Medina native brings dark short film ‘Hide’ home to CIFF

For a Medina native, having a film in the Cleveland International Film Festival is a triumphant homecoming on many levels.

“Selfishly, it’s my hometown, it’s where I’m from and one I’ve always wanted to get into,” said Los Angeles-based filmmaker Justin Kohlas of his latest project, the short film “Hide,” which will be screened April 16-17 at the Cedar Lee and Allen theatres as part of the festival’s after-hours shorts program.

“Another thing is a lot of people back home, even my own family, don’t understand what I do,” said Kohlas, 35. “It sounds like I am a carnival worker.”

No doubt the results of Kohlas’ work over the better part of the past decade are far more recognizable than his actual title.

A Medina High School graduate, Kohlas left the media production program at the University of Akron after one year to enroll in Ohio University’s acclaimed film program, where he said he came to realize filmmaking can be a marketable skill with true career potential.

Moving to Los Angeles after graduation, Kohlas found work at a visual effects company working mainly on commercials.

“I wanted to be doing TV and film,” he said.

A trip home for the holidays in the winter of 2013 proved to be just the break Kohlas was looking for.

“A friend I went to college with asked me, ‘You’re from Medina, right? There is a movie being shot there now,’” he said.

Snagging a gig as an assistant on the film “Fear Clinic,” starring “Nightmare on Elm Street”’s Robert Englund, the opportunity also led to a connection with the executive director of “NCIS: Los Angeles.” Kohlas was hired as an assistant and later became a writer on the show for the remainder of its 14-year run.

When the COVID-19 pandemic, a yearlong writers strike and CBS’ resulting cancellation of “NCIS: Los Angeles” in 2023 found Kohlas out of work for the first time in several years, he said he put his new free time to good use.

“(I decided) I have to make stuff happen,” he said, adding that the nature of the filmmaking business demands creatives “keep working” no matter their employment status.

Kohlas began writing and pitching scripts independently, eventually forming his own production company, KimberMark – named in honor of his mother and father and specializing in development, production and intellectual property adaptations – in late 2024.

He said the genres of his currently in-the-works projects are “all over the place,” including the psychological horror of “Hide”; the true-life adventure of “The Ledge: An Adventure Story of Friendship and Survival on Mount Rainier,” which Kohlas and Oscar-winning “Free Solo” producer Evan Hayes are developing for film; and “…And Then She Was Gone,” based on the novel “The Moonlight Child” by Karen McQuestion, starring Kohlas’ “NCIS” colleagues Daniela Ruah and Natalia del Riego and set to begin production this fall.

“The goal of that one is to film it in Northeast Ohio,” Kohlas said of “…And Then She Was Gone.”

“Hide,” which made its debut at Screamfest in Los Angeles and Nightmares Film Festival in Columbus last year, also draws on real life, Kohlas said, albeit in a much more sinister and unnerving arena.

“I read a Guardian article about people who participate in ‘consensual cannibalism’ – volunteering themselves to be eaten and [also] eating parts of themselves,” Kohlas said of the concept behind the movie, which he called his first attempt at “just making something” from scratch in the midst of script pitches and IP development projects.

Kohlas said “Hide” plays on this societal oddity to create a storyline that may not be as far-fetched as some would like to believe, whereby the boredom of the uber-rich leads them to an appalling new pastime. The movie’s plotline finds a desperate domestic maintenance worker attempting to rob his employer, then becoming trapped inside the house when the owners return home to host a consensual cannibalism “party.”

Kohlas said while “Hide” is his first foray into a genre he is mostly unfamiliar with, he hopes the film festival screenings stir interest in a full-length production of the film.

“It’s kind of a running joke in filmmaking that horror is the ‘theme parks’ of the industry – they always work,” he said with a laugh.

“Hide” will be screened during the Cleveland International Film Festival “After Hours Shorts” program April 16 from 9:30-11:33 p.m. at Cedar Lee 5 Theatre, 2163 Lee Road; and April 17 from 10:10-11:53 p.m. at the Playhouse Square Allen Theatre, 1407 Euclid Ave.

For tickets or more information, visit https://www.clevelandfilm.org/films/hide-2026/.