Now in its fifth season of sharing thought-provoking cinema to small towns and rural communities all over North America, Wandering Reel Traveling Film Festival returns to Whidbey Island for the second year, bringing a new collection of award winning short films from around the world.

Once again, The Clyde Theatre hosts this year’s festival, which features three nights of inspiring short films. Films start at 7:30 p.m. each day, Tuesday, Nov. 5 through Thursday, Nov. 7. Tickets are $7 for adults and $5 for students and seniors.

The Clyde Theatre is located at 213 First Street, Langley. Each screening will be followed by Q&A discussion with festival director, Michael Harrington.

Wandering Reel is a traveling short film festival with a focus on bringing meaningful films to communities with limited or no access to compassionate, thought-provoking cinema. WRTFF strives to engage its audience in deeper conversation about the role of cinema, and how films can relate to community, conscious living, and contribute to making the world a stronger and more unified place.

This year, the festival features 26 short films divided into four different themed programs that explore some of the most important topics of our time, including: corporate greed, the climate crisis, the refugee crisis, immigration, and how we interpret and reinterpret history in the modern age, as well as more everyday life happenings in youth culture, our relationships, love, gender and more.

Each film is chosen based on its merit of telling a powerful story, then programmed with films that, together, are an integral part of a larger story, represented in the theme of the program.

For the second year in a row, the festival proudly features a line-up of films feature a majority of female filmmakers, a sign that, according to festival director, Michael Harrington, “short films are once again ahead of the pack and paving the way for innovation and true gender equality in the film industry.”

Wandering Reel was not only conceived as a way to give a longer life to important short films, but a way to bring communities together through a shared experience, in this case, the shared experience of cinema.

For this reason, Michael Harrington leads a Q&A discussion after each screening to deepen the experience and provide information about how and why the films were made.

“Short films don’t necessarily answer all the questions for the viewer and often times are made to inspire questions,” Harrington said. “I’m more of a facilitator of these conversations. The best screenings always end with me learning something from the audience about the films we just watched, not just the other way around.”