CAA has launched that the tenth annual CAA Moebius Film Competitors, a two-day screening sequence showcasing graduate pupil filmmakers, will occur Would possibly 28–29, 2025.
Marking its tenth anniversary, this 12 months’s competitors choices its broadest illustration of film purposes to date, with graduate pupil filmmakers from a rising report of distinguished institutions. For the first time, Columbia School joins a lineup that options returning schools akin to Chapman School, the American Film Institute (AFI) Conservatory, New York School (NYU), England’s Nationwide Film and Television School (NFTS) and CalArts, amongst others.
The tenth model of the Moebius Film Competitors will spotlight 10 fast motion pictures chosen from a record-breaking 170+ submissions, showcasing every live-action and animated works. This 12 months’s lineup explores themes of self-actualization, coming-of-age and family, spanning genres from drama and comedy to horror, all in service of the competitors’s mission to champion cultural and artistic vary.
Since its founding in 2015, Moebius has change right into a revered platform for rising filmmakers, offering early publicity that has helped launch worthwhile careers. Amongst its notable alumni is Felipe Vargas, whose Moebius-selected fast “Rosario,” a supernatural story rooted in Latin American folklore, helped pave the best way by which for a attribute adaptation that acquired important acclaim on the worldwide competitors circuit. Equally, Oran Zegman’s fast “Marriage Supplies” screened at Moebius various years sooner than her attribute debut “Honor Society,” starring Angourie Rice and Gaten Matarazzo, premiered on Paramount+. The competitors moreover counts amongst its alumni Max Barbakow, who made his narrative attribute debut with the acclaimed “Palm Springs” and most these days directed “Brothers” for Legendary, starring Glenn Shut, Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin.
Conceived by then-trainees and now CAA Motion Picture brokers Christina Chou, Zach Kaplan and Pete Stein, along with Lingie Park, Moebius is organized by a crew of youthful leaders all through the corporate, along with Odessa Chiklis, Olivia Guevara, Sidney Jaet, Brendan Kim, Jessica Lee, Cameron Mendez, Jack Spencer, Saundarya Thapa, Lex Torrington, Jordyn Walker and Nick Wnuk.
“Reaching our tenth 12 months is a milestone that speaks to the power and promise of rising filmmakers,” talked about Chou, Kaplan and Stein in a joint assertion. “With each model, Moebius continues to develop in scale and scope, and this 12 months’s submissions mirror a worldwide fluctuate of voices, daring ideas, and cinematic imaginative and prescient. We’re proud to supply a platform the place the next period of storytellers can be discovered and celebrated.”
Moebius helps CAA’s larger dedication to inclusion, collaboration, and belonging inside the corporate and previous. Over time, CAA has launched quite a few purposes and initiatives to assist creators and executives from all backgrounds, along with the Full Story Initiative, an industry-led effort designed to generate additional real storytelling in television and film, and CAA Amplify, a platform to connect a cross-disciplinary group of leaders from media, leisure, sports activities actions, know-how and previous, to find expert options, social have an effect on initiatives, and collaborations to hurry up transformational change in rooms of enterprise and widespread custom.
The 2025 Moebius programming line-up is as follows:
NIGHT 1 – WEDNESDAY, MAY 28TH
- THE WRATH OF OTHELL-YO! directed by Kwesi Jones (NYU)
- When the lead of an erotic Othello adaptation fails to get erect, a PA volunteers to double-in nonetheless discovers that rising to the occasion is harder than he thought.
- GIRLS IN REAL LIFE SITUATIONS directed by Ofre Sparrow Vaknin (CalArts)
- Sam, Lexi, and Jane spend the first day of eighth grade plotting a scheme to get the ultimate phrase lunch desk. Their plans unravel when Katy, a preppy sixth grade TikTok influencer, beats them to the coveted submit.
- BRUNO & ELENA directed by Javier Hirschler (Columbia)
- On the ultimate day of highschool, Bruno lastly manages to attraction the girl of his objectives and invites her over to his dwelling. Nevertheless his mother, Elena, gained’t maintain in her room.
- DANDELION directed by Fiona Obertinca (AFI)
- In Nineteen Seventies Los Angeles, rebellious queer teen Margaret will get thrown out of yet another foster placement and finds herself inside the agency of a mysterious social worker who’s tasked with discovering Margaret a model new dwelling sooner than the break of dawn.
- NERVOUS ENERGY directed by Eve Liu (NYU)
- On the cusp of success/failure, two unhinged female filmmakers decide to interrupt up with their boyfriends, and for as quickly as, make a daring selection with their lives.
NIGHT 2 – THURSDAY, MAY 29TH
- FOLLOW ME WHEREVER I GO directed by Maxwell DeFalco (Chapman)
- A deeply religious single mother is about to begin out her life anew and might stop at nothing until she is going to get what she wants—her son’s best good good friend.
- A VERY NORMAL-SEEMING MAN directed by Allamaprabhu Pattanashetty (NYU)
- An individual pitches movie ideas to his filmmaker son… all starring himself.
- DAD SWAP directed by Ethan Mermelstein (Columbia)
- Ethan Mermelstein’s dad is a dick, and he’s had ample. So, he swaps him out collectively together with his dad’s best good good friend/nemesis, Ron.
- FAWN directed by Molly Mayhew (NFTS)
- Following the sudden passing of her mom and father, Fawn is compelled to return to a house she hasn’t generally known as dwelling in a extremely very very long time. As painful recollections begin to seep via, Fawn is thrown onto the robust path of reconnecting with a earlier she thought she had left behind.
- TEEN MARY directed by Ali Rosenthal (AFI)
- Mary is a teenage girl dwelling in Nazareth inside the 12 months Zero (nonetheless speaking in fashionable dialogue). She’s a conventional teen: engaging. Nevertheless when Mary will get knocked up by a scorching, married shepherd and should get stoned to demise for adultery, she and her gay best good good friend Joseph hatch a plan to save lots of a lot of their lives. They’ll persuade all those that God made Mary pregnant—with the model new Messiah.
