Slamdance ’26: Short Film Round-Up, Part Two
The 2026 Slamdance Film Festival is officially over! Well, the in-person portion of the festival ended, but the virtual festival is live on the Slamdance Channel! From February 24 to March 6, you can catch up with selections from the fest from the comfort of your own home. All of these short films, plus part one of the round up, and more are available on the Slamdance Channel now!
Monkey Bar
courtesy of Slamdance
Monkey Bar is the second short film featured in this round-up that’s part of the 99 Special program. Director and screenwriter Mya Van Dyk describes it as a combination of Planet of the Apes, Buster Keaton, and Taxi Driver, all crammed into 45 seconds. It’s a tall order and a large promise, but it’s one that Van Dyk makes good on.
The entire film takes place outside a bar. A sad monkey has just stepped out to have a smoke. If that sounds like the set-up for a joke, it is. Monkey Bar is existential, while also reveling in a joke any chance it can get. From a clever pun tucked away in the background to the more obvious jokes in the forefront, Monkey Bar is good, old-fashioned monkey business.
Domestic Demon
courtesy of Slamdance
Anahid Yahjian’s Domestic Demon is a visual poem that tackles postpartum depression in the midst of the pandemic lockdown. Yahjian narrates the film in the endangered language of Western Armenian, a choice that speaks to the feelings of loss that linger over every frame. It’s not necessarily a tangible loss, but something that’s tied to postpartum depression. A feeling of lost freedom that is confusingly at odds with this exciting moment of new parenthood. To experience depression or anger in the early stages of motherhood doesn’t make someone a bad caregiver.
Much of the film is of extreme close-ups of various domestic tasks. It opens with a shot of a drain and Yahjian’s voice telling the viewer that it’s laundry day. This opening is reminiscent of Alfonso Cuarón’s masterpiece, Roma, another reflection of the silent labor that caregivers do every day.
The last words Yahjian speaks are “alive / animal.” When night falls, she feels free to be herself again. It’s an exhale, a reclamation of one’s own body and sense of self. The more women talk about the effects of postpartum depression, the more they’re able to feel less alone. Domestic Demon looks at these heavy feelings without judgment. The mere fact that they’re given the space to breathe lets other parents know they’re not alone, even in their most monstrous-feeling moments.
Climate Control
courtesy of Slamdance
Sarah Lasley first came onto my radar with her delightfully insane short film Welcome to the Enclave, about an escape to the metaverse that goes horribly wrong. The short played as part of the 2024 Slamdance Film Festival and now, Lasley, along with her Gen Z film students at Cal Poly Humboldt, has returned to the festival with Climate Control.
The short film opens with a definition of extractivism: the removal of natural resources for profit without consideration for long-term environmental or social consequences. The current depressing state of the world can be traced back to this corporate greed that views the earth as something to consume and control rather than to live in tandem with. Climate Control begins as a documentary about youth activists in Lutzerath, Germany, who were protesting coal mining company RWE’s destruction of a village. The documentary team’s attempts to tell this story are regularly interrupted by an AI agent that wants to tell a basic love story.
Climate Change is a battle between the world of consciously human-made work and the world of artificial intelligence. The film carries the absurdism that can be found in Lasley’s previous short, but also takes a more grounded approach, as strange as that may sound. It’s a short film that moves wildly between a Lifetime-style rom com and the devastating effects of extractivism, yet there’s a deftness to these tonal swings. It’s not oddity for the sake of smacking the viewer in the face, but a reflection on the world as it is now.
At one point the director, who is valiantly trying to make her movie about fossil fuel extraction, finds herself on the beach with the AI agent. They’re watching the sunset and the director comments on how beautiful it is. Then she notices that the AI is saturating the natural colors of the sky. It’s a moment where the viewers have to think about how they look at a sunset. Are they noticing it for everything that it is or everything that it could be?
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