Every January, the festival, now celebrating its 30th year, showcases independent feature and short films from around the world.

Out of this year’s record-breaking 8,161 submissions, only 66 short films were selected for the program. Every day from Jan. 19-25, “Funnel” will screen before director Joe Swanberg’s feature film “Happy Christmas,” starring Lena Dunham (HBO’s “Girls”) and Anna Kendrick (“Pitch Perfect”). 

Hyland’s seven-minute short film, shot entirely around Cincinnati, follows a man on his quest across town for a funnel after his car breaks down. Hyland refers to the journey as a “fantastically mundane adventure”, but one that everyone can relate to.

“Everybody, more or less, has had a time when their car broke down, or they’re sitting around waiting for the bus, or they’re waiting for a ride, or they’re just caught in some like, mundane, slightly miserable daily experience,” says Hyland. “It’s a moment you could have had when you were in seventh grade and one you could have now.”

Before he entered seventh grade, Hyland was already making movies. At age 10, he started experimenting with a video camera. 

“We (Hyland and his siblings) used to make this series called 'Batman and Reuben,' and I was Reuben. It was kind of like a bootleg Robin, and he was out of shape and rude,” says Hyland. 

In high school, Hyland used VCRs to edit videos in his room. His desire to create something forced him to learn how to do everything. His do-it-all work habits served him well once he entered the Fine Arts program at UC’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning in 1998 where he focused on electronic art. 

Hyland had a lot of creative freedom at DAAP, particularly in Advanced Electronic Art, a studio course he took several times with associate professor and fine arts chair Charles Woodman. 

“It was pretty much you propose a project, and then you were basically graded on if you could pull that off or not, which I thought was really good because it left everything to your own devices,” says Hyland. “With any creative endeavor, if you don’t do it, it’s just not going to get done.” 

Professor Woodman remembers Hyland for his gifted storytelling and “weird work sense of humor.” His favorite project by Hyland was “The Straw Scratcher,” a short film about a man who discovers music by sliding his straw up and down in a to-go cup. Hyland directed and starred in the film. 

“But that was really always sort of Andre’s style,” Woodman adds. “He wanted to be the star of the movie and write the movie and direct the movie. He was always kind of a multifaceted guy.”

During his time at UC, Hyland made videos for more than Woodman’s class.  “Even when I didn’t have a class, I would borrow one of the cameras from the library during the summer so I could still keep shooting stuff,” Hyland says. 

He was also a regular contributor to local art shows and film festivals. 

After completing the Fine Arts program in 2002 (though he didn’t formally receive his degree), Hyland moved to New York City to pursue a career in comedy film and television. Eventually, he moved back to Cincinnati and worked at Adriatico’s Pizza for about a year before finally moving to Los Angeles, where he has lived for the past nine years.

In LA, Hyland has become a regular at comedy venues, doing live performances and exhibiting his films. He has created several television pilots and was a series regular on Fuel TV’s sketch comedy show “Stupid Face”. 

It was during a visit to Cincinnati last January when Hyland wrote and filmed “Funnel” with the film’s cinematographer, Shane Johnston, his brother-in-law. Hyland wrote the outline for “Funnel” during a church service he attended with his family just days before shooting. 

“I don’t really go to church, but every time at this Christmas service, it’s become a tradition almost, me and my siblings just kind of like zone out and doodle on our programs,” Hyland says. “I wrote the outline for this short on this program for the Christmas service, and then we shot it just a few days later.”

He and Johnston shot the entire film in places like Kenwood and Milford over the course of just one day. Hyland knew then that he wanted to submit “Funnel” to festivals, but it was television veteran and comedian Bob Odenkirk (“Breaking Bad”) that gave him the push to Sundance.

Hyland and Odenkirk met through Hyland’s manager about five years ago. In 2010, Odenkirk executive-produced and co-created Hyland’s first Comedy Central pilot, “The Untitled Andre Hyland Project.” The two have been collaborating together ever since. 

After seeing an early rough cut of “Funnel,” Odenkirk lent his name to the project and encouraged Hyland to submit it to Sundance and other festivals. Sundance was the first festival to accept his submission. 

Hyland hopes that having his film in the festival leads to more recognition and, ultimately, more work. He recently completed a feature screenplay about two “knuckle heads” who find themselves on a metro bus odyssey. If everything goes well at Sundance, he could make that screenplay a reality. 

“I don’t expect anything overnight of course, but hopefully it will open up more opportunities,” Hyland says.

The week-long festival, however, isn’t all opportunities for Hyland.  “I want to just enjoy the festival and just sort of soak it in,” he says. “A lot of times I feel like when you accomplish something ... you don’t actually take that time to enjoy that crossing of a hurdle, so I want to be conscious of enjoying it.”

He also hopes to screen “Funnel” and his other work in Cincinnati one day. In the meantime, his friends and family can watch “Funnel” and 14 of the other selected short films on YouTube, a sponsor of the Sundance short films program. 

Elizabeth DePompei is a UC journalism student and writing intern with UC Magazine.