FILMS A-Z

A Job Like Any Other

Pierre is an ordinary 55 years old man, solitary and very shy. He lives in his tidy and quiet apartment surrounded by his favourite figurine collections. However, his job is far from his low profil type. He’s been a Drag Queen Barmaid for the past 30 years, a hard and restrictive work he never really chose. But for him, it’s a job like any other.

Annick Roussy

A Town Still Standing

Nestled behind high mountains and dark forests lies Triberg, the birthplace of the cuckoo clock. For centuries, this cult item has been handcrafted right here, attracting tourists from all over the world. Ever since the boom of the 1980s has faded, the cuckoo clock has gradually lost its appeal and magic. And so has the place, which now resembles a ghost town. Between abandoned restaurants and empty souvenir shops, the residents eagerly hope for the return of tourists.

Marvin Meckes, Lukas Fuhrimann

An Evening’s Trail

An outcast Taxi Driver drives around the city of Prague with his dog in the hope of finding someone who could listen to him grieve about his personal tragedy.

Pranav Kumar Radharkrishnan

Atlas

Allegra is a lively young woman with a passion for high mountain climbing. She decides to travel to Morocco to reach the top of the Atlas, but her trip ends abruptly when a man explodes a bomb in a coffee shop and her three friends die in the attack. Unable to overcome the trauma months later she returns to her city, where the encounter with Arad, a young Muslim refugee, forces her to confront her perception of reality, her fears and heal her profound interior wounds.

Niccolò Castelli

August Sky

As the Amazon burns for the seventeenth day, a nurse in Sao Paulo finds herself drawn to a neo-Pentecostal church.

Jasmin Tenucci

Beauty

Callie, an unemployed young woman living with her controlling mother, is looking for a way out through the glittery yet cruel YouTube beauté universe. She will go beyond her limits to please her handful of subscribers while keeping up a smiling face and maintaining a perfect image

Thanos Liberopoulos

Can We Pretend?

COVID-19 has accelerated an already emergent trend of our migrating to digital spaces in order to feel connected with the world around us. In this virtual landscape, the lines between fantasy and reality blur, as technology allows us to create new possibilities. How authentic these possibilities are – and what they mean – is a question each person has to answer for themselves. Can we pretend?

Arshile Egoyan

Chance

Played magnificently by themselves and without a script, CHANCE tells the nocturnal attempt of four young Sudanese asylum seekers to get from  Belgium to the UK. Filmed entirely in the trailer of a lorry, this docu-fiction is a rare, privileged and deeply human encounter with four individuals and with a reality that is too often invisible. All night long, four young men between four walls, replay their quotidian reality in this theater-like black box.

Effi Weiss, Amir Borenstein

Dajla: Cinema and Oblivion

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.

Arturo Dueñas Herrero

Different Pages

This is an animated music video for the song Different Pages by David Urbinati. Alarm systems go off as an escape pod jettisons from a mothership splitting apart two beings.

Dude

Sören and Melchior got lost in the woods. While Sören desperately looks for a way out, Melchior enjoys the fresh air and the drive into the blue. At a lonely gas station, the two get into a heated argument and Melchior takes off. Left on his own, Sören drives through the increasingly surreal forest which becomes denser and denser and finally invades his mind. Through the overwhelming trip, Sören finds back to his inner self.

Konstantin Rosshoff, Tokay Yotimo, Marco Jörger

Elevator Alone

Four people and the time they spend in an elevator. Inspired by everyday life and by the difference in people's behavior when they are alone, in contrast to the socially acceptable behavior that individuals adopt when in public space and especially in the confined and always awkward setting of an elevator.

Anastasia Papadopoulou

Filled Vacuum

A son in his 30's returns home in order to interview his mother about her life choices for the final project of his academic degree. His goal is to try and "assemble", through the art of cinema, the human puzzle that is his mother's traumatic past, ever-changing present, and a future he must deal with. In this experimental journal, he constructs his mother's life story while trying to answer his deep-rooted questions and worrying thoughts that are driven by the aging process of his mother.

Yotam Giustizia

Fulesee

Sunday, Fulesee. Two people go diving in a lake. They understand each other without a word, everything seems ok. But the dive leads them not only to fish and into darkness, it also reaches into the depths of their souls. At 30 metres below the surface, fears and stories for which they cannot find any signs in diving language suddenly rise up. – The animated short films of Christina Benz combine the art forms of drawing, poetry and music. This film was made in close collabaration with a writer and a musician. The stop motion film was drawn with black sand.

Christina Benz

Great Celebration

Marco, eighteen years old, is forced to re-evaluate his feelings, divided between his xenophobic family and his Indian friend, on a very important day for his family: the day in which it is his turn to perform the annual ritual of pig slaughter.

