AUSTRALIAN SHORT FILM TODAY premiered in Austin, Texas, at Austin Film Society's AFS Cinema on April 21, 2018.

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Austin Film Society was founded in 1985 by Richard Linklater, a leading American independent filmmaker, to exhibit independent, experimental, foreign and other non-mainstream art films as well as retrospectives. He also founded the Austin Studios film production complex in the hangers and terminal of the old Austin airport.  

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The 90-minute program included - among other films - A Writer and Three Script Editors Walk Into a Bar, a 3-minute comedy by Australian television and film director Matthew Saville on the agony of screenwriting; Habits, a 3-minute animation about a woman in need of self-improvement; The Blue Ducks, a raw drama about a teenager who must challenge her younger sister so as not to lose face in front of her friends; My Best Friend is Stuck on the Ceiling, a comedy in which Connor, secretly in love with Rachel, plans gives her a birthday present that may knock her off her feet; The Mother Situation, a dark comedy directed by well-known Australian actor Matt Day in which three siblings agree to "assist" their terminally ill mother; and Deighties, a warm documentary in which an 86-year old widower nervously ventures into the unfamiliar world of online dating.

 

The 2018 Audience Award in Austin went to Bluey, a drama by acclaimed director Darlene Johnson about an angry young indigenous woman, trapped in a life of violence, who is challenged by a boxing coach.