SUPERFEST 2026 FILM SELECTIONS
Superfest 2026 will occur online and in-person at the San Francisco Disability Cultural Center from September 9th through the 13th, with an extension for virtual viewing on Vimeo. Stay tuned for more information on how to register, and for now, read below to check out the blurbs for our 2026 films and save the date!
Jonas Lindblad: male, wheelchair-user, short brown hair, blue eyes, full brown beard. He looks off camera, serious. Behind him is a leafy plant.
4 Years in a Row
Sweden (Documentary Short, 24 min)
Director: Emilio Di Stefano | Producer: Daniéla Frykstrand
Under the isolation of the pandemic, Jonas has a brilliant vision: to commission the world’s most expensive Connect Four game, crafted in precious metal. He gets in touch with the goldsmith Eddie, and soon the project spirals far beyond anything they could have imagined, through hundreds of text messages and rapidly escalating costs.
An image of a washing machine with the words “An Unquiet Mind” in the middle of the door. At the top are the words “The Unseen Side of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”
An Unquiet Mind
USA (Documentary Feature, 1 hour 16 min)
Director: Rachel Immaraj | Producer: Kovid Gupta, Rachel Immaraj, Natasha Paradeshi
OCD extends beyond hand washing and perfectionism. Natasha in San Diego battles intrusive thoughts about harming her children through Post-partum and Pedophilia OCD. Vinay in Brooklyn developed Harm OCD after 9/11, visualizing images.
Steven Bukaya, a black man in a blue button down holds a stick in his hand and smiles amidst the farmland.
Changing Land
Uganda (Documentary Short, 8 min)
Director: Isaac Oboth | Producer: Isaac Oboth, Jody Santos
Once, the land Steven Bukaya farms was green and full — a place of trees, rain, and steady seasons. He remembers it as "a shiny place," alive with growth. Today, that landscape is changing. Trees have been cut down, rainfall has become unpredictable, and the land has been divided into smaller and smaller pieces.
Everything is made of craft materials. Against a background of the sky, a person using a walker and a person in a wheelchair with an inflatable pool ducky wait for the metro.
Getting There
Canada (Comedic Short, 1 min)
Director: Pree Rehal
Getting There is a heartwarming stopmotion film about 2 best friends trying to get to the beach whilst navigating public transit in the big city. Will they make it?
Four people with different disabilities stand together against the background of an old school. They have dirt on their faces and are dressed in 1940s outfits.
The Goalkeeper
Italy (Dramatic Short, 20 min)
Directors: Salvatore Lizzio, Daniele Bonarini | Producers: Marsha Hallager, Tameka Citchen-Spruce, Markus Essien
It’s 1944 and a group of friends with disabilities are playing a soccer game until Zeno, the goalkeeper and youngest of the team, is taken by Nazis. This prompts the others to embark on an unlikely rescue mission.
A white woman with down syndrome in a brown coat holds an ice cream cone up to a white man in a coat with a smile on his face. They both sit on a beach with waves in the background.
Grace
Ireland (Dramatic Short, 25 min)
Director: Anna Rodgers | Producer: Nuala Carr
Grace is a poignant coming of age drama centred on a woman in her late 20s with Down Syndrome, navigating the complexities of adulthood, independence and first love from within a residential support house. When Grace pushes the boundaries set for her, the consequences ripple through her carefully managed world.
A darkly lit bar with three people with serious expressions: A Drag Queen, a woman with blood all over her face, and a woman in a wheelchair. They look at something off camera.
The Hog Queen
USA (Dramatic Short, 13 min)
Director: Katherine Craft | Producer: Shelby Hadden
A disgruntled bartender’s plans to skip town are disrupted when feral hogs attack a small town Texas gay bar during a drag show, and everyone inside scrambles to survive the hogs…and each other.
A black and white image of little people in historical attire, not modern clothing. In front of them is a woman who is in full color, wearing a red dress and a leopard shawl.
The How We Look Project
USA, 2025 (Dramatic Short Series, 15 min)
Director/Producer: Julie Forrest Wyman, Sofiya Cheyenne
The How We Look Project is a collection of three short narrative films about dwarf culture and identity, created and performed by Little People (LPs). Each film centers one act of image-making, from renaissance portraiture, to sideshow photography, to medical imaging.
A blurred image of Maryam Salehizadeh looking through glass. Lights are in the reflection over her face.
Light Through the Blindfold
Canada (Documentary Short, 25 min)
Director: Alireza Kazemipour | Producer: Sina Nazarian, Sepehr Samimi
Maryam Salehizadeh, an Iranian-Canadian goalball athlete with 5% vision, is offered a surgery that could partially restore her sight. As she contemplates the possibility, memories and dreams resurface, challenging her sense of identity and what it truly means to see.
An image of Gaelynn Lea playing a violin with other musicians behind her.
Make a Joyful Noise
USA (Documentary Short, 17 min)
Director: Alice Stone | Producer: Larry Rothstein, Artemis Joukowsky
Winner of the Audience Award at the IFFB, "Make A Joyful Noise" features The Music Inclusion Ensemble, a group of highly accomplished disabled musicians who demonstrate that disability can be a profound source of creativity, innovation, and talent.
