official selection june 2021
narrative
DONA by Marga Melia
At the time of her death, and after a lifetime of silence, a woman decides to confess all her terrible secrets to one of the psychiatrists of the mental institution she is held in. A tragic story full of suspense that talks about three generations of women marked by destiny in an oppressive and suffocating environment.
TSUNAMI by Alissa Autschbach
A normal day at school. Nina and Ruby have an argument in the bathroom. Fed up with Ruby, Nina enters a cubicle to be alone. Moments later, Nina hears a shot being fired. Whilst hiding, she becomes witness to an unfolding school shooting. Finding Ruby to be dead, Nina tries to escape through the bathroom window. Then Ruby regains consciousness. Nina has to make a decision.
THE PIGS METHOD by Boris Kozlov
Toni works day and night but barely earns to survive. His last chance is self-publishing: he has just finished "The PIGS Method", a personal success manual which he hopes will turn his life around and help him regain his ex-wife's love.
SPLIT by Richard Anthony Dunford
A Serial Killer stalks and kidnaps his Neighbour; a young nurse dolled up for a night out. The Killer takes the victim to a remote woodland area to bury the body, unaware she is still alive…
Split is a horror/thriller short film; presented in split screen. The left side of the frame follows the target while the right side of the frame simultaneously follows the killer.
IN ISOLATION by Edmund C. Short
A short social narrative film.
Three housemates are confined to their home during a severe military lockdown.
experimental
MAPS by Alex Barrera
A man and a woman confront the terror of Alzheimer's, facing the abyss of forgetting their lives, their loved
ones, their identity.
A DOUBLE CAPRICE AT THE ASYLUM by Stephane Rizzi
A film found in an abandoned psychiatric institution
(circa 1987-2018)
TIPPI AT SQUAM LAKE by Jenny Plante, Alison Folland and Daphna Mero
Tippi Hedren is put through her paces by Alfred Hitchcock as she screen tests for "The Birds."
ARROW BOARD GAME by Marcin Gizycki
It is a film made out of instant photographs of signs with arrows which I took in the US n 1992-1993.
I WILL GO BACKWARDS OF OUR PATH by Mattia Biondi
"Andrò a ritroso della nostra corsa" is a backwards journey through the seasons and the units of the language. To change the prose of the world, its intact clock.
There is always a place more thoroughly, lost images in minimum intervals.
LIBERTY OR LIFE by Mike Davies and James Hatton
The link between ecological destruction and the Free Market are explored- the connection distorting the line between info-tainment and surreal dreamscape. We follow a phantom apparition of the economist James Buchanan, who's theories rested in a complete faith in the Market to create a free and fair world; butting up against the reality of the bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef.
Drawing on found footage, symbolic reenactment and documentary, the film travels on a dream journey through these polarised topics; one that seeks to solidify the struggle we have in reconciling how we live and the harm we are doing to nature... And ultimately ourselves.
animation
FEEDER by Laura Iancu
A girl comes home to her cat.
CHOCOLATE by Lili Zhang
This film was inspired by a director's little poem.
"You're sweet
He said,
Sweet, is a characteristic
Or, a reward
Or, a desire
To be
Your favorite
Chocolate”
It is about a subtle psychology which in the process of intercourse between men and women. Some women think that men’s desire is appearances. However, once a woman began to change herself too much, she became the chocolate in the box.
BARKING ORDERS by Alex Tullo
When the entire British Royal family tragically dies, the Queen’s corgi finds himself next in line for the throne and in the seat of power.
GHOST AND ME by Francesca Pazniokas
GHOST AND ME (2020) is a surreal, animated short about the path to recovery. Through Rorschach-like images, it explores how trauma affects our minds and bodies, how we reconcile the past with the future, and the fraught role coping mechanisms play in our healing.
While GHOST AND ME is a purely visual and auditory work, it was generated using verbatim text. For this project, I interviewed people recovering from eating disorders. I then took excerpts from their interviews and created a poem-like "script." The animator, composer and I used this script to depict the inner conflict, trauma and hope that the anonymous interviewees described. What remains is a "ghost" of those interviews -- a visual and auditory depiction of their journey to recovery.
TOUCH & PASTE by Ruxandra Mitache
my palm
just waiting to melt
a winter flake
HAPPY PEOPLE by celinefreud
"happy people." is a response to the current cultural desert. In its depiction of an interlinked schizopolis (schizotypal-metropolis, schizophrenic-metropolis, schizo-metropolis; borrowed from Soderbergh’s 1996 experimental comedy, Schizopolis), the artist aims to satirize a contemporary, postmodern era marked by irony, commercialism, and nihilism. While "happy people." may be sardonic, crass, and sacrilegious in turn, it is, ultimately, a sincere film. Through its kaleidoscopic narrative, absurd characters, and bleak setting, the work reflects on a spectacular madness unique to the digital age, as well as the painful tedium of life under late capitalism. "happy people." amplifies the horrors of such a society to the point of ridicule, begging the question: where are the happy people, anyways, and why aren’t we happy, too? Comically tragic, and tragically comical, it is the artist’s means of confronting a world increasingly abstracted by the throes of capital.
documentary
DAJLA: CINEMA AND OBLIVION by Arturo Dueñas
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.
NAME by Tibor de Laminne
Born November 18, 1933, Name is the firstborn of five children. She grew up in a bourgeois family in Brussels, which made a fortune in textiles and decoration. In 1959, she married Yura Dimitrieff, an architect who graduated from the Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels.
He will work in Savona, Italy, for the contemporary architect Enzo Magnani. At thirty, Name leaves a comfortable existence to head to Spain. With her husband they moved to a small coastal village located in the south of Valencia.
During holiday periods, this place welcomes all the Madrid and Valencia elite. The great tailor and designer Cristobal Balenciaga usually lives there.
THE NOISE ON MARLOWE by Ardin Klimenti
We spend time with one of the residents of the Marlowe Road estate as she recounts escaping Kosovo in the 90's, gets ready for dinner with her husband and watches the day pass by. All the while, the block is being demolished around her.
LA SANTA E LA PUTTANA by Francesca Lolli
The video talks about the circularity and the eternal return of the patriarchy.