CZECH SELECTION 1

59th Second
Category: Documentary, Experimental, Short
*Student film
Director: Kateryna Ruzhyna
Czech Republic • 2024
This experimental film takes a closer look through the entomologist's lens at the cyclical behavioural patterns linking humans to the insect world. Just as the fig wasp inevitably finds death in the pollination of the fig tree flower, we too are thrown into the dance of passion and death. Drawn by the seductive scent of allurement and the inevitability of the final end.

Asterion
Category: Documentary, Experimental, Short
*Student film
Director: Francesco Montagner
Czech Republic • 2022
Under the burning sun, a solitary bull awaits tireless, whilst a man jumps deep into the darkest waters of his persona, in their common attempt to defeat death.
In this silent visual poem, the massive body of a bull appears on the table of a meticulous taxidermist, having died in the hot sun in the middle of a bullfighting arena. Working with the body of an untamed animal, the man is inwardly transformed and finds in the animal's skin a way to cope with his own mortality and the transience of life.

Baby Jesus does not exist
Category: Short, Student
*Student film
Director: Filip Šperl
Czech Republic • 2024
Adult Vojta, wearing a magician's hat from his childhood, reconstructs how one Christmas, he doubted the existence of Baby Jesus (who brings presents in Czechia) and how his curiosity finally led him to a crushing discovery.

Home
Category: Animation
* First Time Director *Student film
Director: Yana Kadurina
Czech Republic • 2024
The film focuses on a woman, who undergoes a process of loss and alienation from her home, while depicting her longing for a place she belongs in. The movie conveys through symbolic and artistic motifs deeply intimate experience connected with the loss of home and past.

Picturam
Category: Short Experimental
* First Time Director *Student film
Director: Eva Rezová
Czech Republic • 2025
Short dance film inspired by da Vinci's Last Supper seasoned with a little bit of Rembrandt's style about life and death of Jesus and his apostles.

Rose in the Dark
Category: Short Film
*Student film
Director: Vojtěch Konečný
Czech Republic • 2022
A dark quiet basement and an ordinary sunny day behind its windows. A young woman enters the space and looks for her grandmother. The grandmother does not reply and keeps hiding. What is she doing down there? Is she hiding something? And is everything really the way it seemed at the very beginning?

Ruvja and Morena
Category: Short Document
*Student film
Director: Julie Slovencikova
Czech Republic
An intimate portrait of a girl's friendship beyond the grave stretches the interval between childhood and adulthood, play and seriousness, reality and fiction. In the edited documentary, photographs from home archives are interwoven with cameraless animation. The stream of images is carried by a lazily flowing river, into which the protagonists finally sink because it is warm.

Salsa Rueda
Category: Short film
* First Time Director *Student Film
Director: Katarína Nogeová
Czech Republic • 2024
Attractive dancers including Patrick and Jasmine, meet In the Latino club every night. But behind the passionate dancing the iconic couple have a relationship full of insecurities and arguments. Jasmine doesn't know if she's imagining things or if she's too blinded by love to recognize where it comes from.

Something You Don't Know About Me
Category: Short Film
* First Time Director *Student Film
Director: Kateřina Boušková
Czech Republic • 2023
It's a big day for Václav. Tonight he is going to show his mates at the bar a part of him, he has been hiding from them.

The Last Day of Kamil Krofta
Category: Short Film
*Student film
Director: Filip Liška
Czech Republic • 2024
The academic Kamil Krofta feels unappreciated and is preparing his protest. However, he keeps getting interrupted, and his last day at the faculty turns out differently than he originally planned.

Touching Darkness
Category: Short Animation
*Student film
Director: Jamaica Kindlová
Czech Republic • 2024
Ten-year-old Vítek has special abilities – he can feel and hear what others cannot. This animated documentary, made using the technique of sand animation, opens a door to his world and shows us that the absence of one sense doesn't have to be just an obstacle.
CZECH SELECTION 2
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Butterfly Girl
Category: Short document
*Student film
Director: Ema Hůlková
Czech Republic • 2024
Six-year-old Viktorka tries to understand the complex relationships in her family. At the same time, she prepares for her sibling to be born and the first day of school. Her optimism, playfulness and imagination help her overcome all challenges. The camera also adheres to the child's perspective, in which every day is full of small miracles.

