International Student Film Screening & Panel
"A Shared Story of Distance" and "Brief Tender Light"
A SHARED STORY OF DISTANCE
by Giovanna Orfali (Visual Arts, '26)
"A hybrid short film that captures the connection between a Brazilian mother and daughter living nearly 5,000 miles apart. Blending real voice messages with intimate point-of-view visuals, the film gently explores love, memory, and the quiet ways we remain close across distance."
BRIEF TENDER LIGHT
by Arthur Musah and Brook Sitgraves Turner
"Ukrainian-born Ghanaian filmmaker Arthur Musah follows four African undergraduates through MIT, America's premier technological university and his alma mater. The students embark on their MIT education with individual ambitions – to engineer infrastructure in Tanzania; to secure a better life for family in Nigeria; to contribute to post-genocide reconstruction in Rwanda; to advance democracy in Zimbabwe. Their missions are distinct, but fueled by a common goal: to become agents of positive change back home.
While their dreams are anchored in the societies they have left, their daily realities are defined by America – by the immediate challenges in their MIT classrooms, and by the larger social issues confronting the world beyond those classrooms. Their new environment demands they adapt. Over an intimate, decade-long journey spanning two continents, students and filmmaker alike are forced to decide how much of America to absorb, how much of Africa to hold on to, and how to reconcile teenage ideals with the truths they discover about the world and themselves."