“Hollywood Lovesong” by Dirty Dollhouse plays as a man carries a white flag through a noisy rainstorm and a father and daughter stand side by side in a laundromat.
“It’s just like the movies,” the song whispers as the homemade trailer draws to a close.
It’s a final touch that ties together diverse talent with a simple, poignant line — perfectly suited for a short film trailer featured at the University of Maryland Film Festival. In its first year, the festival, hosted by Veritas Short Films club, received more than 50 submissions from 10 universities around the country, spanning from documentaries to animation.
Organizers at Veritas, which was founded at this university in 2022, began planning its first film festival last year, bringing it to life Sunday in Stamp Student Union’s Grand Ballroom. The event featured an award ceremony, film screenings, guest speaker panel and reception.
Emily Lin, a senior English major and the club’s vice president, said they received student submissions through FilmFreeway, a website filmmakers often use to submit their work to festivals.
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“We posted our film festival on there, and we said it was for college students, and we set it to open all across the country, and people just came by and submitted it,” Lin said.
The highly anticipated moment of the night featured awards in three categories: best short film, best documentary, best animation and the Veritas choice award — a prize selected by students at this university.
The winner of the festival’s best short film, Fall to Blossom, tells the rarely explored story of a young girl grappling with childhood loss and grief. Directed by Ziyan Xue, a filmmaker from Beijing studying at New York University, the film uses unique shots to place the young girl at the highest level of the frame, allowing the audience to experience her life through her eyes.
As she begins to cope with the death of her beloved grandmother, the shots gradually widen to reflect the depth of her healing journey. White flowers symbolizing her grief appear throughout the film — both in flashbacks and the present — ending in a final scene where the girl is beside a full-grown tree. She hears her grandmother’s words and the audience realizes she has blossomed.
The winner of best animation, Dandelion, was directed by Zhengwu Gu and Ling Zhao of Ringling College of Art and Design. The film follows an overworked, coal-burning robot who encounters his first lifeform — a mesmerizing dandelion.
As the robot chases the dandelion past the mine’s boundaries he is destroyed by his master. But the dandelion lives on, multiplying and turning the dingy mine into a vibrant, life-filled landscape.
The film struck an emotional chord with the crowd. Caitlin Yan, a junior majoring in computer science and studio art at this university and co-social chair of Veritas, said she was moved by the robot animation.
“It was just really cute, and I thought the animation was really well done,” Yan said. “It seemed really professional and the storyline was also pretty clear and it was compelling.”
The winner of best documentary was The Vietnam Action, directed by Chenghao “Clone” Wen, a student at New York University. It captures the essence of improvised live art along the Belilun River, which borders China and Vietnam. This film, the only one of the nine shown in full black-and-white, features no dialogue as subjects, the sea and hymnal sounds take center stage.
“It’s good to open a film, especially a long film with black and white, no dialogue, so [they’ll] listen to the sound of the sea,” Wen said.
Wen said that because he’s studied in both the U.S. and China, his friends are spread around the world, making language one of his biggest barriers. To work around this, he stuck with zero dialogue and experimented with an international approach.
For him, the documentary is less of a straightforward, face-value film and more of a philosophical performance of the sea.
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Not only did the festival feature an award ceremony and a screening, but the stage, decorated with black chairs, hosted four accomplished guest filmmakers from the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area. Each from a different corner of the film world, the panelists addressed the dimly lit crowd, sharing golden nuggets about how to succeed in the industry.
Beyond screening films from students across the nation, the festival proved that anyone, regardless of experience or interest, can get involved in film. What began as a dream and a plan for Veritas blossomed into a festival that displayed talent beyond this university, yielding a platform for students around the country.
“It really means a lot to me that I’m able to help create a space where students can express themselves,” Lin said. “There is a pathway for them into film.”