Lights
Category: Short Animation
* First Time Director *Student Film
Director: Jitka Nemikinsová
Czech Republic • 2023
Lightbulbs are throwing a party for growing up flames to welcome them in the system that will let them shine and protect them. But one flames likes to play with fire and rebels against the system.
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The Longest Dream Lasts 45 Minutes
Category: Short Experimental/Documentary
*Student film
Director: Juliana Moska, Zdeňka Petrová
Czech Republic • 2023
A symphonic poem that explores what is not normally visible and tangible; our unconscious. It takes us through the dead landscape of memories and dreams where a granddaughter meets her forgetful grandmother. In what kind of world does she live, if with the next minute she forget what she has just said? When did you arrive, she asks. Maybe you never arrived.

Materials Mechanics
Category: Short Film
Student Film
Director: Liza Chakanava
Czech Republic
After Yana discovers that her best friend is trapped in the war in Ukraine, she is forced to question the moral compass of her own family. She visits her grandparents, who place more trust in Russian television and radio than in her personal experience. This intimate drama is based on the real-life experiences of families divided by the war in Ukraine.
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The Portrait of Irma Geisslová, Who Died Sad
Category: Short documentary
*Student film
Director: Kateřina Konrádová
Czech Republic
The film traces the afterlife of the rediscovered writer and pioneer of literary decadence Irma Geisslová (1855-1914), not through known facts, but through the intimate experience of five characters with Geisslová's work. The film is thus an image of the encounter of voices, words and gestures, albeit often quite banal, that inhabit the seemingly empty space left by the deceased author with a living human presence. The imaginary measure becomes the depth of touch of one small fate.
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Water Nymph
Category: Short Animation
* First Time Director *Student Film
Director: Lucie Vostárková
Czech Republic • 2024
Inspired by Slavic mythology and folklore, the film tells the story of the soul of a young woman reborn as Rusalka, a water nymph. Rusalka´s inability to accept her own fate and the desire for the warmth of the human heart lead her to the world of the living, to which, unfortunately, she is unable to adapt.
SHORT FILM
SELECTION
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Ab Absurdo
Category: Short Experimental
* First Time Director *Student Film
Director: Iris Peil
Estonia • 2023
Through pitchblack humor that’s born from a familiar absurdity of life’s situational satir ‘’Ab Absurdo’’ offers a sharp insight to the minds of somewhat intertwined inner worlds of two lonely individuals.
Former starlet Ada and protagonist Jonas land on an unexpected journey throughout life to search for meaning and relief to one’s existence. Throughout thirty-something years the pair seem to peek through the life on stage as well as road to death.

After Link
Category: Short XYZ
* First Time Director
Director: Catarina De Cèzanne
Portugal• 2024
At the peak of Summer, in a realm where circuits intertwine with consciousness, Martha and David question whether a menacing algorithm conceals the whispers of spirits, blurring the boundaries between technology and ethereal existence.

A Move
Category: Short Doc
Director: Elahe Esmaili
Iran • 2024
Elahe returns to her hometown in Mashhad, Iran, to help her parents move to a new place after 40 years. Influenced by the Woman-Life-Freedom movement, she's also hoping for a bigger move beyond just a new apartment.

At Gino's
Category: Short Film
Director: Christoph Otto
Germany • 2024
At Gino's we always drink one more glass and complain about what's wrong, because our fear of the big world has to go somewhere. This is nothing new, but it's still true. And usually an evening like that with Gino is enough for Tina, but today she would like a little more.

A Short Trip
Category: Short Film
Director: Erenik Beqiri
Albania • 2023
Klodi and Mira, a young Albanian couple, decide to marry Mira to a Frenchman for 5 years in exchange for money, in order to obtain French nationality. They will then have to choose the right husband for her, and learn to detach themselves from each other.

Chasing the Sun: El Shatt
Category: Short Doc
Director: Ana Bilankov
Croatia • 2023
The film touches on some historical facts about the largest refugee camp El Shatt in the Sinai desert in Egypt during the WWII, based on materials from Croatian and international archives and intertwined with the visuals of this desert non-place now. An attempt to reconstruct a fragmented memory of unknown history about migration in the Mediterranean as a transtemporal filmic journey.

