Introducing our Short Circuit 2025 Screeners

Introducing the team of screeners for our 13th annual Short Circuit Pacific Rim Film Festival coming up in May 2025 in Victoria / Lək̓ʷəŋən Territory / BC / Canada! These fine filmmakers, creators, enthusiasts, and festival alumni are diligently reviewing submissions to bring you the best of the best...

Eva Grant is an Indigenous/Eurasian filmmaker and programmer from the St’at’imc Nation. She is a Sundance Native Lab fellow and a former Vancouver Queer Film Festival Programming Disruptor Fellow and an AGO x RBC emerging artist-in-residence. Eva was an associate producer on Madison Thomas’ Emmy-winning documentary Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry it On, the co-writer of CBC’s This Place, the creator of the upcoming heist series Degrees of Separation, as well as a guest director on the Francophone TV show Couleurs du Nord. She studied philosophy and literature at Stanford University.

Gabriel Souza Nunes is an award winning gender-queer Brazilian-Canadian filmmaker based in Vancouver, BC. They are a strong advocate for representation in front and behind the camera, especially for the Latinx and LGBTQAI+ communities, navigating through horror and drama, always adding a surrealistic twist to their work. Gabriel's film Passiflora screened at Short Circuit in 2024.

Nathan Rivers is an emerging filmmaker from Vancouver, BC. A recent graduate from InFocus Film School, he is eager to tell engrossing stories that resonate and make positive change in the world. His graduation film, Downwind, has screened at several festivals across the globe including Short Circuit in 2024. Nathan is eager to pay it forward, and is honoured to play a small part in sharing incredible stories with the Short Circuit audience.

Chelsea Spirito is a writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, CA, and is honored to be a screener for the first time with CineVic. Her short film A Tight Ten screened at Short Circuit in 2022.

Sarah Nicole Faucher is a disability activist, poet, short fiction writer (under the name Nicole Matthews), and screenwriter of award-winning short films. Her short script Going Home won the 2021 CineSpark prize at Short Circuit. Filmed by Trent Peek in 2021, it was the only Canadian short shown in the same category alongside a short film written by John Patrick Shanley, Oscar-winning writer of Moonstruck, at the SOHO International Film Festival 2024. She hosts Cold Reads in her home to encourage local fellow screenwriters in their own creativity. Nicole has been a CineSpark judge and is back as a screener for Short Circuit.

Rraine Hanson is a Jamaican transdisciplinary artist who designs worlds through mixed media to tell stories centering the imaginations of queer and trans people of colour. His visual style is heavily informed by surrealism and the aesthetics of his Caribbean upbringing and is always seeking to answer the question: what can be found in the crevice between our dreams and our memories? He was awarded the 2020 Barbara Hammer Lesbian Experimental Filmmaking Grant for his short film Mooncake, which premiered at e-flux, screened at Short Circuit in 2024, and has since been acquired by UCLA Film & Television's queer moving image archive and OTV. While his films have been screened at film festivals and galleries across the world, he has also curated for publications and exhibits, and assisted film festival programming teams as a means to champion other unique and underrepresented makers and thinkers.

Jason Whyte is a film festival die-hard with over 20 years of film festival coverage and attendance at many major festivals all over North America including the big ones in Toronto (TIFF!), Vancouver, Whistler, Victoria, Austin TX (SxSW, Fantastic Fest) and Seattle. Every now and then you can see his film fest favourites screen as part of the Victoria Indie Film Series which takes place at The Roxy and Capitol 6. He is currently the Managing Editor & Lead Film Festival coverage writer for Get Reel Movies (www.getreelmovies.com) and can also be heard frequently reviewing movies on CFAX Victoria. He also serves on the screening committee for Whistler Film Festival (since 2016). When not watching a movie, you can pretty much count on Jason seeing a movie in a theatre somewhere in the city. (Of course, he also enjoys lengthy walks around the city, podcasts and coffee meetings…..heavy emphasis on the coffee).

🎬 Submit your film at filmfreeway.com/ShortCircuit