A photo of Ariel Baska as a baby, smiling in a white onesie. There’s a red mark along their forehead with a smattering of brown hair.
Monstrous Me
USA (Documentary Short, 15 min)
Director: Ariel Baska | Producer: Akima A. Brown, Brea Grant, Lela Meadow-Conner, Lilly Wachowski
Monstrous Me is a horror positive short film about how I found agency in the face of Freddy Krueger, the first of many monsters on my quest to find myself through cinematic horror. The short is a proof of concept and the first chapter of a longer feature comprised of five chapters and an epilogue.
Otis, a boy who is white with black hair, wears a blue space outfit and sits in a spaceship driving it with the stars blurring behind him.
The Other Space
USA (Animated Short, 8 min)
Director: Blake Derksen | Producer: Meagan L. Rufo-Derksen
A young boy must find courage through his imagination while undergoing cancer treatment.
Two woman in wheelchairs roll through a colorful apartment complex surrounded by trimmed hedges.
Rag Dolls
Mexico & USA (Documentary Short, 12 min)
Director: Amy Adler | Producer: Valeria López
Two women living with disabilities in Mexico face challenges, yet find ways to love and care for each other.
A white woman lies down surrounded in lush blue drapes and sheets. She wears a pink dress and her brown hair is curled around her head as she closes her eyes and smells the top of a fluffy pen, seductively.
'Rubbers' - 2D
United Kingdom (Comedic Short, 8 min)
Director: Cat Davies | Producers: Cat Davies & James Moran
A neurodivergent woman who struggles to form relationships explores her private passion for stationery to unlock her explosive fantasy world. A comedy fantasy…with a dark twist, where the pen is mightier than the sword.
Two women, Sofiya and Julie, sit on a film set watching something off screen.
The Tallest Dwarf
USA (Documentary Feature, 1 hour 32 min)
Director: Julie Forrest Wyman | Producer: Lindsey Dryden, Shaleece Haas, Jonna McKone
When a filmmaker with a rare form of dwarfism seeks out people with bodies like hers, she enters a community in flux. She joins forces with little people artists to trace a troubled history of being put on display. Together they forge a vision of disabled beauty and power.
Shruti Kothari (South Asian, female, wearing a brown robe, holding a cane) and Liz Johnston (Caucasian, female, wearing a black jumpsuit) on a stage.
That Which is Heard
Canada (Documentary Short, 21 min)
Director: Ken Pham | Producer: Kirthiga Rajanayagam
That Which is Heard is an intimate observational-style documentary about Shruti Kothari, a former Stratford Festival actress whose world drastically changed in March 2020, when she suffered a stroke just days before the onset of the global pandemic. Four years later, she and her three close friends—Ruth Goodwin (The Howland Company), Liz Johnston (The Second City), and acclaimed director Ravi Jain (Why Not Theatre/The Stratford Festival) come together to create a deeply personal storytelling stage show reflecting Shruti’s experiences, and her relationship with theatre before and after her stroke.
Image of Drea, a black woman with wearing a black shirt leaning her head against a wall as she watches blurred figures around her. She is framed by a window illuminating her. The words “No need to go through it alone” are at the top.
Them That’s Not
USA (Dramatic Short, 18 min)
Director: Mekhai Lee | Producer: Charlie Hopkins, Redd Coltrane
Andrea “Drea” Stoney, a down-on-her-luck poet, finds herself at her grandmother’s repass, along with her seditty larger-than-life family. But Drea is sticking out like a sore thumb; she’s introspective, Queer, artistic and proudly Deaf, albeit surrounded by her distant family members who don’t care to know ASL. So Drea resorts to finding solace in hidden, lonely moments that she can steal in the pockets of her grandmother’s generational brownstone. Her visit is complicated by the arrival of her father Samuel, who’s 20 years into a 25-year prison sentence, released for the day on a furlough to say goodbye to his late mother. The two strangers, bound by blood & their love for the deceased, are forced to reconcile with each other before his inevitable return to prison.
Lara, a white woman, lies back in a pool wearing a black and pink bathing suit. Her eyes are closed as she faces up, with the sun shining on her.
Unmasking
United Kingdom (Documentary Short, 28 min)
Director: Clare Johns, Louis Neethling | Producer: Sarah Tavner, Louis Neethling
Lara is a young Deaf woman who is going blind. This film follows her journey as she explores new ways of being.
Amber Galloway sits in the middle of the room, a big smile on her face. she has short pink hair, glasses and wears a black T-Shirt. She is surrounded by other folks who hold yellow balloons in a living room.
The Way We Move
France (Documentary Feature, 1 hour 34 min)
Director: Vanessa Joo Dumont, Nicolas Davenel Producer: Matthieu Belghiti, Hubert Cornet, Arnaud Le Guilcher
Amber Galloway, a trailblazer in sign language interpretation, takes us on a journey into the profound bond between the Deaf community and music. We follow Amber as she shares her skills with struggling new recruits who she hopes will have what it takes to join her at ACL music festival.