5 Ways I Didn't Marry You
About the Film
In five parallel universes, Bernadette does not marry her lover. Watch her relate with a different lover in every universe and navigate a relationship that does not end in marriage. No two relationships are the same and not every universe involves a proposal. The film wrestles with questions like, what is the value of marriage? What makes for a happy, successful marriage? Or a happy, successful relationship? How do our smaller choices impact the outcome of a relationship? How do our relationships shape the people we become?
Director: Tom Dunn
Producers: Christine Stoddard Sanchez, Aaron Gold, Jacob Serlen
United States // 2025 // Romance, Comedy, Drama // Los Shorts
15 minutes
About the Filmmaker
Christine Stoddard is a broadcaster, filmmaker, and storyteller named one of Brooklyn Magazine’s Top 50 Most Fascinating People. Currently, she works in local news as a reporter and multimedia journalist at a TV station in Northern California. She co-hosts "Don't Mind If I Don't," a comedy web series with Aaron Gold, and running Quail Bell, an award-winning boutique studio for her films and other creative projects.
Stoddard's feature-length art film, “Sirena’s Gallery,” is distributed by Summer Hill Entertainment and streaming on Amazon, Tubi, and other platforms. She is also known for authoring the critically-acclaimed play "Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares” and books such as Heaven Is a Photograph and Desert Fox by the Sea.
"Shanda," co-written with Aaron Gold, is her latest short film; it's currently in post-production, with a Seed&Spark campaign here. Stoddard collaborated with director Tom Dunn on the narrative shorts “5 Ways I Didn’t Marry You." The artsy rom-com premiered at the New York Shorts International Film Festival and won an editing award from the NYWIFT/iWomanTV Festival. "Canarsie Pier," a collaboration with director Jacob Maximillian Baron, premiered at the Big Apple Film Festival's Women's Spotlight and is continuing its festival circuit.
As director, her short film “De Colores (Chorus of Melancholy)” won Best Experimental Project at the Latino Film Market, while her short “Bottled” was nominated for Best ‘Short’ Short at the New York Long Island Film Festival and was a finalist in the JCAL 10-Minute Film Festival. Her short documentary, “Brick City Renaissance,” was a semi-finalist screened for the Newark Reel Stories Challenge, curated by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.
