5th Edition SSF

5th edition SSF

official selection

narrative

LIKE ME by Boris Schipper

Alba is an eccentric young girl who seems to live in a distorted reality, trapped within the walls of a large family house. In order to control her and stay by her side, the menacing Chus forces other girls to live with her. Her latest victim is Juliette. A perverse bond. A tale of terror. A somber reflection on the impact of social media on our daily lives.

SINCOPAT by Pol Diggler

Ona, a creative executive of a large company, is about to launch the latest technological revolution into the market: a device that allows listening to music directly inside the brain.

DIRTY GUACAMOLE by Marta Tchai

Carla, a Spanish actress seeking success in Ny. She´s trying to get herself together after a bad date. The fact of making a good guacamole is vital for regaining her self esteem. Paco, her roommate, sees that there?s something wrong with her. Carla will end up telling him what she went through the passed night.

PULZAAR by Miki Háromöthét

The protagonist of the movie is Cockroach (Adam Schwarcz), a rocker in his thirties who works as an assistant mechanical fitter in Kőbánya. He lives with his godmother (Bori Péterfy), who has taken him in at her apartment in Pest, but she can no longer afford to cover the rent. Csótány's two greatest passions in life are his favorite Norwegian metal band, Pulzaar, and his secret love, Évike (Lilla Kizlinger), who works at the ground-floor bakery. When he sees a poster announcing that his beloved band is coming to Budapest, a lightning bolt strikes, setting off a chain of events. Will he ultimately manage to attend the concert and summon the courage to invite Évike as well?

An unconventional, satirical musical about an ordinary person who dared to dream big, and his dream actually comes true.

ACTS IN PARTS by Sergio Milan

Marta´s cancer makes a strong comeback. Tired of her luck, she decides to give up. That´s when three stories, filled with the most unexpected humor, will come to help her rewrite her destiny.

5 MORE MINUTES by Alberto Niculae

A young man with commitment issues gets trapped in a rollercoaster of peculiar events during the first night he sleeps with his girlfriend.

THE WORST TRADE IN THE WORLD by Luis Ladorrera

Pablo is a salesman at a funeral home. His work begins when someone dies: at that moment, he quickly goes to offer all the services of his company to the relatives of the deceased. For him, every day is the same as the last. He often questions himself how he ended up doing this, whether he could do his job differently.

RAIN, TEAR AND SWEAT by Bei Yu

In recent years, the Shanghai municipal government has proposed to build 'five new cities' with the goal of providing high-quality medical conditions and educational resources to new immigrants. As these cities develop, they will also feature abundant supporting facilities, including urban sub-centers that will create a complex urban structure with different emotional responses from the residents.

TO ARABY by Meiyo Tan

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Yang Yongsi was secretly planing to run away from home. At this time of approaching adulthood, she gradually found that everyone was trapped in the dark water, looking forward to an unreachable escape.

experimental

WHY ARE YOU IMAGE PLUS? by Diogo Baldaia

Ima is a little girl who passed away too soon. Desperate to talk to her grandmother, she decides to possess a young boy. But an old spirit is interfering with her plans.

I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS by Dara Jade Moats

A experimental found footage documentary about the first school shooter, Brenda Spencer.

STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN, TEA AND LETTER by Tess Martin

A photograph is a window into the past, but sometimes, the border between past and present is not entirely clear. This stop-motion animation invites us to think about our relationship to time, by portraying one woman caught in the middle.

NOWHERE STREAM by Luis Grane

A nowhere man swimming with the Nowhere Stream seeks meaning in the virtual world and fails.When he gets a second chance, he finds that the answer was closer than initially expected

3 BEARS by Roger Horn

3 bears, a Chuck Norris sign, and a man walking a horse in the Romanian countryside.
“3 Bears” was filmed on Super 8mm in Romania and Czech Republic and features watercolor pictures created by my son in Berlin from three to five-years-old.

QUINTESSENCE by Betty Blitz

“Two bodies are merging together, something new is created - with analogue black and white images and an immersive sound by David M Schuh, Betty Blitz' experimental film makes the miracle of life visible and perceptible in various feelings. A genuinely cinematic work about the beginning and the end - becoming and passing in the course of time - the quintessence of all existence."

NOBODY WANTS TO FIX THINGS ANYMORE by Joseph Wilcox

"Nobody Wants to Fix Things Anymore" is a short film about a lost man who finds a special rock.

The narrative uses AI generated images and speech, surveillance photographs, and original video to weave together a story of the search for a kindred spirit.

INSIDE by Laida Aldaz Arrieta

One space. Two dices. 10 dancers. One game of chance. The possibility of creating in the confinement.

STILL LIFE by Mats Landstrom

Everything is as it has always been. A repetition. The same things are done over and over again. They only have eyes for each other. Is there a slow decay going on? A shift from one phase to another. A new guise, damaged, defective and cracked but the contents are the same.. Days will come. Days go by. When do we cross a line of what is acceptable and appropriate? What significance does time have for who we are?