Gianmaria Sortino

In The Wild – Hunters & Gatherers

«IN THE WILD – Hunters and Gatherers» turns a critical eye to one of the world’s oldest cultural practices and paints an authentic picture of the essence of hunting from different perspectives. The filmmaker, hunter and forest engineer Mario Theus challenges viewers with controversial questions on our ambivalent relationship with wild, domestic and farm animals, pulling no punches as he documents the contradictions that underlie our meat consumption.

Mario Theus

Intro

Intro is the opening track of The Ghibertins’ forthcoming concept album “The Life & Death Of John Doe”. John Doe is a term used when the real name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. As much as we try to leave a legacy, a sign of our passage on earth, no one will remember us in 200 years. We are all passing through this world, we are all forgettable, we are all John Doe. Nevertheless, the life of each of us is unique and worth telling.The idea behind The Ghibertins' album is that there is one song for every decade of the protagonist’s life; from his conception to his afterlife. ‘Intro' begins this unique journey that will allow us to see the fall and the redemption of the main character, putting pen to paper all of the band’s hopes and fears. In the video the protagonist gets created and subsequently abandoned by the violent and abusive father, the prelude to his fall in disgrace.

The Ghibertins, Federico Cadenazzi, Fabio R. Rossin

Kε•ha•’jas – Man of the Land

"Kε•ha•'jas – Man of the Land" is an ethnographic documentary filmed in Lemnos, the most lowland of the Aegean islands. Lemnos, which according to one version owes its name to the Homeric Leion, which identifies a field with wheat or from the Leis + "Apple", which means sheep, is characterized by intense livestock and agricultural activity, since ancient times. The Lemnian farmer, Kε•ha•'jas – during the oral tradition of the place that gave birth to him – was a momentous and turbulent concept, mostly misunderstood.

Giorgos Komakis

Le Pain

Le Pain' is a historical short film that follows a house search during the 2nd World War. A German soldier investigates wether a jewish family is hiding in a dilapidated farmhouse that only seems to be inhabited by a French speaking Belgian girl.

Pepijn Tebrunsvelt

Marianne

Marianne, a heroine for a day, is interviewed by a young journalist. Despite of all the misunderstandings, a meeting takes place, brief, tenuous, human.

Julien Gaspar-Oliveri

Mila

MILA is a war story that takes on a child's perspective. Inspired by World War II stories from the director's mother, the character of Mila represents the best of humanity. Although she has lost everything – her family, her house, her peace – she still clings to hope. With a little more than imagination and humanity, Mila manages to profoundly impact others, including a caring stranger who saves her.

Cinzia Angelini

Need no More

The video uses semiotics to express how six girls deal with difficulties and challenges in relationships. In the beginning, the girls are trapped in wooden boxes as if they were trapped in their feelings. Eventually, they escape the boxes and what are in front of them to embrace a wider world. This demonstrates the free and brave image of neofeminism. The personaly lip-sync element also shows the different reaction the six girls have when they face difficulties in their love lives. This includes developing a paradoxical personality, having an optimistic mindset, being closed-off and represses emotions, immersing in nature to heal a broken heart, having an extremely high self-expectation, seeking for self-trancedancy and self- realisation. These different reactions allows audience to see the different mentality people tend to have when facing relationships.

Leo Sa

Nightline

A bittersweet tale around a live interview radio broadcast that changes the lives of several innocent people. After lying low in the USA for almost 20 years Radek makes a surprise visit to his home city of Prague. Tech savvy he manages to avoid revealing all forms of his identity and location to tell his story on a late night radio phone-in show hosted by ambitious young journalist Eva. Eva bends over backwards to accommodate him and becomes embroiled in his mission to track down a young mother called Eliska. Eva has no idea that she herself is part of his plot from an event two decades ago. Czech law gives a 20 year time limit for all crime, including murder. Detectives on the late shift hear the interview and start to build a case but they only have a few hours left before the crime is deemed unpunishable. A fierce struggle for time and justice begins.

Robert Sedlacek

Offscreen

Antonio, a professional actor, is hired as the main character Rocco in Una stanza per cinque sitcom. Due to script demands, one day his character leaves the ranks of the show with an immediate layoff. His life is turned upside down: victim of the show sudden and vast success, Antonio’s ego considerably enlarged, finding himself trapped in its developments. Unmotivated and without perspective, Antonio is more and more dominated by a chronic depression: withdrawn in his, by now, fruitlessly well decorated flat, he can’t find any consolation other than binge-watching the show he’s not being part of anymore, letting himself go and drowning his sorrows in alcoholism. One night Franco, a friend and former member of the show’s cast, rings his bell escorted by Patricia, a prostitute the man paid for pretending to be his girlfriend. During the improvised dinner with his two unexpected guests, Antonio starts hearing weird laugh sounds, incredibly similar to the sitcom laugh track. These noises grew as they show in Antonio’s ears during the more disparate occasions and inconvenient situations, slowly becoming a grotesque background noise of his everyday life. Even during his grieving speech for Franco’s funeral, suicide’s victim, he’s tortured by the morbose and growing sound of laughs that leads him to feeling lightheaded. Suddenly, Franco sits up in his coffin, annoyed by Antonio’s mistakes in telling his lines, a voice-over calls stop and every actor exits their character. Antonio, astonished, stays motionless in his spot, shocked by his incapacity in distinguishing truth and fiction.

