Here below is the line-up for the closing weekend of 2026 New Jersey International Film Festival!
Friday, June 5, 2026 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Short Documentary Program
A Song Between The Gardens - Nastaran Bagheri (Buffalo, New York) Two international students at the University at Buffalo engage in a conversation reflecting on their student life, their memories from Iran, and their experiences as students back home, while also praising the progressive and vocal role of students during the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement. In Persian, subtitled. 2025; 10 min.
Salt Marsh - Tom Bell (Yarmouth, Maine). With a haunting, original score by Lee Ranaldo, Salt Marsh explores art, climate, and solitude through the reflections of Maine artist Mitchell Rasor. The 15-minute documentary is a poetic portrait of an artist and place. 2025; 15 min. WIth a Lecture by Mitchell Rasor after the screening!
Meet Me in Silence – Lucy Mathews Heegaard (Minnetonka, Minnesota). A year-long experiment sitting in complete silence and darkness with strangers leads to an intimate contemplation on connection to self and others through silence. Could the surreal, human-engineered silence of an anechoic chamber be a pathway to healing and awareness? 2025; 14 min.
Entre Luz - Adelaida Tamayo, Gabriel Barrios (Queens, New York). Entre Luz is a short documentary made with survivors of police shootings who lost their eyes during the 2021 Colombian national strike. The film follows a popular-theater troupe of survivors as they carry their performance into the streets of Cali, where testimonies join the clamor of community kitchens, mothers demanding justice, and youth who refuse to be silent. Through disorienting imagery, Entre Luz proposes a new way of seeing structures of oppression. Spectators witness and join the groups mobilization. Produced with MOCAO (Movement in Resistance Against Ocular Aggressions), the film channels the power of popular cinema to invite you to join the battle for justice. In Spanish, subtitled. 2025; 18 min.
Greenfield – Rob Herring (Whitefish, Montana) Greenfield is an intimate look into the mind and mission of Robin Greenfield — one of the world’s most radical environmentalists. Known for his bold eco-experiments, including wearing a month’s worth of trash through Times Square, living a full year on only homegrown and foraged food, and giving up every possession, Robin challenges what it means to live in harmony with the Earth. As he walks barefoot from Canada to Mexico with nothing to his name, his radical simplicity invites us to question what we truly need to be free, fulfilled, and human. 2025; 34 min.
There will also be a Lecture by acclaimed Landscape Architect and Artist Mitchell Rasor after the Documentary Shorts Program screening. This talk contextualizes Mitchell Rasor's work in the context of Robert Smithson's interest in dialectics, Olmsted's park designs, the relationship between Cezanne and Pissarro and the birth of modern art, post-punk rock, his education at Oberlin and Harvard...and then ends with three recent series of drawings and paintings done this past winter as an extension of the work depicted in Tom Bell's Salt March film. The talk would be of great interest to students of environmental studies, art, art history, landscape architecture, and film. This lecture is part of the NJIFF Short Documentary Film Screening.
Saturday, June 6, 2026 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 5PM!
Jersey Fresh Program
Not a Hero by Accident – Adam Ansorge (Matawan, New Jersey). The fatal collision with a meter maid puts a truck driver in the hands of the local community to decide his fate. 2025; 3 min.
My Plastic Lung – Nicholas Diodato (New Brunswick, New Jersey). A disabled teenager with artificial lungs that need to be manually operated by another person begins to lash out against his family. 10 min.
Frankie’s Okay – Kat Lindsay (New Brunswick, New Jersey) A woman (Frankie) and her husband (Hafez) host a game night for their friends. The three couples engage in a game of celebrity when Frankie starts to experience an anxiety attack that becomes increasingly hard to cope with. Unbeknownst to the group, Frankie tries to cope with the attack during the game while trying to hide her ongoing panic. 2025; 10 min.
Bajo el Sol (Under The Sun) – Jamili Pacheco-Urquiza (Somerset, New Jersey) During a summer spent with his grandmother on the Oaxacan Coast, a filmmaker explores the layered relationship Puerto Escondido has with tourism through conversations around labor, water, paradise, and gentrification with tourists and locals alike.2025; 18 min.
The Girl With A Red Hat – Sandeep Karanjkar (Dayton, New Jersey) Trapped in the digital world of likes and followers, a Gen Z college student learns to break free from the digital vortex and embrace authentic human connection through an unexpected friendship with a compassionate street vendor. 2025; 20 min.
Sapphire – Jawan Edgar Martinez (Rockaway, New Jersey) Sapphire/Camille is a sex worker trying to make a way out for herself and her friend, Olivia. But when a shocking revelation is made about Olivia, Camille must make an impossible decision. 2025; 22 min.
Saturday, June 6, 2026 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Shorts Program #2
The Clam Guy - Jen Nista, Max Beckerman (Brooklyn, New York) A clam-obsessed deadbeat plagued by otherworldly visions searches for connection as his life spirals out of control. 2025; 11 min.
The Drive – David Arrow (New York, New York) It’s a warm November day in the early 1960s and Liz has just picked up the kids for her weekly carpool. Little does she know that this will be a drive she’ll never forget. 2025; 12 min.
Finding YiYi – Kim Caicedo (Los Angeles, California) After losing her grandmother’s cherished dumpling recipe, a 65-year-old woman embarks on a journey to piece it back together, leading her to reconnect with a childhood friend and explore the relationship they never had. 2025; 15 min.
FOR. – Gianfranco Bello (Brooklyn, New York) Cleo, a lonely young woman obsessed with numbers, searches for answers to their significance in her everyday life. 2025; 25 min.
Stew to Eat - Nathaniel Jameson & Alex Saltiel (New York, New York) The Stew is almost ready, but there is one thing missing… a dark adventure of unrequited love, societal decay and insatiable hunger. “Pitch-perfect expressionism… cartoonish briskness alternating with poignancy… a world created out of faces and blackness… It’s also incredibly funny!” - Guy Maddin on Stew to Eat. 2025; 25 min.
Sunday, June 7, 2026 – Online for 24 Hours!
Return: Saving Turtles - Ignacio Loera (Mexico City, Mexico) Return: Saving Turtles follows the efforts of a family of former sea-turtle–egg poachers, now dedicated protectors, leading VIVEMAR—a community-based organization in Oaxaca, Mexico. Through their work, they safeguard one of the world’s most endangered sea turtle species during its nesting season along the Mexican coast. 2025; 15 min.
Los Tres – Yehuda Sharim (Merced, California) Three Mexican-American artists find refuge in friendship and art as they compose their artistic vision in the face of denigration and a space/time that deliberately fails to see them. In English and Spanish, subtitled. 2025; 58 min.
The 31st Annual New Jersey International Film Festival will be taking place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between May 29-June 7, 2026. The Festival will be a hybrid one as we will be presenting it online as well as doing in-person screenings at Rutgers University. Most of 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. The in-person screenings 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 on the Film festival go here: https://2026newjerseyinternationalfilmfestival.eventive.org/welcome
