New American Voices continues with a glimpse at life in the suburbs, where skaters run amok in search of weed and sneakers.

A down-and-out weed dealer has all of his product stolen alongside his beloved Nike Galaxy Foamposites in this wild short from Aidan Sullivan. Shot in suburban New Jersey with a cast of non-professional actors, Galaxies boasts a lived-in dimension that amplifies the borderline surreal tribulations its central character must face.

With a pounding electronic score and frenetic camerawork, Galaxies transforms a simple plot about teenage recklessness into an alarming wake up call about the state of aimlessness that permeates across suburban America. Genuine in its depiction of what kids get onto behind closed doors and outside their parents’ homes, Sullivan’s film relishes in its characters’ bad behavior, whether it involves spinning lies to hit a dab pen or stealing shoes to avoid getting beat up.

“Galaxies was a true labor of love, crewed on by a group of unpaid friends, who spent weeks sleeping on the floor of my parent’s New Jersey home. We shot in and around my home-town, with a cast of non-professionals pulled out of the local skatepark, with nothing but the promise of being in a movie. I wanted to explore a world that felt hyper-specific and totally universal, through the lens of a character both alienated from and deeply connected to the culture of suburban life in modern America, ultimately exploring the set of contradictions that drive someone to put on a pair of Galaxy foamposites in the morning.” AIDAN SULLIVAN

Galaxies, like a lot of independent American films of late, bears the influence of the Safdie Brothers’ cinematic language, as well as their interest in madcap stories of grift and survival in present-day America. But, more pertinently, Sullivan has worked with the Safdies at Elara and Central Pictures, taking the lessons imparted unto him in new directions and creating a feverish dog-eat-dog world all of his own.

Aidan Sullivan is a filmmaker from New Jersey. Spurred by a life-long love of movies, he picked up a camera at the age of 11 and started forcing his friends to act in a series of shorts that were uploaded to YouTube for nobody to see. He dropped out of college and snuck his way into an internship at Central Pictures, where he found mentors and sage-like guidance. He’s currently developing his first feature film with Central.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Aidan Sullivan.