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Screening of Czech Short Films 1 + Q&A: Fragile Inner Worlds
Tuesday, April 14, 19:00 – 21:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
EBB AND FLOW
Animation, Short, Student
Director: Živa Divjak
Czech Republic • 2025 • 3 min
A young couple's relationship is tested by their struggle to communicate. Set against imagery of shifting waters, the film explores their journey through conflict, emotional barriers, and moments of reconciliation, culminating in a narrative that begins and ends on tranquil blue waters.
IT WILL BE FINE
Animation, Short, Student
Director: Karolína Pravdová
Czech Republic • 2024 • 7 min
The short animated film To bude dobrý is a record of the internal struggle of the teenage daughter Karin with her mother's illness. The autobiographical story brings to the viewer two main themes that intertwine in the film: the existential anxiety of a young person resulting from the threat to his mother's life and the need to grow up prematurely and accept responsibility for taking care of his mother and running the household.
ADULTING
Short, Student
Director: Sumit Mandal
Czech Republic • 2024 • 10 min
10-year-old Ema is conflicted- she takes care of her sick grandmother, while an overturned truck intrigues her to check it out. Influenced by her friends, she eventually gives in, and leaves for the highway. However, grandmother falls critically ill- leaving Ema questioning her decisions and making a call on what to do next.
BETTER MAN
Animation, Documentary, Student, Short
Director: Eliška Jirásková
Czech Republic • 2024 • 6 min
Better Man is an animated documentary that explores the phenomenon of bodybuilding and examines the relationship fitness-oriented men have with their own bodies. Through interviews inspired by journalistic techniques, the film presents the stories of three men who use exercise as a way to cope with inner traumas that have often resulted in low self-esteem. Each protagonist started working out for differen reasons: one was bullied by classmates for being too skinny, another was pressured by his father to go to the gym to lose weight, and the third experienced domestic violence. All three started working out. All three built muscles.
MIND YOUR BODY
Animation, Short, Student
Director: Anna Rybecká
Czech Republic • 2025 • 8 min
Addiction is a terrible thing, especially when it causes the heroine to lose her mind.
AMNION
Documentary, Experimental, Short, Student
Director: Sarah Lomenová
Czech Republic • 2024 • 12 min
A short poetic film, Amnion, explores the hidden layers of intergenerational trauma passed down through familial ties, often beginning in the prenatal period. Just as the amniotic sac nourishes a growing life in the mother's belly, family history shapes our emotional landscape in ways we rarely perceive.
BEHIND THE BLUE
Documentary, Student, Short
Director: Viktorie Aldabagh
Czech Republic • 2025 • 21 min
The film follows Jindřiška, who has been diving tens of meters into the depths of the sea on a single breath since she was a little girl - always finding silence, peace, and joy there. But that sense of serenity has somehow faded, and so Jindřiška embarks on a journey to rediscover it - and, in doing so, to find herself.
CONVERSATIONS AND DREAMS
Experimental, Short, Student
Director: Melanya Hamasyan
Czech Republic • 2025 • 19 min
After a young woman dreams of her father’s death, a torrential fear begins to affect her everyday reality. She walks the landscapes of her father’s dreams and memories, imagining and inhabiting them, discovering fears in the turbulence of her father’s youth very much like her own.
Feature Film: My Father and Qaddafi + Q&A
Wednesday, April 15, 18:00 – 20:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
Documentary
Director: Jihan K
USA, Libya • 2025 • 88 min
In 1993, Mansur Rashid Kikhia, Libya's former diplomat and peaceful opponent to Qaddafi vanished in Cairo. His daughter Jihan investigates his disappearance while documenting her mother's 19-year search for truth.
Feature Film: Memory + Q&A
Wednesday, April 15, 20:00 – 22:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
Drama
Director: Vladlena Sandu
France, Netherlands • 2025 • 98 min
After her parents’ divorce, six-year-old Vladlena moves from Crimea to Grozny, not yet aware of the changes that lie ahead. When war breaks out in Chechnya, it deeply affects her city and family. Years later, filmmaker Sandu reflects on her childhood in this poetic, autobiographical hybrid film, exploring how cycles of violence shape children—and how healing and change are possible.
International Short Film Screening 1 + Q&A: Mutating Futures
Thursday, April 16, 18:00 – 20:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
BERLIN MANSON - AFD (FEAT. NOBODYLISTEN)
Music Video
Director: Petr Racek
2025 • 3 min
Music video for the title track AFD from the album Alternative für Disneyland
SOMETIMES A SOUL
Experimental, Short
Director: Marco Joubert
Canada • 2025 • 2 min
Constructed around selected passages from a Charles Bukowski poem, SOMETIMES A SOUL illustrates how recontextualizing archival material can lead to new, unusual resonances. Here, the presence of the contemporary technological ecosystem is only reservedly implied, yet this ghostly implication provides a background against which the poet's words acquire coarse relief, hinting at the sociological impact of technologically-induced human irrelevance.
