A woman walking her dog alone in the bush has a strange encounter.

“Trespass” is the picks of Short of The Week’s Premiere by Staff Pick Premiere! on @Vimeo.

Director: Mirrah Foulkes

Screenplay: Mirrah Foulkes

Producer: Alex White

Cinematography: Ari Wegner

Cast: Sara West, Maya Stange

There is an eeriness that accompanies experiences in the forest. Even the mundane leaves rustling, a branch breaking can make your mind jump to sinister conclusions before reason has the chance to calm it back down. Maybe it’s being out of your element. Or that the silence and sparseness of nature allow space for your brain to wander. This is the picks of Short of The Week’s Premiere by Staff Pick Premiere, “Trespass,” we’re dropped instantly into this kind of heightened state. By recreating the tension felt in the forest, the film gives viewers room to project their own insecurities and ideas into the story and ultimately, come to their own ominous conclusions.

Filmmaker Mirrah Foulkes is an Australian actor, writer, and director known for her performances in Top of the Lake and the Animal Kingdom, as well as her short films “Dumpy Goes to the Big Smoke” and “Florence, Has Left The Building.” You may also recognize her from the hilariously cringe-worthy Vimeo classic “Spider” by Nash Edgerton.

In “Trespass,” which premiered at TIFF in 2016 and won the Erwin Radio Award for best Australian short at the Melbourne Film Festival, Foulkes wanted to create an atmosphere, unlike most thrillers. The protagonist, Rachel, walks her dog through the woods and comes across a young woman crying. Through the lingering details of the forest and sparse dialogue between the two, it’s difficult to get a clear read on the situation. Does this young woman need help? Should Rachel just continue on her way? “I was interested in the idea of trying to sustain the tension and suspense with as little hand-holding as possible for the audience,” she describes, “so that as a viewer, you’re almost having a parallel experience to the character Rachel.” As this tightly-wound interaction ends on an ambiguous note, we, the viewers, feel the same conflicted sense of worry and search for the same clues as Rachel. And that leaves us with the crux of the film: if you think someone is in trouble, do you try to help? Even if it means crossing boundaries that potentially shouldn’t be crossed?

A complex chick deals with a vanilla beau, a shitty brunch, and a dead coyote all in a Los Angeles day. There’s batshit crazy and then there’s good crazy…she fits somewhere in between.

A Comedy Drama Short film “Good Crazy” picks of the weeks by Staff Pick Premiere on @vimeo.

Director: Rosa Salazar

Screenplay: Rosa Salazar

Music director: Kevin Blumenfeld

Producer: Tobias Louie

Cast: Rosa Salazar, Jacob Wysocki, Graham Mackie, Matt Chute, Turen Robinson

It’s a word that flies out of our mouths in zillion different ways: CRAZY. There’s restraining-order crazy, elaborate-prom-posals crazy, a-trillion-views-on-Facebook crazy, grandma-just-got-a-sleeve-tattoo crazy, etc. In today’s vernacular, it’s kind of the every word and it’s often used to describe women, as the residue of ancient gender stereotypes still prevails in modern culture. Men should be the risk-takers, while women idly stand by and take care of a man should he fail. When a woman steps outside of these boundaries, it’s easy (and lazy) to label her as one of the “crazy” ones. In the case of this week’s Staff Pick Premiere “Good Crazy,” the behavior that a boyfriend perceives as exhaustingly excessive is his girlfriend’s perceived duty as a law-abiding, public-space-respecting, animal-loving human.

While partaking in very normal weekend activities with her average (read: vanilla/nice but boring) partner, Rosa goes above and beyond to make any disconcerting circumstance better even if she may appear to be outdoing herself. Ultimately, this Sundance 2017 short is about considering the intentions of those who go out of their way to turn a negative into a positive, no matter the results. About the main character’s particular brand of crazy in “Good Crazy,” director, writer, and star Rosa Salazar explain: “It’s about being a person who has an interesting code if you will. You see, there’s CRAZY crazy someone who is completely irrational and lacks the awareness to be a functional member of society. And then there’s GOOD crazy a person who fights the everyday injustices, a social crusader, often misunderstood and thus intimidating to others due to a severe case of ‘wokeness.’ Because women are by nature intuitive creatures, we possess that ‘wokeness’ and are unfortunately susceptible to being lumped in with the crazy crazies.”

I’m sure you’ve been there before standing on one end of the crazy spectrum, while, oblivious to you, a witness to your behavior thinks you’ve taken a one-way ticket to crazy-town. If so, you may identify with the sweet, harmless motives of Rosa in “Good Crazy,” and the comical train wreck that ensues.

Teen Andrea uses a male stripper to gain the respect and admiration of cool girl Daphne. Hot Seat, which is based on a true story, explores coming-of-age sexuality and the complexities of relationships between teen girls.

Director: Anna Kerrigan

Writer: Anna Kerrigan

Stars: Jess Gabor, Carmela Zumbado, Byron Quiros

Screenplay: Anna Kerrigan

Producers: Ashley Springer, Kati Rediger, Anna Kerrigan

Ask anyone you know about their first sexual experience and you’re bound to get a broad range of answers that, in different measure, include some confusion, awkwardness, and hilarity. Throw in high school insecurities and teenage friendships, and you get the tried-and-true recipe for countless Hollywood films. These coming-of-age stories are so ubiquitous that we can usually spot them from a mile away. Most often, they are about a young boy and a defining sexual experience that suddenly jolts him into manhood. And, let’s be real, they are most likely directed by men.

Which brings us to Anna Kerrigan’s “Hot Seat,” a refreshing and authentic take on burgeoning sexuality and female friendships, as it unfolds at an unusual 18th birthday party. Andrea, a shy wallflower, shows up at the party with a handmade friendship bracelet for Daphne, the cool birthday girl whose approval she is desperate to get. But the innocent party Andrea thought she was attending quickly escalates when the hired male stripper, Jonny Ca$h, shows up, pumping adrenaline into the room and testing the fragile teen ecosystem. Excited to push the boundaries of this new experience, the girls insist that Jonny Ca$h work overtime. But when his offer for a one-on-one performance on is met with reticence, it’s Andrea who seizes the moment to prove her friendship and sits on the “hot seat” with a captive audience.

Played by Jess Gabor in a breakout performance, Andrea is transformed into the queen of the party when a shocking event turns into a hilarious bonding experience. By placing a platonic relationship at the center of a sex-filled room, Kerrigan (creator of Staff Picked series The Impossibilities) draws from her own experiences and subverts expectations, allowing Andrea to feel empowered rather than victimized. “When you’re a teenager,” says Kerrigan, “you look to your peers to tell you how to feel about a moment.” Navigating these insecurities and knowing how to feel can be tricky for anyone, male or female, and “you don’t realize until later that the peers you idolized had no idea what they were doing either.” Based on her own true story, Kerrigan says she wanted to “capture the specific feeling of joyful, teen girl camaraderie and also to convey that it wasn’t really about the stripper’s relationship with us, it was about the relationships between us girls. He was really just a pawn.”