For the fourth September, the Milwaukee International Short Film Festival (MISFF) will be held at the Avalon Theatre. “They like having us there,” says MISFF founder-organizer Ross Bigley. “We’re low maintenance for them. We prepare everything. They just have to program the projectors and sell the popcorn.”
Image courtesy of Milwaukee Short Film Festival
2025 Voices Heard poster
2025 Voices Heard poster
This is also the 27th year for an event that reminds viewers that length isn’t everything. In the first years of motion pictures, every film was short. And like a good short story, a good short film has no room for extraneous digressions. It must make its point fast.
Seventy-five films will fill the big screen over three days and nights. All but four are Wisconsin premieres and many are world premieres. The festival includes a programing track, Voices Heard, “the only show dedicated to local filmmakers of color in this city,” Bigley says. MISFF is giving much of the final day, September 7, to the third annual Milwaukee Illuminate Film Festival, described as “an underground, intersectional film festival” focused on films by LGBTQ, people of color and minorities of all sorts “as well as filmmakers who are survivors of sexual violence.”
There will be a few international selections, including the dark Victorian comedy “Girls Will be Girls” by Britain’s Isabel Steuble-Johnson, but over the past decade MISFF has focused more on Milwaukee (and vicinity) than other nations. Bigley cites healthy film departments across much of the University of Wisconsin system as one reason, adding, “We get a lot of returning filmmakers who like the way they’re treated. Some have shown at the festival for 10 years. We cultivate relationships.”
New this year is MISFF’s “film challenge,” giving competitors “seven days to showcase five Wisconsin locations.” The five winning films will be screened at the festival. There will be a virtual panel discussion on “the importance of diversity” and work by local directors including Tommy Simms, Joe Ludwig, Casey Blackwood, Brennan Kirby, Georgia Elise Didier, Peter Thomson and Patrick Stagg. “Plus nearly half of our new films are created by women. As always, we strive for female representation,” Bigley says.
“There are a lot of documentaries and a lot of animation this year,” he concludes. “Many of the films are about people trying to navigate their lives at this moment. Some do it through horror, some do it through life lessons or comedy.” MISFF will be capped by an awards ceremony.
The Milwaukee International Short Film Festival runs September 5-7 at the Avalon Theatre, 2473 S. Kinnickinnic Ave.
For more information, visit milwaukeeindependentfilmsociety.org
Tickets are now available through the Avalon on their website and you can be purchased in person at the theater’s box office.
