Documentary Shorts

When heading to the oceanside, one might expect to see surfers, joggers, and sunbathers—but not this. Each Sunday, a quiet yet powerful ritual unfolds as worshippers in Tijuana and San Diego gather on opposite sides of the border wall. Through song, prayer, and fellowship shared across rusty steel bars, an unexpected act of unity, faith, and resistance comes to life.

This film represents both singular and collective stories. A lone undergraduate student communes with a tree to help him feel connected to a college campus from which he felt alienated. A professor collaborates with students to create a sense of belonging to Michigan’s natural environment. A society of students fosters belonging by performing a ritual around the tree to induct members into their community. In creating belonging for a select few, however, the society excludes and demeans others who similarly seek to belong. An activist collective responds by effecting change over decades to create spaces for belonging for all people on the campus. All of these stories bear a relationship to the great oak, an unwitting but central figure in their narratives.

A woman in Minneapolis reflects on becoming a new mom in the upheavals of 2020 through a seemingly banal object: cardboard. Combining stop motion animation with live action, this experimental essay unpacks the messiness of everyday life through the desires both revealed and hidden when we open the box.

Winding through the maze of downtown Chicago, the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors work alongside the Field Museum and Willowbrook Wildlife Center to rescue birds that collide with windows, and study the birds that are killed during their annual migrations. The tenderhearted work presents a lens of environmental change that impacts every landscape.

The Lake Sturgeon has existed virtually unchanged for more than 130 million years. It survived a meteor impact and outlived the dinosaurs but we’ve found out it couldn’t survive in the face of human development. With only 1% remaining in the Great Lakes, conservationists in Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay are working to bring this iconic species back from the brink of extinction.

The 2025 MATE ROV World Championships are set to unfold at Michigan’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, pitting the brightest young minds and their custom-built underwater robots against complex, real-world Great Lakes and ocean challenges. This global competition of engineering skill takes on an unprecedented twist with the local rivalry among members of Alpena’s Thomson family, locked in a head-to-head battle to reach the winners’ podium. Family patriarch Bob Thomson serves as mentor for daughter Lydia’s high-school team, while daughter Liz mentors the team from the high school where she teaches, and brother Clayton pilots the ROV for his local community-college team. Watch as innovation meets ambition in this high-stakes documentary, where the ultimate prize is not just engineering glory, but family bragging rights. Who will command the winning robot and emerge victorious in this thrilling showdown?

The midwest has abundant freshwater and wildlife but habitat loss by way of human development has threatened its biodiversity and quality of our water. Habitat restoration, through prescribed fire, native plantings and community engagement is how people can find a way to coexist with nature.