DISTURBIA
Animation, Experimental, Short
Director: Mira Yankova
Bulgaria • 2025 • 6 min
Constructed around selected passages from a Charles Bukowski poem, SOMETIMES A SOUL illustrates how recontextualizing archival material can lead to new, unusual resonances. Here, the presence of the contemporary technological ecosystem is only reservedly implied, yet this ghostly implication provides a background against which the poet's words acquire coarse relief, hinting at the sociological impact of technologically-induced human irrelevance.
PSYCHONAUTS
Animation
Director: Niko Radas
Croatia • 2025 • 8 min
Leaving their human hosts, mental disorders take on anthropomorphic forms and find new refuges.
CHEW
Short
Director: Félix Dobaire
France • 2024 • 21 min
On a Saturday night, Céleste secretly sneaks into her older sister Marie’s party in disguise. Among the guests, a mysterious chewing gum begins to circulate, triggering strange transformations. Sticky lips, air bubbles under the skin, elastic bodies, and an overwhelming desire to merge — the party slowly turns into a nightmare.
LE MOUVEMENT TRAGIQUE DES SPHÈRES
Short
Director: Simon Rieth
France • 2026 • 12 min
The Tragic Movement of the Spheres is a mysterious object whose magic lies in revealing – through simple yet hypnotic images – nothing less than the cycle of life.
INANNA
Animation, Experimental, Short
Director: Dragos Badita
Canada, Romania • 2025 • 16 min
Inanna is a beautiful conceptual film. It is a piece of art and an animation utilizing original art, photographs, sculptures and paintings which are then transformed.
THE BENEATH
Short
Director: Lisette Vlassak
Netherlands • 2025 • 7 min
Haunted by pressure and self-doubt, young model Lone retreats to her garden, her only refuge from a world that consumes her. But when a mysterious underground creature begins destroying her sanctuary, Lone’s battle to save it forces her to confront something far darker than what lurks beneath the soil: herself.
LEIVALAUL (BREADSONG)
Short, Horror
Director: Katariina Aule
Estonia • 2025 • 16 min
“Breadsong” tells the story of a 19th century rural family, who discover a catchy song that is broadcasted from the future through the family children after they are accidentally fed some mouldy bread. It is a story about greed, and how gold fever can make a man blind to true treasures in life, eventually breaking a family.
Screening of Czech Short Films 2 + Q&A: After Dark Instincts
Thursday, April 16, 20:30 – 22:30 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
ECHOES OF THE FOREST NIGHT
Animation, Student, Short
Director: Sebastian Veselka
Czech Republic • 2024 • 9 min
Echoes of the Forest Night is a full of dreams autobiographical film telling the story of a bunch of friends that took place one summer night. Through his perspective, the author invites us into the circle of friendship, but also takes us into the depths of his mind, where he must face a mysterious dream journey from which there is no escape. The film celebrates friendship and the freedom of the human mind.
SAVAGES
Short, Student
Director: Daniel Dandul
Czech Republic • 2025 • 9 min
During a hot summer day at a quarry, primal instincts start to emerge inside the young teenagers.
BRAIDS
Short, Student
Director: Darja Miková
Czech Republic • 2024 • 14 min
Eight-year-old Majda is terrified of the dark, and summer camp feels like the scariest place in the world. The only comfort she finds is in the company of her older sister and her friend, who makes beautiful french braids. But when Majda gets lost in the woods as night falls, she must face her deepest fear to find her way back. As the darkness deepens, Majda sneaks through the campgrounds, hiding from the counselors and searching for the one person who always made her feel safe. Her sister. What will it take for Majda to find courage and overcome her fear?
DOG AND WOLF
Short
Director: Terézia Halamová
Czech Republic • 2025 • 20 min
Rudo is a 25-year-old stripper who has chosen to embrace a life of perpetual partying and sleep deprivation. As he navigates through the chaotic nightlife fueled by drugs and dance, memories of his ex-girlfriend Misha haunt him, reminding him of broken promises and lost connections.
VISITOR
Student, Short
Director: Vojtěch Konečný
Czech Republic • 2025 • 20 min
A young writer Jakub is being visited by an unknown man in his dreams. Jakub contacts his estranged sister and therapist Sara since she has the ability to enter his dreams. Through a strong audio-visual language, this mysterious film with horror elements explores the unpleasant experience with sleep paralysis.
