5 Fantastic Short Films From FilmQuest 2024

Victoria Fratz Fradkin |

Dec 12, 2024

There are a select few film festivals that put in the time to scour the best up-and-coming talent within genre filmmaking. FilmQuest is one of those select few.

As a horror filmmaker, my social feeds fill up with horror-centric festival chatter all throughout the spooky season, but a recurring name posted over and over belonged to FilmQuest. This year it was time to see what all the buzz was about so I made the trip and here’s what I found!

FilmQuest Has A Secret Ingredient For Bringing Out Incredible Genre Shorts

Bringing together wild-minded creators year after year who have turned the festival into an unofficial “film camp”. I caught up with “The Blue Diamond” director Sam Fox, who shared that various cast and crew members all came together from past years at FilmQuest. “I basically came up with the story last year at FilmQuest and a few of the actors were met either through or at the festival,” says Fox on her award-winning short’s casting process.

Festival director and founder Jonathan Martin has fostered a collaborative experience for newcomers and alumni, ensuring that year after year, the festival is programmed with top-tier talent.

“The only agenda for FilmQuest is to program the best of the best. We don’t care what celebrities are involved, how much money you spend, who you know, and so on. In so doing, we’re ensuring that the best films are being screened and that the brightest and best genre talent are being featured and discovered at the festival. Anyone looking for the future of genre cinema can find it today at FilmQuest,” says Martin when asked about the festival’s programming.

This is an important recipe for festivals to follow and a very attractive ethos to lure up-and-coming filmmakers into the festival. Many filmmakers need to be cautious of where they allocate festival submission fees as well as what premiere status to give once accepted. Knowing that your handiwork will be programmed amidst top-tier peers is the kind of incentive filmmakers need especially when so many “cash grab” festivals can flood the inbox.

The great thing about FilmQuest is that even though attendance surges year after year, the festival still has an “undiscovered gem” appeal. The culture fostered by Jonathan Martin and assistant director Jonna Jackson is certainly catching fire in the genre space.

Enter FilmQuest’s Shorts Programming

The 10-day festival features genre-focused blocks aptly named for the cluster you’ll be viewing. For example, the shorts block “Mommy You Don’t Look So Good” features a tidy collection of mind-melting shorts centered around female-centric issues. One short that sticks in the mind, “The Feed”, features a new mother as she faces the challenges of breastfeeding. Cut to a one-of-a-kind prop design of gigantic breasts taunting her or a set piece flooding the woman in milk and you have a very memorable viewing block on your hands.

*Behind the scenes of “The Feed”, featuring DP Julian Bernstein*

If that’s not your cup of milk, don’t worry, there are oodles of shorts to choose from in the programming. I’ve selected a handful that have burned themselves into my brain, and I’m happy to say that I’m enjoying the mental rewatch.