Raif Kendrick makes films.
Raif Kendrick writes, directs, and edits short films in New York City, and he has released one every week since January 2026. He makes comedies about an obsessive subway worker and teleporting phones, a one-minute thriller made at Prague Film School that flips the damsel-in-distress script (Bench, over 100K views and counting), and documentaries about Harlem, the neighborhood he watches change on his way to school. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture commissioned him to film its Junior Scholars music program and direct a music video, LUCHA. When he isn't behind a camera, he writes poetry and draws.
Every new film goes up first on his Instagram, which you can find below, as well as Raif's resume.
More about Raif
Raif Kendrick's films often start from a question about who holds the power in a scene.
In Bench, a thief snatches a girl's phone, softens at her tears, and then learns she was working him the whole time. Raif wanted to throw out the damsel-in-distress archetype and make the seemingly powerless character the most ruthless one in the room.
That impulse to overturn the audience's assumptions runs through his comedies too. In Doomscrolling, a phone teleports to hunt down a boy who only wants to study.
His documentaries look the other way, toward people whose stories get passed over. Harlem follows a high school student describing a neighborhood losing its history to new construction. Desi lets a little boy hand out life advice while walking dogs.
Junior Scholars, commissioned by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, captures a youth music program as a place where teenagers feel safe enough to express themselves.
Raif writes, directs, and edits nearly everything he makes, and since January 2026 he has released a new short every week. The pace forces economy. At WriCampia he came up with Rocks, a film about loneliness, on the spot, then shot and edited it in a few hours.
What holds the body of work together is attention. Whether the subject is a mother's morning coffee or the MTA, Raif treats the ordinary as worth a closer look.
