This post was updated Oct. 6 at 7:49 p.m.

UCLA alumni are setting the stage for efficacious storytelling through short films.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, PBS SoCal’s annual FINE CUT festival of films showcases student films from across Southern California and provides networking opportunities for participants. The festival featured UCLA alumni Giovanna Molina, the winner of the narrative short films category, and Shruti Parekh, a finalist in the same category. Angela Boisvert, PBS SoCal’s senior director of production and the executive producer of FINE CUT, said the prizes’ aim is to fuel emerging student filmmakers for following projects.

[Related: UCLA graduate student Abigail Alonso weaves Native American stories into animation]

“In this line of work, it’s very common to be rejected from things or to have your films not be championed,” Molina said. “So when you do get moments like this, where your films are put together and curated among other great filmmakers in the area, it’s very rewarding and encouraging.”

Parekh said her showcased short film, “Esperanza,” was inspired by her time working as a video journalist covering the surge of immigrants crossing the border from upstate New York to Quebec to claim asylum. The film follows an immigrant taxi driver who drives a couple without legal immigration status to the Canadian border, creating tension between the trio and raising critical questions about the American Dream. Parekh said she hopes viewers are left with critical questions about the immigration system after watching. As a daughter of Indian immigrants, she said she is familiar with immigrant stories and was able to add a personal layer to the film.

“A lot of the taxi drivers were immigrants and were facing this confusing situation of having to follow some U.S. (United States) Border Patrol protocols in order to not get in trouble – and then also putting the people they were taking to the border at risk,” Parekh said.

Fellow alumnus Molina’s award-winning short film, “Hickey,” is a coming-of-age story about three sisters battling for their father’s approval in an Evangelical community in rural Oregon. Prior to production, Molina said she researched and interviewed women in the purity culture movement – which emphasizes sexual abstinence – for several years to make sure her characters were accurately represented in her script. Further, Molina said she chose to shoot the entire film in Oregon to effectively convey the town’s political values and the size of the community. The film’s team worked to involve community members and also recruit actors from Oregon cities, such as Redmond and Prineville, in order to ground the project in its roots, she added.

Although shooting on location proved difficult, Molina said that by the end of filming, the crew had formed sentimental relationships that helped make the production worthwhile. She added that because she values authenticity and wanted to raise awareness about the theme of the film, PBS was a strong platform to showcase her work, as it has an educational focus that supported her growing up.

These efforts to ground her short film in the setting it was inspired by came through on the big screen, as Boisvert said “Hickey” stood out as a well-executed period piece for its art direction and wardrobe. She added that when student films are a thesis, they are often a spec script or film written with the goal of being turned into a feature, but “Hickey” overcame this barrier and proved to be a complete story to the FINE CUT judges.

“For ‘Hickey,’ the characters had a really good arc from start to finish. You felt a completed story,” Boisvert said. “We really look for those really contained stories.”

Boisvert said the festival judges keep in mind the relevance of the stories being told and the uniqueness of each film submission. They also look for fresh ways of storytelling in diverse styles, Boisvert added, and “Esperanza” stood out to her as a film that depicted people, immigration and family in a way she hadn’t seen at FINE CUT before.

For “Hickey,” Molina said she hopes her film will portray the possibility of moving forward from troubling situations, especially for young women. She added that she hopes viewers who are unfamiliar with the film’s subject matter can understand the emotional turmoil that comes with growing up with restrictive abstinence education.

“When I was coming up with my film and listening to a lot of women’s stories, I felt such a strong responsibility to address the subject matter and raise awareness of something that’s happening in a small community but should be talked about,” Molina said.

[Related: Students collage creative works, career opportunities through UCLA film festival]

“Esperanza” aired Wednesday and “Hickey” will air Oct. 23 on the PBS app and the PBS SoCal website. Parekh added that she grew up watching PBS, like Molina, and is grateful to have her film broadcast and streamed on an accessible platform where audiences can respond to it – something that was one of her goals during production.

“By the end, I was like, ‘I feel like I’ve gone through battle and somehow made it,’” Parekh said. “I think that happens a lot with films – student films, indie films, films that don’t have a lot of money – and crew and cast are all putting in their all to make everything happen, and everyone’s multitasking. And that’s for the love of it.”