Electric Youth on a Wild Ride: “Dizzy” Wins Best Short of November 2025 at IndieX Film Fest

The November 2025 edition highlights stories that explore the ties between memory, identity, and transformation. From youthful rebellion to intergenerational bonds and psychological isolation, this month’s selections reveal how people navigate change — and what they hold on to when the world shifts around them.

Among the top honorees, Dizzy by Zac La Roc (USA) captures the reckless freedom and emotional charge of adolescence, Aasmani by Sayani Gupta (India) reflects on love and resilience through the bond between a woman and her beloved car, and Lottie by Bella Rieth (USA) offers a haunting portrait of desire and disconnection in 1970s New England.

Together, these films embody the essence of IndieX Film Fest: distinctive voices, bold emotion, and an honest search for meaning within life’s quiet and chaotic moments.

In a haze of neon, nostalgia, and reckless abandon, Zac La Roc’s Dizzy has taken the top honor of Best Short of November 2025 at IndieX Film Fest. Set against the backdrop of a dystopian suburbia where rebellion and friendship collide, the film bursts with the chaotic energy of youth in freefall — a hallucinatory odyssey through one unforgettable night in the San Fernando Valley.

A Trip Through the Valley

The story follows Dylan and Lizzy, best friends who share a restless craving for escape. One impulsive decision — to steal her mother’s boyfriend’s car and drop acid — spirals into a nine-hour adventure of freedom, danger, and self-discovery. As they tear through the night, the two young women navigate the blurry line between thrill and consequence, fear and euphoria. “Life’s a trip,” the film reminds us, “so enjoy the ride.”

Led by Hannah Kepple (Cobra Kai) and Sydney Taylor (American Vandal), the duo’s chemistry propels the narrative with raw authenticity. Their effortless bond anchors a story that feels both anarchic and deeply human.

Behind the Wheel: Zac La Roc’s Vision

A seasoned writer-director who has spent nearly 25 years in the film industry, Zac La Roc grew up surrounded by cinema. Raised in Los Angeles, he was introduced to the craft by his stepfather, a location scout, and later mentored by Nick Cassavetes, who also produced Dizzy. Drawing inspiration from the DIY grit of independent filmmaking, La Roc channels his trademark philosophy: “Take some risks, tell some jokes, push the limits. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s fear.”

Shot over just three nights on a $30,000 budget, Dizzy captures that fearless spirit. Co-written with Olivia Allen, the film grew out of a late-night conversation about life before smartphones — an era when risk and spontaneity defined teenage rebellion. What began as a nostalgic reflection evolved into a cinematic time capsule — part memory, part mirage.

“We wanted to tell a story that accurately depicts what it felt like growing up in the Valley in the mid-’90s,”La Roc explains. “The untamable spirit of youth is universal — regardless of gender, race, or generation. We just wanted it to feel real.”

Realism, Stylized and Supercharged

Influenced by filmmakers like Penelope Spheeris, Harmony Korine, Spike Jonze, and Mathieu Kassovitz, La Roc threads the needle between documentary immediacy and stylized fiction. The result is a sensory jolt — equal parts chaotic, candy-coated, and emotionally charged. Beneath the noise and color lies a wistful meditation on friendship, risk, and the vanishing innocence of adolescence.

A New Cult Classic in the Making

Dizzy stands as a testament to collaboration and creative daring — a whirlwind of light, sound, and attitude that redefines the teen-rebellion genre for a new generation. With its sharp dialogue, electric performances, and kinetic energy, the film has solidified its place among the year’s standout achievements at IndieX Film Fest.

By receiving this award, Dizzy advances to the 2026 IndieX Film Fest Annual Awards in Los Angeles.

Additional Standout Winners – November 2025 Awards of Excellence

Skybound Devotion — Aasmani by Sayani Gupta (India)

There’s a quiet kind of magic in Sayani Gupta’s Aasmani — the story of a woman and her car, bound not by nostalgia but by shared existence. Smita, a spirited woman in her sixties, has spent her life behind the wheel of her powder-blue Fiat, affectionately named Aasmani — the very color of the sky that once promised her freedom. As time wears on and the pressures of practicality close in, Smita and her precocious granddaughter Tiya set out to protect the car that has become family, memory, and metaphor all at once. What unfolds over the course of 34 minutes is a tender, intergenerational adventure — humorous, melancholic, and deeply human — about holding on to what keeps us alive.

Led with exquisite grace by Revathy Asha as Smita and Daria Bedi as Tiya, Aasmani blends naturalism and warmth with cinematic polish. The film’s modest intimacy belies its impressive budget of $150,000 USD, which Gupta uses to craft a detailed, living world — one where sunlight, silence, and steel all tell stories of their own. For Gupta, one of India’s most versatile and fearless actors, Aasmani marks a remarkable debut as writer and director. Known for her powerful performances in Margarita with a Straw, Article 15, and the groundbreaking series Four More Shots Please, she brings the same empathy and insight to her work behind the camera, sculpting characters that breathe, argue, and dream in ways both familiar and surprising.

“Aasmani is my love letter to the women who raised me,” Gupta explains. That affection is evident in every frame — from Smita’s quiet defiance to Tiya’s bright curiosity, from the faded blues of the car to the laughter that lingers even as time threatens to move on. With its heart full of nostalgia and its gaze fixed firmly on the present, Aasmani becomes a celebration of companionship, freedom, and resilience. It’s a story about two women and one car — but also about everyone who’s ever refused to let go of what once made them feel infinite.

Fractured Innocence — Lottie by Bella Rieth (USA)

In Bella Rieth’s haunting psychological drama Lottie, the quiet unease of 1970s New England becomes the landscape of a young girl’s unraveling. Fifteen-year-old Lottie lives in a muted world of suburban stillness until a pizza delivery boy ignites her imagination — and, with it, her descent into obsession. What begins as a flicker of adolescent desire soon blurs into something darker: a fragile mind bending under the weight of isolation, fantasy, and longing. Lottie captures this spiral with a delicate precision, rendering the interior world of a teenager’s psyche as both beautiful and terrifying — a place where love, fear, and madness intertwine.

Led by Megan Oysen in a striking, vulnerable performance, Lottie balances realism and dreamlike distortion through a masterful visual language. Rieth draws on motifs of The Yellow Wallpaper, reinterpreting Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s timeless story through a modern lens of repression and self-erasure. The film alternates between voyeuristic wides — cold, detached, almost invasive — and bursts of handheld Super 8 footage that feel like fragments of Lottie’s own memory. The result is an immersive, unsettling portrait of a mind that drifts between what is real and what is imagined, underscored by a sound design that hums with the tension of a mind coming undone.

As both writer and director, Bella Rieth brings a rare blend of sensitivity and formal control to her storytelling. Known for her earlier works like Poor Creature, Rieth continues to explore the fragile boundaries of identity, memory, and psychological transformation. With Lottie, she invites the audience not to judge but to witness — to stand at the threshold of a soul slipping away and feel the discomfort of empathy. The film doesn’t offer resolution, only resonance — a lingering sense that we’ve glimpsed something private and irreversible. Lottie stands as a poignant, unnerving meditation on adolescence, perception, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive the dark.