time

This film is based on documentary material but is not, strictly speaking, a documentary film. Nor it is a work of fiction. The film rather appeared to us like a dream, not a nocturnal dream, but one which unfolded day by day while shooting. A dream shared between the photographer-director and the actress (or, better, the woman portrayed in the feature), which nevertheless seemed to follow its own, enigmatic necessity through which the daily shots joined almost magnetically, interweaving in a pattern of superimposed layers that unceasingly merge and dissolve one in another, in the constant flux, crystallization and reshaping of psychic interior. At a certain point, this dream seems to end but in fact it only opens up to another dream, or hallucination, where the film itself abruptly starts to burn, unleashing new and old visions - fragments of reality - until it is put out by a sudden storm and dissolves in a twilight of sea-waters. In this sense, the film is also a meditation on the elements, Water and Fire, Wind, Earth and Skin, inspired by a Sun-Eye that appeared almost by itself in one of the first shots and took possession of the narration, in the endless flow and unfathomable metamorphosis of all things and beings.

memory

Is the police an institution to fight oblivion? A dreamlike meditation on the relationship of memory and faces, this film poem is about a remote police station, where all the young policemen want to find the lost love of the old Colonel before he forgets her completely.

diary film

2042. A man living in the near future. He recalls his past and longs for those days as he gazes at the dark world around him. A woman living in an entirely different dimension: the present. The image of the woman, like the rest of us, moving through her ‘daily life’ is the complete opposite of the man. Meanwhile, solitude from the past has still been remained in his future world because of a lot of environmental issues. So, longing for the past, he tries to go through a certain path of time that can go back in time….But...

documentary short

Life is going on in Dakhla, one of the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria, forgotten for 45 years. The celebration of a film festival, the Fisahara, breaks the monotony. The event ends, life (and oblivion) continues.

narrative short

Hanna makes herself believe that she is the first and only inhabitant of a new world more beautiful than the previous one.
She considers it her mission to lure the remaining humanity into her state of mind. She sets out to create the bistro of her dreams: Hanna’s Bistro. From now on she does everything for her customer space to be attractive for an actual human being.

cinematography

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Award Winner

"Balcony" is a film about an emotional state of a psychologically stuck person in an abstract time frame, about a young girl with a mysterious connection to a balcony.

The protagonist of the animated film is Edie Sedgwick, a model, actress, and star of Andy Warhol's films. The film, however, is not about her relationship with Warhol, but the relationship with her toxic father. Her difficult childhood has cast a shadow on her adult life, soaked with alcohol and filled with drugs. The protagonists are depicted in silhouettes, resembling paper cut-outs or puppets from a shadow theatre. Their character traits are embodied by animal motifs, to achieve a universal story rather than a specific story; whether or not you are famous, sometimes it is too late to reverse fate. "Too Late” - is a tribute to the “Queen of the Underground” for the 50th anniversary of her death. The soundtrack of the film was produced by Robert Margouleff, who was Edie’s friend, a co-producer of “Ciao! Manhattan” (her final film before her death at age 28) and a Grammy Award winner for his work with Stevie Wonder.

The 4000 Blows is the story of X.

Fascinated by Duska, he began, without ever having danced before, to study Boléro, the solo written by Maurice Béjart for the ballerina.

Don’t look for an actual story here.
Nothing but facts are true.

These intimate situations were recorded with a phone, registered on a VHS tape or filmed using a digital camera. Jakub Ciosiński shows the life of a three-generational family in the context of love failures and problems with relationship building. Can a camera lens serve as a tool to provide film therapy or to understand family stories? This documentary family self-portrait combines not only different filming techniques but also different stages of life and social norms with regard to relationships. Almost all members of the Ciosińskis have a say in it.

Two people are determined to continue a relationship despite having to distance themselves in dramatic fashion. Is this happening in a time long ago, or is it in a future which has been forced to ‘re-set’?
‘Waves’ is a love story, a commentary on technology and social interaction, and a need for the human touch.

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Special Award

When Zara, a young, recovering addict, is told, “she holds the key to the end of time”, she must uncover the truth and in doing so, confront her own troubled past while existing in a city overrun by an oppressive government and a mysterious black smoke looming in the sky.