ALAN
Animation, Student, Short
Director: Ivan Štrobl
Czech Republic • 2024 • 13 min
One day, Death arrives at the doorstep of an elderly gardener. Despite his best efforts to get rid of her she refuses to leave. She adores the lush greenery he carefully tends to. As their relationship takes unexpected turns, the gardener must ultimately come to terms with her presence.
International Short Film Screening 2 + Q&A:
Where Forests Remember
Friday, April 17, 17:30 – 19:30 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
ON WEARY WINGS GO BY
Animation, Short
Director: Anu-Laura Tuttelberg
Estonia, Lithuania • 2024 • 10 min
A wintry poem about the Nordic nature. The sun moves low and days get shorter. Birds fly South, porcelain animals and insects hide from the freezing wind and snow. Only a small porcelain girl wanders the abandoned landscape with no way out.
EYES OF THE FOREST
Short
Director: Anna Veisman
Estonia • 2025 • 25 min
In an isolated 18th-century Estonian village, Elo struggles to survive in a community that offers her neither safety nor kindness. Pious villagers fear the dark forests surrounding them, believing supernatural spirits lurk among the trees. But when Elo finds herself betrayed by those she once trusted, she begins to question who she should really be afraid of – unseen spirits in the woods or the people within the village.
EL PÜTÌ PÈRS
Documentary, Short
Director: Paolo Baiguera
Italy • 2025 • 13 min
In the woods of Fobbia, Claudio spends his days obsessively carving wood. Years earlier, his son vanished in that very forest. All that was ever found was a red T-shirt beneath a pine tree. Since then, Claudio has been uprooting trunks and shaping them, convinced his son is hidden within. Blurring the line between reality and fable, his story echoes a reversed tale of Pinocchio.
BORDER
Short
Director: Sasan Kaveh
Indonesia • 2025 • 10 min
The story follows a refugee with one dream in his mind: to cross the border. He carries his wife's corpse, seeking the border, but instead, he finds himself trapped in a vicious cycle within the forest. Exhausted and confused, his journey turns into a fight for survival when a mysterious hunter steals his wife's body, demanding that he abandon it in exchange for directions to the border. Using a strange concoction made from magic mushrooms, the man brings his deceased wife back to life, desperately clinging to his dream of reaching the border with her.
OUR OWN SHADOW
Short
Director: Agustina Sánchez Gavier
Argentina, Germany • 2024 • 20 min
The sky occults bad omens. Where nature is despised, people disappear, trees fall and the sun is devoured.
ENTROPY
Documentary, indigenous, Climate, Nature
Director: Inuk Jørgensen
Greenland • 2024 • 10 min
The vast Greenlandic ice sheet has been created over thousands of years but today climate change is threatening the close and sacred connection between the land moulded by ice and the Inuit who live there. Told from an Indigenous perspective the film celebrates Greenlandic mythology as much as it laments the nature we are all losing.
Feature Film: Clearing
+ Q&A with director Magdalena Ewa Pieta
Friday, April 17, 19:00 – 21:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN B • TICKETS
Fiction
Director: Magdalena Ewa Pieta
Poland • 2024 • 81 min
A young mother disappears on the slopes of the sacred Ślęża mountain, leaving behind a stroller with her baby. A police officer, a young husband and a retired clairvoyant try to reconstruct the last moments before her disappearance. A female police officer with a personal connection to sacred Mount Ślęża stands in for the missing wife.
Screening of Czech Short Films 3 + Q&A: Structures of Loss
Friday, April 17, 21:00 – 23:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
MUSHROOMS
Documentary, Experimental, Short, Student
Director: Theodora Pfeffermannová
Czech Republic • 2025 • 3 min
Mushrooms are all around us. Their communication, growth, and spread take place beyond our awareness. We are fascinated by their properties and forms, even though we often see only a small part of them, the part that grows above the ground. This short film is therefore dedicated to what we cannot see and what we can only imagine about mushrooms.
WHAT IF WE RUN OUT OF STONES?
Documentary, Experimental, Student, Short
Director: Nora Štrbová
Czech Republic • 2025 • 7 min
What if everything in the world were equal, with no distinction between the value of the living and the inanimate? Matter observes, feels, perceives, judges, and suffers us. It is our silent witness, sometimes more influential than we realize. The film seeks to explore this idea through its protagonists, the stones. It extends empathy toward them and metaphorically connects with everything marginalized in our world
FROM PLAY TO PLAY
Documentary, Short, Student
Director: Mikoláš Arsenjev
Czech Republic • 2025 • 8 min
This film was made out of curiosity and a desire to observe and hear how children play when adults do not control them. What games do they invent? What do they say to each other? And how do they reflect and understand the adult world around them?