IMPULSIVES PURCHASES THROUGH ALIEXPRESS by Jose Miguel Barriga

Back from a honeymoon, a job layoff creates a chain of reactions that end up in impulsive purchases through Aliexpress. Trains of thought submerged in dispair go through topics such as mental health and financial inestability, potraying a journey that searches for closure, no matter the cost.

JOY by Julieta Tetelbaum

JOY is the sequel of the queer feminist short film "Wake Up! It's Yesterday" filmed in New York in 2020. The film is a journey through the mind of a 65-year-old working-class lesbian who's addicted to sugar and can't stop thinking about her ex-girlfriend from youth. She lives with her partner—a mannequin that she’s built to look exactly like her ex. The tragicomic piece delves deep into moments of intimacy, loneliness, sexuality, joy and the desperate longing to be loved.

animation

ROASTED by Goulwen COURTAUX

An adventurous chicken discovers the horrible truth about humans and poultry and decides to take its revenge.
(All images are AI generated)

ELEMENT by Yuri Onosato

In choosing motifs, I've opted for water and "Elements" for their transformative qualities in shape, color, and space, embodying elements of animism—symbolizing life and soul. These fluid entities, appearing to rotate within cell-like structures, occasionally shift into particles in a perpetual loop. This work isn't a finalized cinematic piece, but an evolving collection of experimental animations highlighting continuous creativity and expansion

COCOON by Lu Zhang

"Cocoon", is dedicated to portraying the tangible representation of a child's inner world in a broken family. In the animation of Cocoon, there is a stark visual contrast. The story is primarily a metaphor for a broken family, and as the spider's predation progresses, the girl gradually falls into the abyss of family conflicts.

D IS FOR DRAMA by Brand Condie

A sardonic retelling of the English alphabet.

FULFILLMENT OF A WISH by Emily Greenberg

Fulfillment of a Wish tells the story of how Sigmund Freud arrived at his theory of the dream as a form of wish-fulfillment. In pairing this story with animated imagery from a deep learning text-to-image model, the work suggests that generative AI imagery may also be the “disguised fulfillment of a suppressed, repressed wish.

PERK UP by Kayun Kim

A college student has a final essay deadline, but she cannot stop
herself from falling asleep. As she drinks coffee to wake herself up, a battle between Caffeine and Sleepy happens in her brain. Caffeine struggles to defeat Sleepy in the beginning, but as the student drinks
more coffee again and again Caffeine gets stronger. In conclusion, Caffeine defeats Sleepy. However, when the student lies on their bed to fall asleep, she cannot, because she drank too much caffeine. Now, the battle between Caffeine and Sleeping Pill begins.

WILD TALE by Aline Quertain

In the middle of a boreal forest, a lonely feline meets a small bird. These two beings that nature opposes surprise and attract each other. A relationship of friendship tinged with suspicion arises between them.

documentary

LA LIXEIRA The Invisibles dignity by Guido Galante and Antonio Notarangelo

Maputo, the capital city of Mozabimque, has one or may be two million inhabitants. A few neighborhoods have houses or more precisely brick shacks, some paved roads, mostly a wide range of huts without basic sanitation services, where day by day men, women and children scrape food together in slow and quiet despair-the only chance they have to survive.

ONE MORE DAY by Juan Carrascal Ynigo

One day more in the life of Teresa, a 96 years old woman, and his son Nano, who cares about her with love and dedication. One day in the life of Teresa Arenas.

PUYUELO by Sara Sarrablo Asensio

Four young Europeans squat an abandoned village with the aim of taking control of their own lives. Puyuelo recovers its pulse thanks to these young people who begin to rebuild it from the ruins while discovering the history of its depopulation from the former inhabitants.

ABSOLUT by Caroline Rumley

As Covid dims and the war in Ukraine does not, there remains just one absolute.

ASHES LIVING IN CRACKS AND HOLLOWS by Haruka Fukao

A filmmaker followed a Japanese couple who experienced the bereavement of two children. The film shows how a couple scatters the children's ashes and greets them. This film tries to show how the couple perceives the scattering of the ashes as an expression of the indivisibility of life and death (purity and danger) in the circulation of nature. This brings existential questions. Another side is how to break the peer pressure to create an alternative way to stay with the deceased adequately. Scattering the ashes is recognised as an alternative way and not so common practice in Japan. This film showed why they chose the alternative method and their philosophy on their practices.

RANDYLAND by Caleb Bender

A public art exhibition, an artists' residency, a tribute to his late husband- Randy Gilson has been cobbling discarded toys, old furniture, mannequin heads, and more into one of the most unique and colorful places in Pittsburgh. "Randyland" is a portrait of the man behind the space.