Dori
Category: Short Film
Director: Redi Mazi
Albania • 2024
Dori is a 30-year-old boy with development disabilities.
He dreams of becoming an actor.
He knows by memory all Shakespeare plays, (he sings and dances Elvis Presley’s songs) and all his day is organized in function of possible meetings with producers, directors and actors who can introduce him in the theatre and film industry.
He is not taken seriously; he is even offended and at best finds people who feel sorry for him.
He does not give up if there is no role for him in the next play or movie, as he will wait for the one after.
And so, the days go by…
He lays down watching the starry ceiling reflected by the lamp in his bedroom, waiting for dreams taking him on the stage.

EarthWorm
Category: Short Experimental Film
Director: Phillip Barker
Canada • 2024
EarthWorm uses elements of dance, experimental film, and science fiction to create a modern cautionary tale. In the film we meet the extraterrestrial Sean, who arrives on Earth in 1924. Posing as a domestic labourer, he gets work at the Orphanage for Child Victims of the Industrial Revolution. We discover Sean’s mission is to slow down the progress of human technology. However, confronted with ‘Earth’s pointless gravity’, Sean’s body weakens and he begins to float above the surface of the planet. This setback only hastens Sean’s mission as he continues to harvest samples from our planet: a domestic horse, a worm, and the very orphan children who have befriended him.

Embers
Category: Short XYZ
Director: Gerald McMorrow
United Kingdom • 2023
A mysterious woman approaches an ancient city and offers the people a unique and extraordinary deal...
A cautionary tale of our role in our planet's future and the imminent threat of climate change.
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Feel no fear with me
Category: Short Film
Director: Monika Klimkiewicz-Dudziec
Poland • 2024
Polish-Belarusian border. Podlasie. 12-year-old Ola, daughter of a gambling-addict border guard, is forced by her father to smuggle cigarettes in the border forests. One day, instead of cigarettes, Ola picks up a refugee.

Grasshopper
Category: Short Experimental Film
Director: Jussi Eerola
Finland • 2023
Night falls down on empty business premises - and lights go up!
A minimalistic musical.

I don't want to have to be loud
Category: Short Experimental Film
Director: Eva Matz
Germany • 2024
The patriarchy must resign.
'She' is defined; from birth on.The role she has to play, who she is and what she is made of is not determined by her.
If one's own body and gender are a political issue, it is about time that one's own voice is heard

I'm not a robot
Category: Short Film
Director: Victoria Warmerdam
Netherlands • 2024
After repeatedly failing Captcha tests, music producer Lara becomes obsessed with a disturbing question: could she be a robot?

Keep
Category: Short Film
Director: Lewis Rose
United Kingdom • 2023
Gordon, the former keeper of a lighthouse now turned into a museum, is desperate for someone to help him maintain the site. When Musa, an Afghan refugee, comes knocking on his door, Gordon finally finds the helper he has been waiting for.
The two men become friends, confronting their respective cultures and pasts with humour and kindness.
But when Gordon discovers the true intentions of Musa's visit, he is faced with a moral dilemma that upsets all his certainties...

les microbes
Category: Short Experimantal Film
Director: Matze Görig
Germany • 2024
Les Microbes is a film with a special background that emerged in the context of S27, an Arts and Education institution in Berlin. Under the direction of Matze Görig, artists worked with young refugees from several countries to develop a miniature film set by using bulky waste, discarded and found objects, and 3D printed elements. Some participants came for a few hours, others stayed for several months as a core team. The initial goal was to recreate places that were familiar to everyone: a bus stop, a factory, a train, a mountain. During the building process, other places from the participants' stories were added through sharing, such as a town square where someone had been shot for no reason. The resulting models were then filmed in a studiosituation they had set up themselves - and in post-production, the stories of the young makers and the AI-generated images were combined in an experimental way. In melancholy, dark scenes, surrounded by a dense soundscape and accompanied by the poem "les microbes" by participant Gauthier Kollo, who came to the studio one day, the film reflects the situation of many of the participants at that time: persevering, waiting. Having to wait again and again in order to take the next step forward. Waiting while the world outside is flourishing and exploding.

