The New Jersey Independent Film Festival will bring a four-day showcase of global independent films to the Cranford Theater, in Cranford NJ. Not only will the festival bring a diverse selection of cutting-edge films, but it will also honor the area's Hispanic population by featuring a special section featuring the achievements and heritage of Latin American filmmakers. 

The New Jersey Independent Film Festival is one of the newest members of a family of film festivals including the Venice Film Week, the Boston Short Film Festival, the Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, and many more! It's fair to say the festival is in good company. For its inaugural edition, NJIFF included a 2 hour retrospective with a selection of award winning independent cinema in association with these partners.

Schedule of Events:

Wednesday, June 4, 2025

7:00 pm: Before Marriage and Shorts

This screening includes 4 short films and 1 feature film, with a total running time of approximately 95 minutes.
All films are in English and-or have English subtitles.

Location: Roy W. Smith Theater, 1033 Springfield Ave, Cranford, NJ 07016

Sylvia (United States) by Hannah Zipperman, Ezekiel Goodman
- A newly divorced woman decides to go after what she's always wanted.

Running time: 00:07:06

Sio Roho Yangu - Not My Soul (United States) by Joe LoBianco (Out of Competition)
- In 1807, a young slave is condemned to a sweltering hot box for her defiance, facing torment and uncertainty. Trapped in the oppressive heat, she struggles to survive, oscillating between fleeting hope and crushing despair. She draws strength from distant memories and spirituals. As her spirit is tested, the journey transforms from a desperate victim into a determined fighter, in a powerful testament to resilience and the unbreakable human will.

Running time: 00:14:29

Brain Freeze (United States) by Kelsey Comeau
- A snapshot of life long friends Carrie (Sofia Hublitz, Ozark) and Rae, Madison Hu (Brother's Sun, Boogeyman) as their relationship crumbles at the seams. In their safe bubble of Northern New Jersey, the friends have hit their breaking point on Rae’s eighteenth birthday. Crossing paths years later, in the queer paradise that is Fire Island Pines, the friends are no longer. Dealing with themes of adulthood, queer identity, female friendship and mortality, Brain Freeze tackles two formative moments in adolescence otherwise overlooked: the friends who fade away.

Running time: 00:14:36

Before Marriage (United States) by Matt Spade
- Marriage wasn't always an option, especially in gay and lesbian relationships. Diane Marini, one of the seven plaintiff couples who fought for the right to marry in the state of New Jersey, tells her tale of the road to equal marriage as we hear from seven other couples about what they went through to get married and why it is important.

Running time: 00:49:00

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Thursday, June 5, 2025

7:00 pm: MOI-Meme and Shorts

This screening includes 4 short films and 1 feature film, with a total running time of approximately 95 minutes.
All films are in English and-or have English subtitles.

Location: The Clairidge, 486 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair, NJ 07042

Third Wheel (Switzerland) by Kevin Haefelin
- Samurai comedy about a three-way relationship with a ghost set in Edo Japan. Following his abrupt death, Gohei, a master carpenter, returns as a ghost to make peace with his wife, Sachi but finds out he is invisible. He must rely on Sakichi, his once-neglected apprentice gifted with psychic abilities.

Running time: 00:04:00

The Other Side of Despair (Switzerland) by Varsy Buchmann
- "The Other Side of Despair" is a moving portrait of a young Armenian artist, Art Petrosyan, who sets fire to his own paintings. Shot during a time of profound loss and upheaval in the aftermath of the forced deportation of 110,000 people from Artsakh, it provides a unique and thought-provoking perspective on the relationship between art, identity, and the struggle for survival.

Running time: 00:08:30

The Core (Romania) by Robert Obert
- This short animated film illustrates a common consciousness from which materialized instances of feminine and masculine emerge, only to morph again into a single core. It is a metaphor of a love connection between two partners, fueled from the same source, but also for the power of creation that consciousness holds. This  also collects and shows sections of each partner’s transformation process, revealing and underlining that everything begins and ends from and into a single point, it shows the nucleus of narratives from each individual,  their symbiosis and eventually their exit. The author considers this animation a meta frame where we can be spectators to a process of creation and emotion.

