Still from FOREIGN OBJECTS
We can’t escape reality as much as we would like to some days. But on celluloid, for roughly 90 to 180 minutes, we can instead embrace reality and recognize our commonalities with others across the world. The Kansas City Underground Film Festival, kickstarting its seventh year this weekend, continues to deliver on its precept of making its program accessible to all filmgoers, and affordable to all filmmakers to submit.
“We love programming challenging work, but we want to make sure everyone knows what they’re in for and that we’ve fully thought it through before the screening,” says Willy Evans, founder and artistic director of the KCUFF. So, the first rule, according to Evans, is “don’t make anybody feel unsafe or unwelcome.”
This year’s offerings deliver on this premise. On the program — stretched over two weekends, September 11-12 and September 16-19, at Charlotte Street Foundation, 3333 Wyoming St. — are 90 films from countries across the globe and the US.
With its Opening Night Absurdity program, KCUFF offers Tristan Wheeler’s Toronto Apartment. The comedy, in which a rejected boyfriend sublets his apartment unwittingly to anti-corporate terrorists, contains one of the most sublimely Canadian insults: “Some people are calling you one of the worst Canadians in history.” Following on the program are three short films: Scout Stolpmann’s Burnt Toast, dedicated to our most irreplaceable small appliance; Pablo Roncero Garrido’s family mishap comedy The Backstore; and Aaron Garcia’s lovelorn To: Monica, April, Cheyenne, Linda, and Monica (Again).
For true Bigfoot/Sasquatch believers, Friday night’s second program opens with Aaron Mull’s Squatch, a road-trip comedy with two out-of-work park rangers, a sunglasses-wearing Sasquatch (adept at Etch-a-Sketch) and the wonders of Cracker Barrel. Completing the second program of the night are the Rita Hostt’s long-distance romantic comedy Far Far From LA, Antonious George Bassily’s I Can Smell a Rat, in which the young protagonist overcomes her fears to take her place on her school stage as Hamlet, and the film-quote spouting tough guys of Ashley Hayes’ Bruisers.
KCUFF’s presentation of Farah Kassem’s We Are Inside opens the first Saturday slot, and, at 180 minutes, the film will stand alone for its program slot. “The movie is so incredible,” Evans says, “that (the length) didn’t really get in the way. Our concern is often that a long movie can take the spot of multiple other, shorter works.” And, the film, in which Kassem returns to Tripoli to visit her ailing poet-father, merits its runtime, particularly for the touching scenes between father and daughter, as well as the pivotal moments of the country’s political uncertainty.
Of her film, Kassem says, “What I wanted to investigate in this film is the relationship that the citizens of the city of Tripoli have with interiors and exteriors, and therefore with private and public space. How is that space negotiated? Where are its borders? And what lies within those spaces that could allow for a more complex understanding of the realities of that city and of those who live in it?”
Saturday, Sept. 12 proceeds to its Chinamaxxing +1 program. Zheng Liu’s gentle tale of a distant father reconnecting with his children and connecting with the pregnant driver hired to take him home in Time Fell Asleep in the Passenger Seat. Also on the slot are Rust Lee’s detective noir Kill My Lover; Jin Hongle’s tale of homecoming and unexpected surprises, Neverland; and Nuno Pimental’s nature walk through emotion and its pull weights, I’m Feeling Something. For animation fans, the next program includes 20 titles, including the charming Sweet Enough to Eat, in which the root vegetables chastise a cupcake for its lack of substance. Two Iranian offerings — Like Friend, Like Deer and Holy Heaveness — are choices that Evans made, he says, to have filmgoers take away the understanding that “these artists are singular and unique. They view the world and approach their work in their own way, resulting in beautiful animation.”