LESS OF A MAN
Category: Short Experimantal Film
Director: Arkus
United Arab Emirates • 2024
Male breast cancer survivors want to remain invisible in staunch patriarchal societies where having a "woman's disease" is a subject of shame and ridicule. Based on true stories, LESS OF A MAN delves into the turbulent psyche of a survivor during his mammogram, grappling with shattered masculinity and overwhelming fear.

Misericorde
Category: Short Experimental Film
Director: Natasa Prosenc Stearns
Slovenia • 2024
In the Middle Ages a misericorde was a weapon used to put a wounded knight out of his misery. As a theological term, it refers to forgiveness and compassion. In French it has been used as an invocation, notably in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: "Christ have mercy on us!" That there may be no one listening (or arriving) remains a central anguish, felt in the depression, addiction and other disorders, that are normal responses to increasingly abnormal culture.
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Reznica
Category: Short Doc
Director: Davor Marinković
Serbia • 2022
Reznica represents two generations of refugees who are still trying to create a new identity after the break-up of Yugoslavia. Mirjana and Borislav spent most of their lives in a collective center in Serbia. Now they take a journey into the past to embrace the future in which to find a new home.
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The Beach
Category: Short Film
Director: Ana Taran
Romania • 2024
Sasha and Dora, two French-Romanian children, accompany their mother to Romania to sell their grandfather's house for good. Sasha doesn't want to leave his childhood home. Dora, in her turn, doesn't want to lose her brother. The grandfather's archives become their magical shelter.

The Bomb
Category: Short XYZ
Director: Onur Doğan
Turkey • 2024
In the Balkan region, where lawlessness prevailed during the war, a man receives a threatening death letter from the gang he used to be a member of. Thereupon, he plans to escape to America with his pregnant wife. On the last night, after being threatened by the gang, the man leaves the house to persuade the gang members, but does not come back. Instead, an hour later, gang members enter the house.The gang leader starts a game in which he tells the woman that if she fulfills his wishes, she can see her husband again as a reward.
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The Cavalry
Category: Short Doc
Director: Alina Orlov
Canada • 2024
This hybrid documentary explores the involuntary role of animals in human conflict. Filmed during January to September 2023 in Israel and the West Bank, the film provides a glimpse into daily life in the months preceding the Israel-Gaza War.

The Masterpiece
Category: Short Film
Director: Àlex Lora
Spain • 2023
Leo and Diana, a rich couple, bring a broken TV to a recycle point. They meet Salif and his son, two scrap dealers. Diana asks them to come to their house to get more objects. Once there, Leo looks at them collecting objects with mistrust, until they see the scrap dealers have something they want.

TURNAROUND
Category: Short Film
Director: Aisling Byrne
Ireland • 2024
Following a sudden, tragic bereavement, a West Cork cleaner must decide if she will uphold a tightly hidden secret whilst navigating the fast-paced pressures of a tourist property turnaround.

Unborn biru
Category: Short XYZ
* First Time Director
Director: Inga Elin Marakatt
Norway • 2022
A pregnant widow is in desperate need of help. Without help from the community, she decides to steal silver from a dead body, in order to survive and feed herdaughter. But the silver is cursed, and it
has consequences for all of them,
including the unborn.

Where Do Ideas Come From?
Category: Short Experimental Film
* First Time Director * Student Film
Director: Joysi Olijhoek
Netherlands • 2023
When imagination and understanding can freely harmonize, it could happen, on purpose or by accident: an idea forms. In this short film found footage, sounds, and words, composed solely of quotes, are brought together to playfully explore the relatedness between these seemingly random finds.

Why don't you give me a call
Category: Short Doc
Director: Amanda Leissner
Sweden • 2025
While my brother was evacuated from Ukraine, I cleaned my living room in our home country Sweden. The every-day life both changes and remains the same during war. A story told through my parents voice-mails.