Giorgio Chiantese

Primal Therapy

A middle-aged man on the verge of a burnout seeks new energy through a very special form of self help therapy.

Santtu Salminen

Shark

Completing the trilogy of wickedly dark comedy shorts that began with Spider and Bear, Nash Edgerton finds a perfect match in Rose Byrne as Sofie, a woman who loves pranks just as much as Jack, Edgerton’s onscreen alter ego. Alas, the couple’s quest to outdo each other may lead to the most outrageous calamity of all.

Nash Edgerton

Sinking Ships

Sara endured many years in a relationship full of control and violence. As she and her family go on vacation, an opportunity to break away suddenly presents itself.

Andreas Kessler

Storgetnya

March 2020, Yerevan, capital of Armenia. 230 meters underground, in the Avan salt mine, men and women walk to breathe easier. Physical activities and medical consultations set the rhythm of the timeless world of this underground clinic, where lives intersect and stories are told.

Hovig Hagopian

The Guardian

For 18 years, the Syrian Orthodox nun Dayrayto lives on the grounds of a church in Zaz, a dilapidated and abandoned Assyrian village in southeastern Turkey. Together with the monk Abuna she cared for the church for fourteen years. Ever since the monk died four years ago Dayrayto lives alone with her two dogs, a cow, chicken, and three cats. She is vulnerable to multiple threats. Her presence in the region is a thorn in the side of many local actors. There has always been hostili- ties from the Muslim side and little support from her own community. Lately, the situation is getting worse and Dayrayto fears for her dog’s life, which she believes has been deliberately poisoned. The camera follows Dayrayto through her everyday life and observes her struggle for survival, her worries and hardships as fear and loneliness are her constant companions. An yet, Dayrayto is a courageous and fearless woman – she promised Abuna to never leave this holy place and to protect the church, no matter what.

Martina Priessner

The Internal Void of a Damaged Mind

A man wakes up, lost – where he is and what he sees challenges him to confront himself and his feelings.

Christian Søgaard

The Last Bath

A nun is called upon to adopt her 15-year-old nephew, and as a consequence religion, family and love become entangled.

David Bonneville

The Right Words

Kenza, 15, and her little brother Madhi, 13, regularly humiliate one another on social media. On the bus, Kenza puts her naive and romantic little brother to the test: to profess his love for Jada; a girl that Madhi loves but who does not know him.

Adrian Moyse Dullin

to be near you.

to be near you. pushes at the boundaries of time to create a feeling of reconnecting with something, or someone, who is gone. Based on a live duet between Ali Kenner Brodsky and Jenna Pollack, to be near you. honors the memory of those that we have lost, collapses distance by energizing the spaces between, and demonstrates how people can find connection through physical separation.

Ali Kenner Brodsky, Jarret Blinkhorn

Trumpets in the Sky

Boushra, one of the Syrian potato-picking girls in Lebanon, returns from a long day of work in the field only to learn that today her childhood will come to an end.

Rakan Mayasi

Turning Man – 81RPM

Jürgen Leppert, also known as "Der Dreher" or "der Kreisel" is a graduate engineer, speaker inventor, 360 degree dancer, gifted Frisbee player and thoroughbred 68er. Everything revolves around the Karlsruher legend, and not just on the dance floor. A declaration of love to music, dancing and rebellion. A portrait of a tough person who still swims against the stream and the living proof that 81 years is far from too old for hard raves.

Robin Trouillet

Twice my Brother

After a misunderstanding, Damien ends up sheltering a young Sudanese exile, Abdo. Their cohabitation had just begun when they guess themselves as homosexual and homophobic respectively. They get to know each other by confronting their respective fears and misguided preconceptions. In an explosive atmosphere, each intimately discovers "the other", walking the thin line between the enemy and the fellow being.

Mickey Broothaerts

Zabut

Nunzia, a thirty-year-old with fertility problems, returns to her childhood home in Sicily, in the ancient district of Zabut. Here, with the complicity of her mother and her new cabinetmaker assistant, Nunzia rediscovers desire, as in an archaic pagan ritual.

Giuseppe Schillaci