Saturday evening’s last two programs are as wildly entertaining as they are diverse. The Horror program delivers some late-night ’70s-’80s throwback thrills with Todd Sheets’ homage to late-night films of the ’70s and ’80s, Wolf Moon Rising. John Brennan’s humorous Never Fingerbang a Windingo and Rylee Dulaney and Nathan Strack’s tale of the hook-wielding Mr. Handyman, Menace of Cinder Hall complete the bill. The final Saturday slot, Late Night Delights, opens with a must-see for fans of underground bands with Hannah Rosalie Wright’s ’s Les Sans Culottes, about a faux-French ’60s band out of Baltimore, Maryland, who wowed audiences in the early aughts. Following are an array of short films, including the absurd grocery tale, Fresh Values, by Drew Durepos and Isaac Brooks.
Wednesday, September 16, KCUFF resumes with its Non-English Non-Fiction program. On the bill are Ernesto Fontan’s documentary, Una y mil veces, about the refugee experience of 52 Uruguayan activists in Nicaragua; Abata, a visitation by filmmakers Aner Etxebarria Moral and Pablo Vidal to the mountain that inspired Orson Welles’ 1955 documentary The Land of the Basques, and Yinan Wang’s beautifully rendered Thick & Sweet, a history of a dish, the families that prepared it and the restaurants that have become empty. Completing the program is Cami Adaro Liloff’s reconstruction of her father’s life as a merchant seaman, After the Sea.
KCUFF’s bill for Thursday, September 17 opens with the dreamlike Languid, by MJ Strasburger, then continues with Mario G. Riquelme’s Dormant, Amelia Mylvaganam’s Hands, Hannah Rosalie Wright’s Still Life and Lade Tinubu’s Voicemail.
Friday, September 18 offers two programs. First is Loneliness and Its Friends, which features Mari H. Hama’s heartbreaking Milkpunch; Shridharan Raman Revathi’s dialogue between a flower vendor and a trans sex worker, Poongodhaigal; Bastian Huerta’s resilient The Fifth Wall; and Catilin Nitschke’s solemn tale of loss, Three of Us at Sea. Following is the second horror block, simply called Horror (no ha ha). Pablo Cabe’s b&w Shard reveals the most redemptive ending of any recent horror film. Among the titles on the slab are Joseph Pieken’s Porta Killer; Attack on Monegasque by Lucas H. Rossi and Henrique Amud; Laura Katherin Winter’s Epilogue; Ryan Howard’s Grandma’s Couch; Spencer Joseph’s Mike Should Have Stayed Home Tonight; and Adam Rayne’s Sitter Wanted.
The first program block for Saturday, September 19, is the explorative and unsettling Foreign Objects by Daniel Clayton Watkins, that suggests that our ghosts are among us “like a hidden geography.” Following are Elijah Bigler’s Canyon Light, Michelle Trujiollo’s Hurricane Season and Madonna Diaz-Refugia’s real-life hunt for the unauthorized BATMAN FIGHTS DRACULA made by her late grandfather, Filipino filmmaker Leody. The film has since disappeared but has become something of a Holy Grail among Asian cinema and Batman fans, says Diaz-Refugia.
“What’s sad is there’s an entire era of Philippine cinema that has been forgotten and lost — sure, they might have been cheesy knockoffs of American films, but they were evidence of the hard work people did to survive during a tumultuous time in the Philippines,” she says.
Rounding out the festival’s last day are the programs Relationships (sexual and non) with Joshua Allen LaBure’s unpredictably emotional I Don’t Think This a Threesome; Love & Conversations, showcasing Hansel Porras Garcia’s Tropical Park, an exploration of family and place; Jesus & Jockstraps, in which Jennifer M Kroot’s Hunky Jesus explores an Easter parade tradition in San Francisco that has migrated across the world; and, of course, KCUFF’s Local Film Showcase, which includes Taylor Gray’s Spring Cleaning, Clayton Dean Smith’s Kansas, 1989 and Nick Littlejohn’s Mia Eats.
This year’s festival, like the five previous, reflects an ongoing ethos in how Evans wants to curate each program. “The foundation of the program is always the submissions,” says Evans. “We start with the films that really stood out to us and build around those. Once we have a first layer, we start to think about pairings. It’s really satisfying when you find a perfect collection of movies that fit together thematically within a two-hour programming block.”
Admission to the festival is free, but reservations are recommended. For schedules and titles, visit kcuff2026.eventive.org/Schedule.
