Hollyshorts 2025: Round 1
Hollyshorts is, to my mind, the premiere festival for short films. It's all shorts, all the time, with a massive program spanning genres, mediums, and countries. I always love diving into their offerings, usually sampling one or two shorts from one section, then hopping to another. There's always something exciting to find. For my coverage of the animated shorts, I'll plan to publish my thoughts/mini reviews in batches. This is the first batch -- yay! I'll start off with a short that feels like an instant classic, Snow Bear from Disney veteran Aaron Blaise. He worked on classics like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast , and co-directed the Oscar-nominated Brother Bear . The eponymous snow bear looks like he walked right out of Brother Bear , and his expressiveness recalls those longer-ago classics. Some of his facial expressions had me thinking of Jungle Book -- he's so cute, so funny. Snow Bear Snow Bear follows this bear's journey to find a friend. He starts of...
