In Afghanistan, development aid worker Carina Nowak and a squadron of Bundeswehr — German army soldiers — walk into a trap set by the Taliban. Only she and young soldier Luca survive and they both have to fight to reach their own goals.

Nahrani is a short film produced by students of HFF Munich and the final project of director Simon Pfister. It was shot t in Andalusia with a crew of 35 people from Germany and Spain, with six of those days in a set built for the film Exodus and later reused for Game of Thrones.

It looks gorgeous and way better than you’d ever expect a student film to look whole presenting a story of different goals in the face of the chaos of war.

To learn more, visit the official site.

Daniel Slottje directed, wrote and co-stars — as the father — in this film about a young girl (Lilliana Ketchman) battling leukemia and being haunted by a sinister being she calls The Tumor Man (Kelsey Strauch).

You must decide if this monster is real or a metaphor for the pain that Casey, the little girl, is enduring. Slottje — who had a hormone-based disease in his childhood — is now developing the story into a feature film. I can’t wait to see it.

At the California Men’s Colony in Central California, dogs and their inmate handlers — who are preparing them to become fully operational service animals — share a special bond that helps both.

Director and writer Alex Astrella also made Trial By Fire, a documentary about inmate firefighters. As a dog owner, this movie spoke to me and shows how we are saved by animals instead of us saving them.

A young boy named Shah (Bryce Thompson) is convinced that the Devil lives in a hole in his backyard. I mean, I’ve been there, trust me.

Directed by Noah Glenn, who co-wrote the short with Imakemadbeats, this is a film about the power of a seven-year-old child’s imagination. It’s pretty wonderful and imaginative even with its short runtime.

Directed and written by Spencer Zimmerman, this film is about astronaut Sam Bowman (Blakely David) who accepts an interstellar mission to save the lives of a missing crew on a deep space voyage. After abandoning his life on Earth and his wife Sara (Siobhan Connors), a critical failure leaves him without a crew, without hope and plenty of guilt.

The question is, “Who saves you when you can’t save the people you were supposed to be saving?”

Created as part of the Motion Picture Arts Program at Capilano University, Darkside uses practical effects, physical sets and remote locations to achieve its unique look. Production of the film took over 720 days to complete — 16 shooting days over two years and 9 months of post.

You can learn more at the official site.

An excerpt from Dr. Malcom J. Backer’s Hyperexpiology Companion [revision 2b]: “…the destructive system is self-replicating and self-propelling. Functioning like a clock. Systematically. Efficiently. Relentlessly. A mindless machine. It will never be enough. The clockmaker eventually loses control. We are dreaming of a new day when a new day isn’t coming.”

This film by Matt Eslinger is a stop-motion animated film of, well, shapes moving in and out of one another. It’s intriguing, but I have no idea what the story is, if there is one or what I am supposed to get out of this than beauty.

Austin Quarles and Ryan Gentle are filmmakers out of Chattanooga, TN that “met as random roommates in college and hated each other so much that they decided to open up a film company together. They’ve been arguing about it ever since.”

Their film — co-written with Chris Holmes — In the Balance is about how Dr. Marie Mitchell and his assistant Jonathan Meyers face a moral dilemma after achieving a medical breakthrough. It feels like the start of something bigger and I hope at some point they expand it to become a full feature.