MAKE A WISH AS THE CITY FALLS
Documentary, Short, Student
Director: Eliška Dobnerová
Czech Republic • 2025 • 8 min
The layering of memories of four witnesses takes shape as a self-ironic fossil of a town disappearing under the weight of coal mining. When home falls, what is it that we wish to preserve?
THE KITCHEN
Short, Student
Director: Valér Futej
Czech Republic • 2025 • 13 min
The static environment of the kitchen will be disrupted by the arrival of a young woman - a new cook, with her efforts to adapt to the strictly defined working conditions and fit into the settled routine. When she realizes that the mechanism is starting to put a high pressure on her and destroying her individuality, it will be too late to free herself from the system she became a part of.
EMPTY PLACES
Short, Student
Director: Vojtěch Novotný
Czech Republic • 2024 • 25 min
Fifteen-year-old Johana has been missing for months, and the police investigation is at a dead end. Desperate and unwilling to accept this hopeless situation, Johana's mother, Pavlína, turns to a psychic named Schwarz. Together, they embark on their own search, determined to follow every lead. Pavlína clings to hope, refusing to let it fade.
DEATH LIVES
Short, Student
Director: Lukáš Vacula
Czech Republic • 2024 • 27 min
The lives of five strangers are brought together by the environment of an Austro-Hungarian prison. The reasons for their arrest are various, but they share the same goal – to regain their freedom. They decide to escape together. However, the escape itself does not yet represent true freedom – the group must face fear, differing opinions, and often their own moral convictions. Their path is crossed by love, pain, and loss. In the end, freedom becomes not only their personal goal – they want to claim it for the people, for their nation, for their children.
International Short Film Screening 3 + Q&A:
Fragile Human Stories
Saturday, April 18, 16:00 – 18:00 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN A • TICKETS
NARA AND HER CAMERA
Short
Director: Jérémi Roy
Canada • 2025 • 7 min
In the small town of Holcá, in the Yucatán, 8-year-old Nara wanders through her hometown, guided by her curiosity and her new camera. As she films her surroundings, the ordinary becomes magical, and the act of looking turns into a playful, cinematic discovery.
GRANDPA HAS A BROKEN EYE AND MOM IS AN ADVENTURE
Animation, Documentary, Short
Director: Marita Mayer
Norway • 2025 • 8 min
“How can you think if you cannot speak?” Four kids, age 5 to 15, share their thoughts on aphasia and show us how they communicate and interact with someone, who has difficulties expressing themselves verbally.
LE MUR DU SON
Animation, Documentary, Short
Director: Antonio La Camera
Italy • 2025 • 12 min
In a vast empty gym, where silence weighs and light plays with long, elusive shadows, Iris and Lea play hide and seek. Time suspends, a plane approaches, and reality transforms.
THE SPECTACLE
Short
Director: Bálint Kenyeres
France, Hungary • 2025 • 17 min
A young Roma boy is lifted into the light, only to find it fades in an unexpected way.
MIRACLE OF CHRISTMAS
Short
Director: Jarno Harju
Finland • 2025 • 12 min
On Christmas Eve, Atte, a family man failed at life, has decided to end it all. However, an unexpected visitor arrives, bringing him a Christmas surprise.
MY PLASTIC MOTHER
Short
Director: Amar Haikal
Indonesia • 2025 • 19 min
Eki, living by the landfill, searches for a memento to honor his late mother. Battling the relentless rain, landslides, and looming threats from scavengers and machinery, he fears her memory could be lost beneath the waste forever.
THE MAGICIAN
Short
Director: Bogdan Muresanu
Croatia, France, Romania • 2025 • 24 min
Sulina, 1910. It is the inauguration of the first electric power station in this Romanian port city. In the jubilation of a modern and cosmopolitan crowd, Ilarion, a prestidigitator from another time, tries to play his last card.
Feature Film: Under the Grey Sky
+ Q&A with actress Aliaksandra Vaitsekhovich
Saturday, April 18, 17:30 – 19:30 • Kino Pilotů • SCREEN B • TICKETS
Drama
Director: Mara Tamkovich
Poland • 2024 • 82 min
A couple of journalists fight to remain true to themselves despite the repressions in suffocating Belarus after the protests of 2020. The film is inspired by the real life of a young journalist, Katsiaryna Andreyeva, who is currently serving her 8 years sentence in a Belarusian prison.