Emily Everhard ’24 Earns Comedy Commendation at Aspen Film Shortsfest | Andrew Bryan Scott, Columbia University School of the Arts
April 17, 2025
The Aspen Film Shortsfest announced its winners across nine categories, and Emily Everhard ’24 received the Jury’s Special Mention in Comedy for her film, No Experience Necessary.
From a pool of 68 shorts spanning 29 countries and playing over 10 programs at the festival, Everhard’s standout film made a lasting impact on the jury, earning distinction as the runner up for the Jury Award for Comedy.
Everhard’s film was one of only five titles across the festival to receive the Special Mention commendation, the others going to films in the Drama, Animation, Documentary, and Youth Jury categories.
Written and directed by Everhard, the short follows a grieving septuagenarian with two left feet who finds a new lease on life at a ballroom dance studio.
See the full list of winners here.
Original: April 4, 2025
Seven Columbia filmmakers are making themselves known at this year’s Aspen Film Shortsfest. Now in its 34th edition, the Oscar-qualifying festival runs from March 31 to April 5, 2025, in Aspen, Colorado, a ski town in the heart of the Rocky Mountains.
In this year’s program, Emily Everhard ’24 will be showcasing her short NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. Everhard wrote and directed the film about a grieving woman in her 70s finding unexpected joy at a ballroom dance studio.
Christopher Radcliff ’09 will be screening his documentary short WE WERE THE SCENERY, about a pair of Vietnam refugees who landed in the Philippines and became extras in the Vietnam War epic, Apocalypse Now. The film, directed and edited by Radcliff, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where it won the Short Film Jury Award for Nonfiction.
Filmmaker Yoko Kohmoto ’23 is showing CLEAN SLATE at the festival. Kohmoto produced the short, about two actor friends, both Asian, both nonbinary, who are up for the same role.
Joining the Film alums is Daisy Friedman (BC ’24) with her short UNHOLY, which also world premiered earlier this year at Sundance, en route to SXSW in March. It tells the story of a college student with a gastrointestinal disorder navigating her family’s Passover Seder for the first time since being put on a feeding tube. The film is produced by recent graduate Isaak Popkin (CC ’24) and current student Arielle Friedman (GS), who also appears in the film.
The Columbia Seven are in good company at Aspen Film. Past filmmakers to have played the Shortsfest include Academy Award winners Damien Chazelle (La La Land) and Sarah Polley (Women Talking), and Marvel helmer Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings).
See the festival’s full lineup here.