URL IRL: Tales from the Timeline

Peyton and Lyla are two preteen sisters and influencers who hawk fashion and beauty products to online fans from their home in rural Alabama. In a time of immense wealth disparity, influencer culture has created a more fantastical kind of American dream. What kid wouldn’t want a stream of likes and gifts, waking up to the feeling of, as their parents put it, “Christmas, every day”?

An anxious young man convinces himself he is dying after experiencing mysterious symptoms of panic. While searching for an anonymous outlet for his fears, he stumbles into an adult camming site, where he finds unlikely support from strangers.

When a chronically online music journalist encounters a global pop star’s latest effort at queerbaiting, he seizes the moment, turns on his camera, and expresses some choice words for the vapid musician and their fans. But as his social capital rises and the internet is set ablaze, he unknowingly traces a bold-faced arrowhead to his front doorstep, where the pop star’s overzealous fans show up to wreak havoc and seek retribution.

Filmed inside Virtual Reality (VR) and physically in Sweden, this short documentary portrays VR creator Hiyu facing kidney failure, capturing his online friend Photographotter traveling from New York City to Stockholm to be a live donor to Hiyu. Formed of poetic montages shot in real-time VR and intimate interviews, rooted in the expressive subculture of the VR furry community, the film reveals the sincerity of kindness between friends paralleled across realities.

A young Vietnamese teen spends all her time playing an online dancing video game with her anonymous friend, a user named "fried_fish_ball." Meanwhile, she hides away from her family, only coming out for meals and appearing generally nasty. Against the wishes of her one real friend, she decides to meet up with this person "IRL." But when the two meet, he is nothing like she imagined. The two best online friends struggle to find common ground in the real world.