Breaking through genre constraints with a collectively formidable precision, this provocative group of shorts explores the darker sides of identity, reality and mortality. Sometimes unnerving and other times disorienting, these complex stories come from eight boundary-pushing filmmakers and have a cumulatively haunting effect, one that won’t be easy to shake once the journey is complete. —Matt Barone

GRAND BOUQUET, dir. Nao Yoshigai

Presented with a series of questions by a mysterious black object, a woman answers them the only way she knows how.

SELFIES, dir. Claudius Gentinetta

A rapid-fire barrage of digital self-portraits forms a bleak look at mankind’s most self-absorbed impulses.

CHAOS, dir. Samuel Auer

A motley crew of individuals, including a hobo and pig-masked men, are part of a larger plan in this technically head-spinning one-shot gem.

THE FOLLOWER, dir. Stephanie Szerlip

A small-town teenage girl, fueled by the hope of leaving her boring surroundings, entertains the increasingly sinister advances of an Internet friend in this beguiling riff on Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”

DAUGHTER OF BABEL, dir. Ashlea Wessel

It’s the end of the world and only a lonely little girl on a rooftop knows it.

SOMETIMES, I THINK ABOUT DYING, dir. Stefanie Abel Horowitz

Detached and consumed by the possibility of ending her life, an antisocial woman makes an unexpected love connection.

NYMPHS, dir. Isabella Torre

After accidentally freeing three inhuman women, an archaeologist’s world turns upside down.

THE BOOGEYWOMAN, dir. Erica Scoggins

An enigmatic and potentially malevolent local legend comes full circle for a teen girl trying to grapple with her first period.