring filmmakers Elizabeth Schneider, Michael Covello, Maureen Zent and Nick Zweig as well as NJIFF Assistant Director Morgan Kalmbach, and NJIFF Director Al Nigrin. Their films will be screening on Friday, June 6, 2025 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM as part of the NJIFF Shorts Program.

Get tickets and more info here:  

The Creative Process – Nick Zweig (New York, New York) Making art is difficult, sometimes its frustrating, sometimes its infuriating. 2025; 2 min.

Toil and Spin – Maureen Zent (Atlanta, Georgia) Cast off from shore. Into the dim, the dark. Away, away. Adrift in an oarless boat. And deep, deeper below the mirror surface. Then snap. Caught in eddies of regret, past slights, tasks undone, worries fresh and aged. Ever searching for a channel back to the elusive elsewhere. Toil and Spin uses the visual language of minimalism to describe sleep and sleeplessness. 2024; 5 min.

Becoming an Oyster - Elizabeth Schneider, Michael Covello (Kutztown, New York) Becoming an Oyster is an animated short film by Michael Covello and Elizabeth Schneider. It explores the intersection of two significant generational crises: climate change and opioid addiction. Told through the eyes of a young boy, the allegorical narrative touches on themes of consumption, excess, and trauma. The metaphor of an oyster’s life cycle reflects the vulnerability of human and ecological systems. These filter animals become a two-way mirror through which one may glimpse ecological failure and the consequences of climate disruption as well as the broader struggles and individual trauma of addiction. Becoming an Oyster blends ecological metaphors with human narratives to create a surreal landscape of boyhood adventure, heartbreaking loss, and the legacy we each leave to future generations. 2025; 7 min.

Still from Becoming an Oyster by Elizabeth Schneider, Michael Covello.

The 30th annual New Jersey International Film Festival will be taking place between May 30-June 13, 2025. The Festival will be a hybrid one as we will be presenting it online as well as doing select in-person screenings at Rutgers University. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. VOD start times are at 12 Midnight Eastern USA. Each General Admission Ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person when both are offered. Plus, we are very proud to announce that acclaimed singer-songwriter Mike Kovacs will be doing an audio-visual concert on Friday, June 13 at 7PM! The in-person screenings and the Mike Kovacs concert will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 5PM or 7PM on their show date.  General Admission Ticket=$15 Per Program; Festival All Access Pass=$120; In-Person Only Student Ticket=$10 Per Program.

For more info go here: https://2025newjerseyinternationalfilmfestival.eventive.org/welcome