Running time: 00:01:11

A Mother Goes To The Beach (Portugal) by Pedro Hasrouny
- Teresa, a single mother spends a day at the beach with her six-year-old son, Benji and her sister Marga, who is back to Portugal for a summer vacation. The day becomes very stressful with her sister’s constant speech about her son’s achievements and her criticisms towards Benji.

Running time: 00:15:31

Moi-même (United States) by Mojo L Lorwin, Lee Breuer
- Moi-même is the long lost sole feature film of the late avant-garde theater legend Lee Breuer (1937-2021)... Shot in 1968 in Paris and abandoned later that year, the project was resurrected by Breuer’s son, filmmaker Mojo Lorwin, who began restoring and re-imagining the unfinished film in the last year of his father’s life. The plot of Moi-même follows Kevin, a thirteen year old American boy, as he tries to assemble a film collective in Paris and make an autobiographical movie against the backdrop of the May 1968 protests. The film features a cameo by Jean-Luc Godard, footage of the student protesters outside the Sorbonne, and early performances from some of Breuer’s most important theatrical collaborators including Ruth Maleczech, David Warrilow, and Fred Neumann, also known for their work with Samuel Beckett. Faced with hours of unedited silent film (Breuer’s original intention had been to dub the film later), Lorwin has spent the last three years writing a script, editing the picture, and working with a number of voice actors, musicians, and sound professionals to create a feature film out of the raw footage. A collaboration between father and son across half a century, Moi-même is both a lost 60s arthouse film and a new experimental film in its own right, which uses the original footage to tell a story about the political and artistic legacy of the 60s in our time and to explore the meaning of abandoned projects.

Running time: 01:04:46

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Friday, June 6, 2025

7:00 pm: Middletown

This screening includes 1 feature film, with a total running time of approximately 110 minutes.
All films are in English and-or have English subtitles.

Location: The Clairidge, 486 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair, NJ 07042

Middletown (United States) by Jesse Moss, Amanda McBaine
- Inspired by an unconventional teacher, a group of teenagers in upstate New York in the early 1990s make a student film and uncover a vast conspiracy that is poisoning their community. Thirty years later, they revisit their film and confront the legacy of this transformative experience.

Running time: 01:50:29

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Saturday, June 7, 2025

7:00 pm: International Shorts

This screening includes 8 short films, with a total running time of approximately 95 minutes.
All films are in English and-or have English subtitles.

Location: The Clairidge, 486 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair, NJ 07042

The Steak (Canada, Iran) by Kiarash Dadgar
- A birthday party preparation is thrown into chaos by an awful event.

Running time: 00:08:13

(Norway) by Robin Jensen
- Two sweaty men end up at odds with each other in a crowded sauna. A short film about prejudice and politics. And .

Running time: 00:06:30

First Night (United States) by Haneol Lee
- A newly immigrated Korean father goes into a deli trying to order food for his family– only with the help of a dictionary.

Running time: 00:11:43

Stay Strong and Be Quiet (France) by Anne Loriot
- Parents try to prepare their 6-year-old daughter for her future.

Running time: 00:02:18

After Dark (Norway) by Iain Forbes
- On his way home one night, Kristian encounters a young woman in desperate need of help. He agrees to accompany her to the train station, but soon begins questioning her story.

Running time: 00:10:07

Georgie (United States) by Jennie Butler
- An ex-mobster reflects on life, love, and loss after spending 32 years in prison.

Running time: 00:14:20

The Cascade (Mexico) by Pablo Delgado Sanchez
- A man discovers he's been crying for several months without even noticing. Strangely, his tear ducts have decided to work in an inverse manner, transforming his interiors into a waterfall. The man will have to find a way to stop a cry that he can't even feel.

Running time: 00:20:00

Latchkey Kids (Norway) by Sindre Mangen Haram
- When twelve-year-old Erik is forced to choose which parent should have to move out during an ugly divorce, he struggles in the aftermath of his decision and how it ends up altering his relationships not only with his parents, but his two younger brothers as well.

Running time: 00:21:16

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Date:
June 4 - 7, 2025

Location:
The Clairidge, 486 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair, NJ 07042
Roy W. Smith Theater, 1033 Springfield Ave, Cranford, NJ 07016

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