Did you miss UQFF 2025? You can still see our festival favorites the week after in-person festivities end! Join us for virtual post-festival screenings that are sure to delight whether you’re catching them again or just checking them out for the first time.
ABOUT THE FILMS
Best Local Short Film Winner: Embalmed
Directed by Ryan Margetts
4 min | United States
With themes of class-consciousness emerging throughout their catalog over the past year, It should be no surprise to fans of SLC nonbinary art-pop act Die Shiny that their latest music video tackles revolutionary rage with a sharp tongue and in stunning androgynous fashion. “Embalmed” is an anti-capitalist anthem, darkly depicting the elite ruling class motive of profiting from every part of the human life cycle.
Content advisory: depictions of themes like violence, bullying, racial discrimination.
Best Short Film Winner: Pietra
Directed by Cynthia Levitan
13 min | Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Lithuania, Poland
In daydreaming about unlikely relationships, the flower – as delicate as it is revolutionary – represents an act of love amidst the suffocation and embrace of a classic Portuguese neighborhood.
Content advisory: depictions of themes like transphobia.
Best Feature Film Winner: Join the Club
Directed by Kip Andersen, Chris O’Connell
90 min | United States
Dennis Peron is San Francisco’s biggest pot dealer. But when the AIDS epidemic sweeps through his community, Peron realizes that marijuana is more than a good time—it’s medicine. In the wake of his lover’s death, Peron opens the Cannabis Buyers’ Club, a five-story dispensary complete with rainbow murals, drag shows, and doctors onsite. Law enforcement launches a multimillion dollar investigation into the club, but Peron has even larger aspirations, writing a landmark political initiative and leading the fight for change. Following the life of Dennis Peron, Join the Club uncovers the queer history of marijuana legalization in America.
Content advisory: depictions of themes like death from AIDS, drug use, hate crimes.