The Quiet Throughline in This Year’s Sundance Shorts

In this episode of the No Film School Podcast, recorded live from the Sundance Film Festival, GG Hawkins hosts a roundtable conversation with four short film directors premiering work at the festival: Kelly McCormack (How Brief), Anna Baumgarten (Balloon Animals), Ana Alpízar (Norheimsund), and Anooya Swamy (Pankaja).

The filmmakers discuss the origins of their films, navigating production across Cuba, India, Canada, and the U.S., working within (and outside of) film school structures, and the deeply personal themes of grief, mother-daughter relationships, disappearance, and survival that unexpectedly connect their work.

In this episode, we****discuss:

• Shooting narrative shorts on location in Havana, Bangalore, Vancouver, and Los Angeles
• Returning to Cuba to film Norheimsund after seeking asylum in the United States
• How Pankaja draws from growing up in the slums of Bangalore and confronting personal memory
• Making a $6,500 microbudget short inside a real grocery store overnight
• Building a short film over eight years and resisting the “proof of concept” mindset
• Working within NYU’s film school structure versus creating outside institutional systems
• Casting mother-daughter dynamics rooted in real-life relationships
• Designing color theory, texture, cement, and dirt as emotional language
• Shooting inside real police stations and navigating bureaucracy while telling stories about it
• Grief as a “big soup of emotions” and balancing melancholy with comedy
• Collaborating with ride-or-die creative partners
• Advice for emerging filmmakers about not compromising and trusting instinct

Guests:

• Kelly McCormack – Director, How Brief
• Anna Baumgarten – Writer/Director, Balloon Animals
• Ana Alpízar – Director, Norheimsund
• ______Anooya Swamy – Writer/Director, Pankaja

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