Red Bucket Films

This is a story about a real life brother and sister and their journey to the zoo. On their way, they accidentally pick up a hitchhiker.

The Safdie brothers repurpose reality television’s vocabulary of confrontation and cramped cinematography for a miniature study of urban maladies.

While escorting a group of children through New York City, a harried man loses hold of a bouquet of one hundred balloons. Among them, a single black balloon drifts free, seemingly lifeless, only to revive and embark on a strange journey through the city. Searching for companionship, it drifts among the highs and lows of human life, discovering both joy and despair along the way. Conceived as a children’s tale but emerging as a surreal urban fable, The Black Balloon follows the haunting odyssey of a balloon that longs to belong.

A lawyer and his secretary deal with their multiple clients.

A short film directed by Benny Safdie, with cinematography by Josh Safdie and produced under the Red Bucket Films collective.

Commissioned by fashion label Vena Cava, Josh Safdie’s short replaces a runway show with an eerie, late-1970s Los Angeles-inspired tale about a women’s cult; it premiered online in November 2012.

John is a lonely man who wanders through the city, encountering various acquaintances of differing temperaments. Though he crosses paths with many people, some simply prefer not to be bothered with him.

A graffiti art film by vandal, Katsu. The film sees Katsu reproduce his famous skull tag over and over again, growing in scale in powers of 10 from a grain of rice to the roof of a building.

After months of living a solitary existence, Lenny, 34, picks up his kids from school. Every year he spends a couple of weeks with his sons Sage, 9, and Frey, 7. Lenny hosts his kids within a midtown studio apartment in New York. During these two weeks, he must figure out if he wants to act as their father or be their friend. Ultimately, their trip upstate results in complete lawlessness taking over their lives.

Commissioned by Northwest Film Forum’s One-Shot program, this Safdie short trails two street hustlers working a “cold” con in downtown Seattle, observing the quick pitch, misdirection, and payoff with lean, street-level immediacy.

A short film by Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, & Alex Kalman.

Co-directed by Benny and Josh Safdie, this deadpan mock-documentary follows Ralph Handel, a buttoned-down office worker who spends his nights bombing on the open-mic circuit. Staged as cinéma vérité that edges into performance art—Safdie performed the disastrous sets in real clubs—the film channels Andy Kaufman’s anti-comedy and the self-reflexive diary mode of David Holzman’s Diary to sketch a sly portrait of a life quietly coming undone.

When her station wagon conks out by a secluded house in the woods, a woman peers from the window and watches a string of peculiar goings-on next door. Josh Safdie’s 11-minute short turns a simple breakdown into a quietly absurd, deadpan set-piece.

A film crew trails Philbert Powell through his morning, from the supermarket to his job at a video store. Along the way, he crosses paths with several individuals all named “Slater.” His interactions with them raise the central question: who, among those Slaters, is his friend? The narrative unfolds across a single morning, blending encounters and identity as Philbert’s journey reveals the shifting dynamics of connection.

This is the story of a man named Charles Riverbank, who, upon losing his home, wanders into various adventures (and a lot of dirty looks).

A man lives in a bathtub. He goes out for the day, then returns.

A 5-minute found-footage collage by Josh Safdie that overlays narration from an old Jacques Cousteau documentary about fighting elephant seals onto a broadcast of George Foreman vs. Evander Holyfield, reframing the prizefight as a nature spectacle and blurring lines between sports viewing and wildlife observation.

A short observational piece by Josh and Benny Safdie, Solid Gold follows a gold-painted “living statue” (performed by Benny Safdie) working the streets and subways of New York—a compact study of street performance and the struggle to be seen, featured online via NoBudge in 2013.

An early short film by Josh Safdie, co-written with Benny Safdie and featuring frequent collaborators including Sam Lisenco and Ariel Schulman. Running just over three minutes, it premiered at the 2006 New York Underground Film Festival.

Josh & Benny Safdie, Alex Kalman, and Factory 25 present this feature-length program of found moments from the everyday—films that showcase the wonder, beauty, sadness, love, aggression and magic that goes unnoticed on the hectic streets of NYC and elsewhere.