(LONG BEACH ISLAND, NJ) -- The Lighthouse International Film Festival (LIFF) has announced its 2022 dramatic features competition program, which includes inspiring, creative, and shocking films from the USA and around the world. The festival will take place for the 14th time on Long Beach Island, between June 2-5, a long weekend that offers a host of exciting in-person events: new film screenings, panels, networking events, and parties. In addition to its dramatic features competition, LIFF will hold a documentary features competition, a shorts competition, an episodic competition, a high school film competition, surf film screenings, and headliner programs.
The dramatic features competition will bring to the big-screen original stories from the brilliant minds of independent filmmakers who will be attending the festival, coming from across the US, Europe, and even Japan. Two of the competition films will celebrate their world premiere on LBI, with talent attending: Maybe Next Time by Sahm McGlynn, a beautifully shot intimate ghost story starring Kika Magalhaes (The Eyes of My Mother) and Max Hoffman (Dustin Hoffman's son, Hook, Greenberg), and Menina Casilda by Spaniard filmmaker Eric Du Bellay, a surprisingly funny take-off on cinephiles and Hollywood classics, involving a wild kidnapping plot during COVID-19 in Madrid.
Love, Life and Goldfish, by director Yukinori Makabe, is a romantic musical fairy tale that takes place in modern times in the Japanese countryside and will have its East Coast premiere on LBI. A Pack of Sheep, by Greek filmmaker Dimitris Kannellopoulos, also takes place in the countryside, but tells a completely different intense story about toxic masculinity and how good men can be pushed into senseless violence.
Straighten Up and Fly Right by Kristen Abate & Steven Tanenbaum, winner of the Unstoppable Award at Slamdance Film Festival, provides an intimate look into the love life of lonely disabled people in New York. Loneliness and longing for closeness between a father and a son are at the center of the gentle Planet B234 by Keelie Sheridan and Jorge Luna. Romantic intimacy in real life is the center of Clinton Cornwell's 12 Months, which follows a couple falling in and out of love over the course of a year. We Are Not Content! by Yuki Soga offers a unique creative take on the cliche of struggling, aspiring artists trying to make it in the film industry.
Festival passes and individual tickets are available for purchase online.
Here is a look at each film:
12 Months; USA, 1 hour & 32 minutes; Saturday, June 4, 2022 at 8:00pm; Dir: Clinton Cornwell. A hyper-realistic diversion from the usual rom-com, 12 Months candidly portrays moments that are commonly experienced, but rarely shown, as it follows the story of Ellie and Clark, a millennial couple navigating the peaks and valleys of a new relationship.
Love, Life and Goldfish; Japan, 1 hour & 32 minutes (East Coast Premiere); Saturday, June 4, 2022 at 8:20pm; Dir: Yukinori Makabe. When big city banker Makoto has an outburst at work, he is sent to work in a small village in the middle of nowhere as his punishment. Immediately, he falls in love with the woman who runs the local goldfish scooping store. Maybe Next Time; USA, 1 hour and 20 minutes (World Premiere); Saturday, June 4, 2022 at 6:00pm; Dir: Sahm McGlynn. A lonely woman turns the tables on the indulgent spirits that haunt her property. Menina Casilda; Spain, 1 hour & 26 minutes (World Premiere); Friday, June 3, 2022 at 5:45pm; Dir: Eric Du Bellay. During the strict lockdown in Madrid, Diego, a 35-year-old unemployed actor, kidnaps Sara, a 20-year-old law student. She will be his audience. Pack of Sheep; Greece, 1 hour & 50 minutes; Saturday, June 4, 2022 at 3:40pm; Dir: Dimitris Kanellopoulos. Thanasis can’t pay off his debt to Stelios. When he finds out that Apostolis is in the same position, he asks him to join in with him to make a better deal with Stelios. While Thanasis tries to put more players in the game, two young gangsters arrive in town to deal with the debtors. Planet B234; USA, 1 hour; Saturday, June 4, 2022 at 10:30am; Dir: Keelie Sheridan. Jorge, a father thousands of miles away from his son, creates an alternate world - - Planet B234 - - where he can cope with the anxiety, depression, and desperation of being separated from one's child. Geographical barriers are no match for Jorge's fertile imagination, but it comes at the cost of his sanity and the very relationship he's fighting to maintain. Straighten Up and Fly Right; USA, 1 hour & 30 minutes; Friday, June 3, 2022 at 10:30am; Dir: Kristen Abate & Steven Tanenbaum. In a funk, Kristen, a physically disabled New York woman, walks dogs for a living, but dreams of being a writer. As her life unravels, she must make a choice to fall apart or straighten up. We Are Not Content! USA, 1 hour & 23 minutes; Saturday, June 4 2022 at 10:30am; Dir: Yuki Soga. When a wannabe filmmaker's move to Manhattan does little to boost his artistic career, he convinces an amateur puppeteer to assist him, despite his deteriorating finances and mental health. 
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