Wild Eva, la voix d'Eva
Category: Short XYZ
* First Time Director
Director: Muriel Rasolofo
Canada • 2024
Eva, an early-thirties hacker, wakes up in a deserted world where a dull threat is terrorizing and stalking her. She crosses paths with Matt, dropped there a few weeks earlier and just as disoriented as she is. There, weapons are at hand, self-service. Even more accessible than a pizza. There, Eva and Matt seem to be in the grip of an external force. A force that controls them and from which they cannot escape. In this chaos, has their good old technology remained a friend or turned into an enemy? While breathing spaces are rare moments, together they need to fight back for their freedom.

Ya Hanouni
Category: Short Film
* First Time Director
Director: Lyna Tadount, Sofian Chouaib
France • 2024
While the Mom and the Dad try to put their baby to sleep, a competition arises between them: who will manage to get the baby to say the first word?
SELECTION OF
NON EUROPEAN FILMS

AMARELA
Category: Short Film
Director: André Hayato Saito
Brazil • 2024
On the day of the World Cup final between Brazil and France, Erika Oguihara, a Japanese-Brazilian teenager who rejects her family traditions, experiences a violence that seems invisible and plunges into a painful sea of emotions.

NOCES D’EAU
Category: Short Film
* First Time Director
Director: Aurielle Jioya
Benin • 2024
Kémi is a Frenchman of Beninese origin living in Paris. One day, while going through his grandfather's belongings, he finds a photo of a house in Benin, on the banks of a lagoon. This house, which once belonged to his family, has now become a vacation home. Having just arrived in Cotonou, Kemi decides to book the house for a weekend with friends, in the hope of learning more about his family and its origins. His grandfather Sourou, an austere and reserved old man, had severed all ties with Benin when he moved to France. In the company of his friend Thomas, his wife Afiavi and the beautiful Mériga, who has never left him indifferent, Kemi meets a mysterious young woman whom he saves in extremis from drowning in the lagoon. Her name is Angèle, and she tells him she knows his grandfather Sourou...

Not A Fiction
Category: Short Film
* First Time Director
Director: Shah Newaz Khan Cju
Bangladesh • 2023
'NGOs have alleged that Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and other Bangladeshi law enforcement are responsible for more than 600 extrajudicial killings since 2018' - Human Rights Watch (HRW).
NOT A FICTION depicts one such incident. This one-shot-film set from the perspective of an old tree, is inspired by a press release of Bangladeshi law enforcement agency (RAB) & dedicated to the victims all over the world.

RIEL
Category: Short Film
* First Time Director
Director: Zenobia Kloppers
South Africa • 2023
Set in contemporary Southern Africa, RIEL follows an ageing Khoekhoe matriarch as she invites her granddaughter to participate in the iconic riel dance. A celebration of a revered First Nation ritual, RIEL is the directing debut of Zenobia Kloppers.
SELECTION OF
MUSIC VIDEOS
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Chappell Roan - Casual
Category: Music Video
Director: Hadley Hillel
USA • 2023
In a sleepy seaside town, Chappell Roan falls in love with a mysterious Siren but soon realizes that the creature is more dangerous than she ever could have imagined.

Kassikontsert - King of Color
Category: Music Video
Director: Juri Krutii
Estonia. • 2024
Anything but a conventional music video, Värvide Kuningas is a three part experience that acts as a preview of Kassikontsert's upcoming album Nõid. Combining the stark reality of a harsh Estonian winter with the whimsy to match the inherent poetry of Kassikonsert's lyrics - the video offers the viewer an allegory of a struggle of a modern day artist. Enjoy the texture of 16mm film, and riding alongside a colour dealer as he makes his rounds and confronts his demon.

Over My Dead Body - Jonas Benyoub
Category: Music Video
Director: Erik Carswell
Norway • 2024
Jonas Benyoub, deeply embedded in the criminal underworld, begins to sense betrayal within his inner circle. His closest ally, Kim, secretly conspires with the enigmatic Minhche, setting the stage for a deadly confrontation. As tensions rise, Jonas is drawn into a final showdown where loyalty shatters, and his fate is sealed in a brutal, tragic betrayal.

Superkoloritas – Vasara Pasaka
Category: Music Video
* First Time Director
Director: Giedrė Nalivaikaitė, Adomas Koreniukas
Lithuania • 2022
'Vasara Pasaka' tells a story about a little racing boat, making its trip to the seaside. Along the road on the rapid rivers and smooth lakes the boat makes friends, puts himself in dangerous situations and helps some people and creatures. A lo-fi music video was created and filmed by the musicians who wrote the song, using a few vintage DV holiday cameras.

Terminally Ill
Category: Music Video
* First Time Director
Director: Chris Cole
USA • 2023
When a rapper is summoned to his grandmother's deathbed, he engages in a madcap freestyle in a desperate attempt to prevent her from dying.

YOU ARE ENOUGH
Category: Music Video
Director: Lisa MAGNAN
France • 2022
Embracing imperfections and fostering self-acceptance, |YOU ARE ENOUGH| is a dance film that delves into the themes of identity, diversity, and individuality.
Evolving in a clean white space, the film unfolds the journeys of four individuals, capturing moments of life and a spectrum of emotions. Amidst these experiences, the protagonists shape their identities, exploring the beauty and complexity of humanity with a blend of poetry, sensibility, and humor.
SELECTION OF
ANIMATIONS
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Elon VS Mark
Category: Short Animation
* First Time Director
Director: Hubert Lapointe
Canada • 2024
The long-awaited brawl between the two billionaires and businessmen is finally happening. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are engaging in a merciless battle, delivering blow after blow, gadgets, and weapons of mass destruction, annihilating everything in their path. Who will have the power to stop these two tech and jujitsu behemoths before they obliterate our world?
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FINAL WHISTLE
Category: Short Animation
Director: Lotti Bauer
Switzerland • 2024
Grand gestures, determined expressions and tight legs.
Roughly collaged footballers don‘t owe each other anything and a referee loses the overview.
Non-football fans love this film.
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FLOCKY
Category: Short Animation
Director: Esther Casas Roura
Spain • 2024
FLOCKY is an animated allegory navigating pregnancy, exploring the connection between a mother and her unborn child. Set in a melancholic and enchanting world, the film beautifully captures the essence of love, and the poignant nature of loss.
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Las Nogas
Category: Short Animation
Director: Catya Plate
USA • 2024
500 years into the future, the earth is a dry wasteland destroyed by humans. Doctor Alma, a fluffy, brilliant Vulkeet (a cross between a parakeet and vulture) who drives a Vespa, must cure the only creatures left who can save the world by bringing back the rain - the bizarre and loveable Homeys who have fallen ill with a mysterious sickness.
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PURGA
Category: Short Animation
Director: Gintarė Valevičiūtė Brazauskienė, Antanas Skučas
Lithuania • 2023
Winter, 1942. Beyond the Arctic Circle, on the uninhabited island of Trofimovsk in the Laptev Sea, deported peoples struggle to survive. This is the place chosen by Soviet authorities to deport vast numbers of inhabitants from the occupied Baltic countries, Finland, Ukraine and elsewhere.
In this harsh, alien landscape, man is a mere speck. Against the backdrop of such majestic isolation, many thousands face the savage indifference and cruelty of nature. Always living on the edge, they must find a way to stay alive.
All experiences depicted are based on the unfaded memories of those who survived.
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The girl who walked on snow
Category: Short Animation
Director: Bruno Carnide
Portugal • 2024
In a distant place, the saddest of girls carries within her a darkness feared by all.
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THE SONG OF FLYING LEAVES
Category: Short Animation
Director: Armine Anda
Armenia • 2023
A journey to a dream through an encounter between Suna, a twelve-year-old girl who uses leaves as a blanket, and an old man who possesses secret knowledge. A reflection on friendship between a father and a daughter, a teacher and a student, an adult and a child, and the path that can turn the impossible into possible...
The invented letters in the film are inspired by old Armenian symbols.
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The temptation of the coconut clock
Category: Short Animation
Director: Oliver Schmid
Germany • 2022
In a jungle there is a huge clock whose digits are made of coconut trees. Two apes pass her as a nut falls. Once they get the taste, they want more of it. The apes discover the clock with its huge hands. They climb onto the lowest hand, the hour hand. From there they can easily get to the nuts, until someone further up discovers larger nuts. The greed for bigger and bigger nuts is kindled
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Think something nice
Category: Short Animation
Director: Claudius Gentinetta
Switzerland • 2022
At the mercy of the dentist's chair, the protagonist cannot escape the confrontation with pain and the dregs of the miserable human condition. To distract himself, he takes refuge in a fantasised story of fishermen and the sea.
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Voiceless
Category: Short Animation
Director: Samuel Patthey
Switzerland • 2023
Dan is a young man who spends a lot of time in his flat. His routine is always accompanied by electronic music pumping through his headphones. But when he steps outside, he feels disconnected from the world around him and only finds solace in nightclubs. Techno music and drugs transport him to a world where he can be himself, where he feels free. One day, he catches the eye of a baby which will change his perception of the world around him.
SELECTION OF
FEATURE FILMS

BALDIGA - Unlocked Heart
Category: Feature Film
Director: Markus Stein
Germany • 2023
"Prostitutes, transvestites, alcoholics and the mentally ill. That's where I feel at home. That's the world that needs to be captured."
In 1979, 19-year old Jürgen Baldiga moves to Berlin and decides to become an artist. Faced with certain death from HIV infection, he discovers photography as his medium. Between despair, longing, rebellion and an irrepressible will to survive, Baldiga becomes a chronicler of the queer West Berlin subculture of the 80s and early 90s and proves his unique talent as a sensitive and provocative photographic artist.

Cu Li Never Cries
Category: Feature Film
* First Time Director
Director: Pham Ngoc Lan
Viet Nam • 2024
A woman tries to cling onto dimming links to her past after inheriting a pygmy slow loris from her long-estranged husband; meanwhile, her niece prepares for marriage as the young couple ponders their gloomy future together. The present and the complex echoes of Vietnamese history are entwined before a contemplative and poetic perspective.

Eyes Of Gaza
Category: Feature Film
Director: Mahmoud Atassi
Katar • 2024
" Eyes of Gaza " is a hellish portrait follow three Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza as they are forced to risk their lives to document a war that has claimed more journalists in a single year than any conflict since the Committee to Protect Journalists began tracking data in 1992.

Maria's Silence
Category: Feature Film
Director: Dāvis Sīmanis
Latvia • 2024
Portraying the true story of famous actress Maria Leiko, who travels to Stalin's Russia (1937) upon the news of her newbord granddaughter. Soon after, Maria is faced with the brutality of the KGB, who threaten both her family and career, where she ultimately plays her life's most tragic role: an innocent victim destroyed as she struggles between her ideals and the murderous regime that surrounds her.

My Late Summer
Feature Film: Feature Film
Director: Danis Tanovic
Croatia • 2024
'My Late Summer' is a story about a young woman who arrives on an isolated island to settle a family inheritance issue. In the midst of newly stirred emotions, through a series of unexpected events, Maja will finally confront questions from her past. The search for inheritance becomes a quest for her own identity, as well as forgiveness.

The First Days
Category: Feature Film
Director: Stéphane Breton
France • 2023
You found yourself on the edge of the desert. The ocean was hitting hard. The beauty of the chaos left you speechless. The strength of the gestures too, and the grace of the stones. You kept silent. What came out of Cuacua’s and Loco-loco’s mouths sounded like the waves. You listened to them with your eyes. You weren’t sure whether you were seeing or hearing what was happening. Music was born from the marriage of noise and silence.

UNDER THE VOLCANO
Category: Feature Film
Director: Damian Kocur
Poland • 2024
A Ukrainian family is spending their last day of holiday on the island of Tenerife. They do not know yet that the next day their life will completely change. Overnight they wont be tourists any more but refugees

Warboy
Category: Feature Film
Director: Marian Crișan
Romania • 2023
Fall of 1944. World War 2 is closing to an end.
Nicu, a teenager, embarks on a journey through the wilderness of the Apuseni Mountains, trying to save the horses of his family.
SELECTION OF TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Cancer
Director: Yunnian Han
China • 2023
Guo Ming discovers that his father has cancer and uses various means to force him to undergo treatment, but this behavior, which is considered exemplary in China, is opposed by Guo Ming's wife, and the family is exposed to a deeper rift.

Dear Friend, Where Have You Gone?
Director: Nicholas Koscik
Canada • 2023
For Jayden Martin, art is more than just a hobby. It's his escape, his passion, and his lifeline. But as an artist in the small, rural community of Englehart, Ontario, Jayden's dreams of making it big seem almost impossible. Despite growing up with divorced parents and struggling with addiction, mental health, and suicide, he remains determined to succeed.
"Dear Friend, Where Have You Gone?" offers a rare glimpse into Jayden's world as he navigates the challenges of small-town life and grapples with his own inner demons. This powerful documentary is an inspiring reminder of human resilience and the transformative power of art.

SKIN
Director: Leo Behrens
USA • 2023
SKIN is a poetic exploration of identity and self-discovery, using visual symbolism to depict a woman's transformation into a man. With the help of their inner manifestation, the ice man, they sheds their old skin and embraces their true identity.

THE MONOPOL
Director: Gal Genossar
Israel • 2023
Skopje, Macedonia, 1943.
Anna and her family are led to a concentration camp before being transported to Treblinka death camp. She faces the decision between immediate escape with her husband and daughter or risking everything and try and save the rest of her family.

ZURY
Director: Gal Genossar
Israel • 2023
Zury’s life has taught her that she cannot trust a soul, but when she lets her guard down and lets someone in, the choices of her past come back to haunt her. Will she turn back to her old ways for vengeance, or has she truly turned her back on her past for good?
SELECTION OF FESTIVAL OF ANIMATION BERLIN

Flut
Director: Malte Stein
Berlin • 2018
A dirty lake bursts its banks and begins to flood the town. At last there‘s a good reason to keep the son at home. But in isolation, nightmarish associations start to mix with reality. And whilst outside the world sinks peacefully under water, a domestic apocalypse rages inside.
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Karotte
Director: Harry Bhalerao
Deutschland • 2023
A child befriends a stray cat and feeds it carrots, sparking an unexpected transformation.
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Kirschknochen
Režie: Evgenia Gostrer
Berlin • 2022
The film follows a family which comes to Germany as so-called „Jewish contingent refugees“ from the former Soviet Union in the mid-1990s. A personal story from the filmmaker‘s perspective, the director enters into a dialogue with her parents and offers an insight into far more than a specific immigration and family history.
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Love me, fear me
Director: Veronica Solomon
Berlin
What would you be willing to do for them to love you
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The waiting
Director: Volker Schlecht
Berlin • 2022
Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them.
SELECTION OF SCRIPTS

Crossing the borders
Oleksii Sobolev • Ukraine
Egor returns to Ukraine after six years in America. Then, the full-scale Russian invasion happened, the war broke out, and the borders were closed. Egor is stuck and cannot return to his wife and son, who have stayed in New York.
His wife has not divorced him yet (that would be cruel). However, she has a new partner. And Egor's son is getting increasingly used to having another man living in the house. Egor is ready to do anything to reunite with his son and be the one who will teach him to ride a bicycle.
Egor needs volunteer paperwork to get out of Ukraine. His old girlfriend Zofia, who regularly travels to Poland for humanitarian aid, has such permits.

Free martin
Scott Thompson, Hayes Hart-Thompson • USA
A fourteen-year-old and her girlfriend run away from home after fears their relationship has been discovered.

Mendoza the Jew
Robin Uriel Russin • USA
1782: When the boxing coach to the Prince of Wales spots a Jewish boy dominating in a street fight against a bigger man, one of the great boxing rivalries in history is born as young Daniel Mendoza becomes first the protege and then bitter adversary of Gentleman Richard Humphreys, rising to be the first Jewish boxing champion of England, an underdog who fights as “Mendoza the Jew," but is known as “The Lion of Israel” to his people.

The Age of the Empath
Steve Brown • USA
In a near-future world where thoughts shape reality, a compassionate scientist and a group of extraordinary empaths must fight a covert, militarized faction bent on controlling humanity's consciousness.
Think INCEPTION meets BLADE RUNNER 2049.

The Arrangement
Kátia Kieling • USA
After years trying to conceive a child, a desperate couple comes to an arrangement, pushing the boundaries of friendship and underestimating the powerful consequences of sexuality.