A sensory, lyrical, and gnomic exploration of memory and loss.

This film strives to meditate on loss, filmmaking and cadence of an unstable relationship. A poetic narration accompanied by meditative sounds gradually sinks the images into the viewer. An intriguing subjective montage of dream sequences and sounds, fragments of cultural contexts, bound together by the characters inner monologue.

A series of circular, rhyming narrative repetitions, laying out desire and anxiety, with the chance that a particular dream might transcend away from the disappointment of reality into a sought of spiritual transcendence. The geography of the unconscious world and cinematic desires juxtapose over the topography of separating lovers as an aching journey: we must betray the memories of the ones we loved to love again.

This film strives to follow a narrative trajectory, but itself becomes a poetic elegy.

A few months after a painful loss, lonely photographer Carlota Cortés fails to complete a commission documenting castles in the Spanish countryside. Despite the passage of time, she has remained obsessed with “her man”. She is especially haunted by the memory of one “Tina Tickey”, a mysterious and erotic woman of whom he often spoke. Who was she?
During her trip through the barren Bardenas Reales Desert, Carlota’s mental distress grows, and she gradually gets lost in her thoughts, musing about the vital need to take photos, the ideas of property and the nature of matter. These at times humorous reflections lead her to observe the rocks, sand and dust of the desert where she finds symbolic figures of “her man” in the contours of the landscape.
Her overheated imagination then develops a hypothesis: could the shapeless “magma” which permeates the imagery – an entity as indestructible as the memory of the flesh – bring back from the depths of the universe the very atoms and voice of her departed lover?
By chance, the beginning of an answer appears when she finally meets the real “Tina Tickey”.

From erosion to overgrazing to enduring poverty, the people of Lesotho—a highland country surrounded by South Africa—face a variety of difficult challenges. Yet grassroots communities in the country also exhibit tremendous resourcefulness and creativity. In particular, a wealth of artists have mastered a talent for resurrection, developing the skill to creatively turn negatives into positives: Designers who turn discarded trash into beautiful jewelry, clothes, rugs. Filmmakers who turn tragedy into artistic expressions of resilience and compassion. Musicians who write songs to save the environment.

A religious and traditional man after his wife death suspects her and he thinks his wife had a relationship with another man.

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Honorable Mention

Two estranged brothers meet for the first time in 16 years at their mother’s funeral.

They share the car journey back to their family home - a final time they will have to suffer each other. On the way they crash, and are forced to walk the last three miles across country.

As they travel through the landscape of their youth, memories return and time bends. When their journey ends, they have arrived at the place and time of their childhood.

In the course of conducting experiments on memory and time during the pandemic, a lovesick scientist with a morbid fear of rejection, makes an unexpected connection.

'the abyss surrounds us' is a poetry film by filmmaker and intermedia artist Michèle Saint-Michel. The film expresses a Melvillian sense of much activity without substantial progress. The title is borrowed from the final lines of the Wisława Szymborska poem, 'autotomy': The abyss doesn’t divide us. /
The abyss surrounds us. //



A letter to the filmmaker's mom about daughtership and memories, To You frames their diasporic relationship with womanhood and daughtership memories. Using drawings, cyanotype, old photographs, live action, and stop-motion animation, To You provides a lens through which home can feel both close and foreign.

A child stumbles upon an abandoned house in an isolated part of Portugal. A narration attempts to tell its story, but it quickly gets lost in the landscape. Eventually the old lady who used to live there takes over and tries to remember the story herself.

This is a film about memories, songs, and stories... aware of the unkown side of them.

This documentary tells the story of an amputee pole dancer and athlete. Andrew, the protagonist of this documentary, shares the story of his amputation and his discovery of the world of pole. Andrew has won awards and medals in pole competitions, he has also set a world record and is very passionate about pole. We take a look at his experience entering a pole competition against able-bodied pole dancers for the first time. He only had this one chance to do this performance and tell his story through pole as it's based on such a personal life experience for him.

This love story, set against the backdrop of extreme right-wing protests, reminds us that queer love and politics are never too far apart. When Kinga falls for another woman, she sets off on a journey not only to soul-searching and self-reflection, but also to social-political awareness.

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Summer 2021