“And I hope it’s all it seems, not another dream. There’s a time for you and me in a place living happily.” Life lessons echo in these shorts about the bonds of family and asserting one’s independence. A family’s quiet night together has fateful repercussions in Erich Steiner’s haunting In the Still of the Night (Austria, 14 min). Sibling rivalry between sisters takes an unexpected turn in Lara Gallagher’s American Gladiators (US, 10 min). A dying mother tries to reconcile her fractured family in Barbara Zemljic’s moving The Right to Love (Slovenia, 17 min). Personal expression enters an aquatic dimension for a young girl in Lexi Lefkowitz’s playful Freestyle (US, 7 min). And insecurities and deceptions arise when a lesbian couple prepares for a hurricane in Melissa Finell’s Disaster Preparedness (US, 15 min).