Jean-Marceau Sécheret's The Passage/Le Passage

This year, Film Society of Lincoln Center is pleased to co-present the Columbia University Film Festival as it celebrates a quarter of a century! Highlighting more than 40 short films of student work from Columbia University's Graduate Film Division, you can say you saw these talented young filmmakers first at CUFF.

The festival was started in 1987 by the Graduate Film Division to showcase its students' contributions to the world of cinema. Three films from last year's festival went on to win Regional Academy Awards, including Hatch (written and directed by Christoph Kuschnig), The Recorder Exam (written and directed by Bora Kim '11) and Under (directed by Mark Raso, written by Jake Crane and produced by Jean-Marceau Sécheret '11). Jean-Marceau Sécheret returns as director this year with The Passage/Le Passage, a film about a young Afghan boy who leaves his country at the age of 14 and travels through Asia and Europe alone. The Passage will be shown in Program F on May 6.

Other festival highlights include:
Program A — Reza Hassani Goes to the Mall (directed by Sara Zandleh). A recent immigrant journeys to the American cultural mecca that is the mall.
Program B — Epigraph (directed by YounJoo Cheong). A young man struggles to find his memory while being taken care of by a robot nurse.
Program C — The Louder the Better (directed by Michael Toscano). A conservative talk show radio host discovers words can have violent consequences.
Program D — Family Bum (directed by Ben Seccombe). Featuring the first three episodes of a web series about Moonrock, a homeless man.
Program E — The Driven Hunt/Treibjagd (directed by Christiane Hitzemann). A young huntress' aim incites disastrous consequences for her and her family.
Program F — Mr. Bear (directed by Andres Rosende). An average guy stumbles upon a crime scene and is mistaken for a professional cleaner. He is forced to choose to either dismember a corpse or become one.
Program G — Asternauts (directed by Marta Masferrer). Two farmers see an object fall from outer space into their pasture.

Since its conception, the festival has shown works by Adam Davidson (Academy Award winner for Best Short Subject, The Lunch Date, originally shown at CUFF '90), Nicole Holofcener (writer-director of Friends With Money, and her thesis short, It's Richard I Love, originally shown at CUFF '88) and Greg Mottola (director of Superbad). Presenters of this year's films include: Adam Davidson, Joan Stein, Lisa Cholodenko, NIcole Holofcener, Kimberly Pierce, Greg Mottola and Courtney Hunt, among many others.

Check out the charming and cinematic trailer for the 25th Columbia University Film Festival below: