Biography

Mantas Kvedaravičius (1976-2022) was a Lithuanian-born filmmaker with a degree in social anthropology from Cambridge University. His first documentary film, Barzakh was selected in numerous festivals and won several awards, including the Amnesty International Prize and the Ecumenical Jury Prize at the Berlinale in 2011. His following two films, Mariupolis (2016) and Parthenon (2019) were selected at the Berlinale and the Venice International Critics' Week, respectively. Mantas Kvedaravičius was captured and killed by Russian Forces in the end of March, 2022 in Mariupol while documenting Russia's invasion of Ukrainian territory. 

Synopsis

Some cities are symbols of society’s progress, while others are a reminder of people’s degradation, lack of empathy, and ruin. The Ukrainian city of Mariupol has been under fire from Russian aggressors for more than five months, with lifeless bodies lying in the streets and many buildings left in ruins. Six years after his first film about the city, Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravičius returned to Mariupol to record the unexpected continuation of the inhospitable, everyday reality of the bombarded city. He paid for his return with his life – but his fiancée managed to get the footage out. Shot in the spirit of cinéma vérité, Mariupolis 2 provides a unique, hyper-realistic account of war and of the altruism of the Ukrainian people.

Biography

 Valentyn VASYANOVYCH (1971, Ukraine) studied Cinematography and Documentary Filmmaking at the Karpenko-Kary National University of Theatre, Film and TV in Kiev. In 2007, he graduated from the Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing in Poland. He released his first feature film, Business As Usual, in 2012. His 2017 feature, Black Level, won the FIPRESCI Prize for Best Ukrainian Feature at the Odessa International Film Festival. Atlantis (2019) won Best Film in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival. REFLECTION was also premiered at Venice film festival in 2021

Synopsis

2014 – the first year of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. After his capture, the surgeon Serhiy is confronted with violence, torture, and killing. His return home is deeply affected by the trauma he has been through. Valentyn Vasyanovych lets the viewer taste his protagonist’s fear, desperation, and sense of helplessness. During the second, no less painful part of Serhiy’s journey, together they seek the answer to the question of how to live on after having experienced such horrors.

Biography 

Volodymyr Tykhyy(born on February 25, 1970, in Chervonohrad, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian film director, screenwriter and film producer of documentaries and feature films. He is a member of the National Union of Cinematographers of Ukraine, and he is a 2018 winner of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine for a series of historical and documentary films about the Revolution of Dignity.

In 2013 he completed his film “The Green Jacket '', which was in the competition program of San Sebastian IFF, Warsaw IFF and Tbilisi IFF.

Synopsis

Media activist and filmmaking collective Babylon’13, formed during the Maidan uprisings, focus on the events of March 14, 2022 – the 2,944th day of the Russian-Ukrainian War.

Biography 

Paolo Taviani was born in San Miniato, Italy in 1931. Since 1954, he has made feature films and documentaries with his brother, Vittorio Taviani, with the two also writing the scripts. They won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Father and Master and the Grand Jury Prize for The Night of San Lorenzo. They received the Golden Lion at Venice in 1986 for their lifetime body of work. The films The Subversives, The Lark Farm and Caesar Must Die all screened at the Berlinale, with the two winning the Golden Bear for the latter. Rainbow – A Private Affair was the last film they made together.

Synopsis 

LEONORA ADDIO narrates the stunning adventures of Pirandello’s ashes and the tortuous journey of his urn from Rome to Agrigento, leading up to his eventful burial that took place only fifteen years after his actual death. And beyond that, to Pirandello’s last story, written twenty days before his death, “The Nail”, in which the young Bastianeddu, torn from his mother’s arms in Sicily and forced to follow his father across the ocean, is incapable of healing the wound that drives him to an irrational gesture.

Biography 

Dardenne brothers, Belgian filmmakers known for their starkly realistic approach to working-class themes and characters. In addition to directing, Jean-Pierre Dardenne (b. April 21, 1951, Engis, Belgium) and Luc Dardenne (b. March 10, 1954, Awirs, Belgium) also wrote and produced their movies. 

In 1978 they shot their first documentary, Le chant du rossignol, about the resistance against the Nazis during the second world war in Belgium. In 1986 they shot their first fiction movie, Falsch, about a Jewish family massacred by the Nazis. After their second movie, Je pense a vous, they released La Promesse, a movie about inmigration in Belgium. The film was a success worldwide winning awards in many festivals.

In 1999 they had another hit with Rosetta that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival. The movie tells the story of a blue collar worker with an alcoholic mother who tries to have a better life in a small belgium city.

In 2002, they came back to Cannes with their last movie, Le Fils, that won the ecumenical jury prize and the award for best actor for Olivier Gourmet.

Synopsis

Tori et Lokita will look back on the friendship uniting two youngsters who have travelled alone from Africa and find themselves contending with the cruel conditions of their exile in Belgium.

Biography 

Jonas Mekas was born in Semeniškiai, a small farming village in the Biržai region of northeastern Lithuania in 1922. His adolescence was spent in his own world of literature and poetry which consumed his daily life. This peaceful existence was thrown into turmoil with the arrival of Soviet and then Nazi troops to Lithuania. Jonas and his younger brother Adolfas attempted to flee to Vienna in 1944, but were diverted by the Germans to a forced labour camp outside of Hamburg.

Following the War and several years living as displaced persons while studying in Germany, they got the opportunity to emigrate to the United States, where they settled in Brooklyn and began their artistic activities, such as founding Film Culture magazine and making their own films. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania documents the brothers’ return to their home after 27 years abroad.

Synopsis

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas creates an elegiac diary of a trip to his home country of Lithuania.An exquisitely composed document of this emotional homecoming, the film is structured as a triptych, with the central section comprising “100 Glimpses of Lithuania, August 1971.” Reuniting with siblings, neighbours and their mother Elžbieta – at that time in her eighties and still cooking outdoors over an open fire – the film brings the viewer along on a tour of village life in rural Soviet Lithuania. This is bookended by scenes from New York in the 1950s and a stop in Vienna following the brothers’ time in Lithuania.

Biography 

Jerzy Skolimowski was born in Łódź, Poland and graduated from the Łódź Film School. In addition to acting in many of his own films, he has appeared in Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls (00) and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (07), both of which played the Festival. He made his directorial feature debut with Identification Marks: None (64), and later directed the Festival selections Moonlighting (82), Four Nights with Anna (08), Essential Killing (10), and 11 Minutes (15). EO (22) is his latest film.

Synopsis

Eo is a gray donkey who is freed from the circus by a legislative act. Thus begins his surreal journey across the world, as the audience observes various forms of human behavior through his eyes. He meets football hooligans, a jolly truck driver, and a young priest who has failed on his spiritual quest… For his distinctive variation on Bresson’s allegorical Au hasard Balthazar, legendary Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski chose to collaborate with the talented young cinematographer Michał Dymek. Together, they have created a daring, formally liberated parable that one reviewer called the wackiest film in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Biography 

Lech Majewski is a poet, media artist, writer and film, theatre and opera director. He studied at Krakow Academy of Fine Arts and graduated from the National Film School in Łódź, Poland. His video, film and art works are shown in a variety of galleries and museums around the world. He lectures on the hidden language of symbols at various universities, colleges and academies of art.  He is a writer and director, known for The Mill and the Cross (2011), Valley of the Gods (2019),  Wojaczek (1999) etc. 

Synopsis

The mid-20th century in communist Poland. Adam lives with his mother, who is persecuted by the state security service. Adam's father fought in World War II as a pilot, defending Britain, and has not been heard from since. It's not clear if he stayed in England or returned and is hiding to avoid persecution. Packages and postcards arrive from him, but Adam, who has never seen his father, suspects someone else is sending them. At school he keeps dreaming that his father will one day land in the sports field at his school in his Spitfire, raising dust from which he will emerge alive, heroic and magnificent. One day, as the boy is watching Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" at the cinema, he is transported to the young Brigitte Bardot's dressing room and her world of film and music stars.

Biography 

Ruben Östlund was born in Styrso, Sweden, and studied directing at the University of Gothenburg. His films include the short Incident by a Bank, which won the Berlin Golden Bear, and the features The Guitar Mongoloid , Involuntary, and the Festival selections Play, Force Majeure (14), which won the Cannes Un Certain Regard jury prize, and The Square, which won the Palme d’Or. His latest, Triangle of Sadness, also won the Palme d’Or.

Synopsis 

Models Carl and Yaya are navigating the world of fashion while exploring the boundaries of their relationship. The couple are invited for a luxury cruise with a rogues’ gallery of super-rich passengers, a Russian oligarch, British arms dealers and an idiosyncratic, alcoholic, Marx-quoting captain. At first, all appears Instagrammable. But a storm is brewing, and heavy seasickness hits the passengers during the seven-course captain’s dinner. The cruise ends catastrophically. Carl and Yaya find themselves marooned on a desert island with a group of billionaires and one of the ship’s cleaners. Hierarchy is suddenly flipped upside down, as the housekeeper is the the only one who knows how to fish.

Biography 

Soso Bliadze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, 1986. He studied at Tbilisi State University, Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences, Major in Informatics. He studied also at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgian State University, Faculty of Film and TV, Major in Directing. His graduation film The most Precious was shown at many international festivals and won awards in Kazakhstan, Georgia and Slovenia. He directed the short film Three Steps which premiered in Rotterdam and Oberhausen and also directed Tradition (together with Elmar Imanov) which premiered in Clermont Ferrand and Busan.

Synopsis

Tina, a young woman who has lost her way in life, rents a room from the vibrant Megi. Tina has never been accustomed to taking care of herself and now she waits patiently for her boyfriend Beka to join her in Tbilisi.Things don’t go according to plan, however, and Tina, thanks to Megi, starts to discover what it’s like to be free and to be able to make her own decisions without being reliant on men.

Biography 

Maryna Er Gorbach (1981, Kyiv, Ukraine). Filmography: With her husband Mehmet Bahadir Er she co-directed the feature films Black Dogs Barking (Kara Köpekler Havlarken, 2009), No Ofsayt (2009), Love Me (Sev beni, 2013), Omar and Us (2019).

Synopsis

In July 2014, many people still believed that the situation in the Donbas would soon calm down again. Irka, who is expecting a child, also stubbornly refuses to abandon her home, but she has no idea that her decision to defend her right to stay will come at great cost. Emotionally torn between her passively pro-Russian husband and her actively anti-separatist brother, she doesn’t begin to understand the laws of war until it is too late. The mastery with which Maryna Er Gorbach filmed her evocative drama based on true events was confirmed by a Best Director award at the Sundance festival. The filmmaker presents the story of a mother responsible for a future life through carefully composed shots in which each frame evokes the destructive force of war.

The story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine during the start of the war. Irka refuses to leave her house even as the village gets captured by armed forces. Shortly after they find themselves at the center of an international air crash catastrophe on July 17, 2014.

Biography 

Romed Wyder was born in 1967 in Brig, Switzerland. He graduated with a degree from the cinema department of HEAD-Genève (Haute école d'art et de design) in 1995. He is active in several Swiss professional associations and works as producer, director and screenwriter for fiction and documentary. His features NO COFFEE, NO TV, NO SEX (1999) and ABSOLUT (2004) premiered at the Locarno Film Festival and DAWN (2014) won several international awards.

Synopsis

Grappling with a mid-life crisis, Sacha leaves his girlfriend and escapes to his grandparents’ Airbnb. He is surprised by the presence of Marjan, an Iranian woman who is facing her own marital crisis. They are both annoyed at having to share the apartment and rather than finding a place of retreat, tension builds. When Mina, a vibrant American, arrives, their mutual prejudices give way to curiosity and complicity. What began as an involuntary encounter becomes a moment of new possibilities.

Biography 

Hilal Baydarov was born in 1987 in Baku, Azerbaijan. During his high school years, he won the national championships of mathematics twice in 2004 and 2005After a master in computer sciences, Baydarov studied at the Sarajevo Film Academy under acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr before going on to make his feature debut HILLS WITHOUT NAMES (2018), which premiered at the Montreal World Film Festival. Since then Hilal has completed an award-winning trilogy of documentaries set in Katech Azerbaijan: WHEN THE PERSIMMONS GREW (2019) which won the Heart of Sarajevo for Best Documentary at the Sarajevo and the Interreligious Award and Special Jury Mention at Visions du réel; MOTHER AND SON (2019), which premiered in the main competition at IDFA; and NAILS IN MY BRAIN (2020) which premiered at Cinema du réel. Baydarov’s second feature, IN BETWEEN DYING premiered in the main competition of the 2020 Venice Biennale Film Festival.

Synopsis

The story follows a soldier who returns from war and finds everyone in his village has rotted away due to a mysterious illness. The only survivor, his sister, is also slowly rotting, with only a dog to keep her company.

Biography 

Bahman Ghobadi was born on September 2nd, 1968 in Baneh, a city near the Iran-Iraq border in the province of Kurdistan, Iran. After graduating from high school in Sanandaj, Ghobadi moved to Tehran in 1992. He started his artistic career in the field of Industrial Photography. 

Through his instinctive and hands-on approach to filmmaking, Ghobadi developed a unique style, soon gaining widespread local recognition. A breakthrough came with “Life in a Fog” (1999), one of the most acclaimed shorts ever made in Iran. Following this success, Bahman Ghobadi went on to make “A Time for Drunken Horses” (2000) – the first feature-length Kurdish film in the history of Iran. In the wake of being awarded several different International Awards, Ghobadi attracted international attention and established himself as a pioneer of Kurdish cinema.

This film and all subsequent made by Ghobadi (among others, “Half Moon”, 2004, and “Turtles Can Fly”, 2006) were widely praised at film festivals the world over, gathering dozens of awards, but were little or not seen in his native country. In 2009, Ghobadi completed “No One Knows About Persian Cats”- a semi- documentary about the underground indie music scene in Tehran, filmed in Iran without an official permit and in very restricted conditions. After that, he had to leave Iran and continue working abroad. In 2012 he made „Rihno season”, which was shot in Istanbul. His latest work- „Flag Without A Country” (2015) is a Kurdish documentary-fiction with action in Erbil, Iraqi-Kurdistan.

SYNOPSIS

Kurdish composer Boran is no longer able to see the ocean, obstructed by a new building, and a tragedy befalls him…

Biography 

Born in Trabzon, Turkey. Tayfun Pirselimoğlu graduated from Middle East Technical University after which he went to Vienna and studied painting at Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst (Academy of Applied Arts) He held various exhibitions in different cities of the world, including Vienna, İstanbul, Ankara, Budapest, Tallinn etc. He is the one of the founders of the independent art initiative of Akademie Genius which he lectured on script writing, cinema and painting. Pirselimoğlu is the author of four novels (Tales from the Desert, Album of the Missing Persons, Melancholia, Towers of the City) and two story books. He started his film career as script writer and wrote various scripts of shorts and features. He directed his first short film DAYIM (My Uncle) in 1999 and then IL SILENZIO E D'ORO (SILENCE IS GOLDEN) in 2002, have been the recipients of numerous international awards. In 2002 he also shot HICBIRYERDE (INNOWHERELAND), his first feature film, which has also received many awards. He shot the trilogy of CONSCIENCE AND DEATH including RIZA 2007, PUS (HAZE) 2009, and the last one, 'SAC' (HAIR) 2010, all awarded. Their latest film KERR (2021) was selected at Istanbul FF.

Synopsis

Can is a sole witness of a murder in the town where he came for the funeral of his old father. The murderer showing no interest in Can's presence quits the place, calmly. The police he applied then, doesn't allow him to leave after his testimony. He meets various strange friends of his father in the town where he's trapped, thereafter and some weird things happen right after another. On the other hand, a quarantine is declared due to rabid dogs are at large. The whole town turns into purgatory with no exit is almost at the edge of insanty.

Biography  

Francesco Costabile (1980, Italy). Selected filmography: L’armadio (2004, short), Inside Rome (Dentro Roma, 2006, short), The Dress and the Face. Portrait of Piero Tosi (L’Abito e il Volto, 2009, doc.), Piero Tosi, 1690 – The Beginning of a Century (Piero Tosi, 1690 – L’inizio di un secolo, 2014, doc.), In a Future April /The Young Pasolini/ (In un futuro aprile, 2020, doc.), Una Femmina – The Code of Silence (Una Femmina, 2022).

Synopsis

Rose was a child when her mother died, and the family had an explanation ready for her: suicide. Except the fragments of memory that come to the young woman as she is growing up in the care of her grandmother and despotic uncle in a remote part of Calabria suggest something else. In her desire to understand the past and the family dynamic, Rosa uncovers the laws of the mafia world, in which she had only been a passive element until now.

Biography 

Adilkhan Yerzhanov is a film director and scriptwriter. He was born in Djezkazgan city of Kazakhstan on August, 7, 1982. In 2009 he graduated from Kazakh National Academy of Arts with a major in “Film directing”. Adilkhan Yerzhanov is a two-time participant of the Cannes Film Festival's Official Program (“The Owners”, 2014, Official Selection, and “The Gentle Indifference of the World”, 2018, Un Certain Regard Section).

All of his films were premiered and awarded at many international film festivals. “The Owners” film was included in the 100 Best Asian Films catalogue, published in 2015 by Busan International Film Festival.

Synopsis 

Selkeu Uashev is a local police officer at Karatas village. He turns a deaf ear to lots of criminal offenses and takes bribes. For that he's loved a lot by local criminals and frauds. But one day the commission arrives from the city to declare a big audit all over the village due to the pandemic.

Biography 

Born in Lucerne (Switzerland) in 1982. From 2003–2008 he studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. His short films have been shown at over 100 international film festivals and won several awards. His graduation film Polar received a Special Mention at Berlinale 2009 and won the German Camera Award as well as the German Short Film Award. His debut feature film Marija had its world premiere in Competition at the International Filmfestival Locarno 2016. The film was internationally screened at several festivals such as Toronto, Busan, Angers and Gothenburg, winning numerous national and international prizes. A Piece of Sky is his second feature film.

Synopsis

In a remote mountain village, the still young love of Anna and Marco is put to serve a test. As a result of the brain tumor, Marco increasingly loses his impulse control. In the tense relationship between the village community and the effects of Marco’s illness, Anne tries to preserve a love that in the end outshines even death.

Biography 

Manijeh Hekmat was born in 1962 in Arak, Iran. She is a producer and director, known for Women's Prison (2002), Three Women (2008) and Bandar Band (2020). Up to now, as president of Bamdad Film Company, she has produced 16 feature films– such as The Girl in the Sneakers (1999), There Are Things You Don’t Know(2009), No Entry for Men(2011), City of the Mice (2014), Gap(2014) – and several shorts and documentaries.

Synopsis

After getting infected with COVID-19, a 57-year-old painter, single woman, Mitra, goes into a coma. With her last breaths, she begins traveling to different pieces of her memories through her unconscious mind.

Sinopsys

The Easter celebration takes place in the Church of the Holy Trinity  in Pheria and the nearby cemetery.

Biography

Was born in Batumi in 1992. Has studied at Batumi Art Teaching University. 

Biography 

 Jan Bujnowski is a student of Film Direction at National Film School in Łódź. He also studied journalism and history of art at University of Warsaw. "Time machine", his short documentary, was screened at over 20 film festivals in the world. He is currently working on his graduate films.

Synopsis

According to polls made throughout the 1990s by the Public Opinion Research Center, approximately 95% of Poles identified themselves as believers. At the same time, unemployment rates reached record values. In times of crisis, when people sought spirituality, seemingly impossible events were possible.

Biography 

Hanna Jalali was born in Ukraine. Studied at the Institute of Journalism of Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University (BA in Journalism). In 2015 she graduated from Kyiv National I.K. Karpenko-Kary Theater, Cinema and Television University (MA in Documentary Directing; MA in Film Production). Her first short film "After" was officially selected in several international film festivals and won several awards. In 2018 she was invited to participate in the 3rd Film school Alliance in Georgia, where she took a diploma from the masters and 3rd place audience award. In 2020 she took part in the Kyoto Filmmakers Lab (KFL) (Masters session). Also, she's a participant in the Berlinale Talents 2021. Currently, she's working on her first feature film.

Synopsis

Yulia is about to leave the country for work, but there is a snag: her cousin-autistic Bodia. Now it's essential for her to quickly find another shelter for him.

Biography 

 Antimo Campanile, is a 91 class director and screenwriter of short films, video clips and commercials. Graduated in Cinematography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples with 110 cum laude.

Winner of Trento Film Festival, Ivelise Cine Festival, Altacauda Film, Festival, Borgia Film Festival, Napoli Film Festival, Lucania Film Festival, Calcutta film Festival and other numerous national and international festivals. He is currently engaged as Assistant Director in the production of the documentary on the research of dr. Paolo Ascierto, 1 + 1 = 3 by Romano Montesarchio produced by Bronx Film. In 2021 he shoots his third short film “Leggero Leggerissimo” with Corrado Taranto and Renato Carpentieri.

Synopsis

The life of a lonely and melancholy old man is turned upside down by the encounter with a visually impaired child.

Biography 

Joseph is an award winning animator and writer/director. Upon graduating from the National Film and Television School in 2008, he was named one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow. His first live action film, the darkly-comic drama, Baby Shower, screened at the 2016 Film London BFI showcase and picked up the Jury Award. Other works include A Family Portrait, for C4, which screened in over 35 festivals, winning multiple awards including Best Animation at Bristol Encounters and reaching the Oscar long-list. Joseph has collaborated with National Theatre, Met Opera House New York, BBC Comedy, BBC Films, Atlantic Records and his animation was featured in Philip Glass opera about Walt Disney, The Perfect American.

 Synopsis

Driving along the motorway, Will loses his sense of scale. As his condition deepens, he struggles to unpick the sequence of events that led to this predicament, before he's lost forever.

Biography 

Janaina Wagner (São Paulo, Brazil) works with cinema, photography, scenography, drawing, video and installations, researching the relations of limit, control and contention that human-kind establishes with the world. Currently on a PhD at Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts Contemporains (FR), Wagner participated in several artistic residencies, such as Gasworks (EN), FID Campus – Festival International de Cinéma de Marseille (FR), Bolsa Pampulha (BR), Festival Mondes Possibles – Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (FR), Casa Tomada (BR), W139 (NL) and NES Skagaströnd (IS). Janaina lives and works between Paris and São Paulo.

Synopsis

Filmed in 2021 on the roads Transamazônica, BR-319 and the real village of Realidade, in the south of Amazonia, Curupira e a máquina do destino is the encounter between the entity Curupira, a queer devil who protects the forests of Brazil, and the incarnated ghost of Iracema, a 14-year-old prostitute.

Biography

Morad Mostafa is an Egyptian Filmmaker, born in Cairo. He worked as an Assistant Director in many independent films; he collaborated as an Executive director in "Souad" feature film – official selection in Cannes Film Festival 2020 and Berlinale. He wrote and directed two short films "Henet Ward" and "What we don’t know about Mariam"; both had their world premieres in "Clermont-Ferrand" and has been selected in other major festivals (BFI London – Palm Springs – Busan – Thessaloniki – Stockholm – Karlovy Vary – Namur – Cinemed – Shanghai – Durban – Cairo) and won more than 30 international awards

Synopsis

Khadiga, a young mother of 18 lives alone with her baby after her husband left for work in a remote city; on an ordinary day she makes her way through the hustle of Cairo streets to do some visits where she feels uncomfortable with the surroundings.

Biography 

Nicolas Bouchez (1997) is a director, editor and cinematographer from Brussels, Belgium. He studied film directing at INSAS in Brussels before entering DOCNOMADS, a Creative Documentary Masters Programme between Portugal, Hungary and Belgium. His graduation film “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” premiered at the 2022 Berlin International Film Festival in the Generation competition, where it received a special mention.Playful observer, his films blend documentary, fiction and animation techniques to explore the relationships between people and urban landscapes.

Synopsis

Like a stroke of white paint, the aeroplane’s condensation trail moves across the blue canvas of the sky. The voice on the radio is talking about an upcoming lunar eclipse – of which nothing will be seen here, on the outskirts of a city in Portugal. Instead, with touches of humour and magical realism, director Nicolas Bouchez observes the everyday happenings and colourful facets of a city where there is ostensibly nothing to see.

Biography 

Carlos Ormeño Palma is a Peruvian filmmaker and alumnus of La Fémis - Université d'été, Berlinale Talents, Oberhausen Seminar and Talents Buenos Aires. His passion for filmmaking arose from his family memories and his identity.Since he started making films, Carlos has produced short films combining different genres of filmmaking, mostly experimenting with documentary and fiction. "The Distance of Time" is his first Experimental/Fiction short.

 Carlos is currently developing his first feature film, “The Scent of Walls,” developed with the support of Cine Qua Non Lab in Mexico. In 2020, he won the Peruvian National Fund for Short Films for his second short film, "The Weight of Air."

Synopsis

In a Peruvian city corroded by an eternal and indifferent winter, a young androgynous man with indigenous roots reaches the depths of abandonment as his lover tries to survive an unknown disease and his memories fade into oblivion and sorrow.

Biography 

Showman of Kazakhstan, TV presenter, musician, director, owner of Jantik Show company and world famous orchestra.He was born on January 30, 1973, in Almaty. Since childhood he was surrounded by his favorite records of Elvis Presley, music of such bands as Beatles, Rolling Stones and many other English musicians, who immortalized themselves in the rock-n-roll epoch.

Synopsis

Upon his release, Saken does not know where to go. He has no family, no home, his friends are either dead or gone in different directions. He decides to go to the city to find any kind of “workhouse” and lodging. At a flea market, Saken meets an intelligent woman named Anna, who helps him with lodging – a room in the administrative building of a former factory. Saken settles in, but he is not alone there, he has a neighbor, the music-loving rat Lyusya.

Biography 

Gabriel Gonzalez Acosta is a filmmaker and theatre director. His work explores the staging of worlds and the role of narrative, dreams, magic and place in the age of extinction. He recently finished production on his first short, Concertina (2021) which is currently in the process of festival application. His work has been presented in Mexico and internationally, in institutions and publications such as Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), HB Studio (New York), and Klima Magazine. He received a PhD in Philosophy, Art and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School. He also holds degrees from the Royal College of Art and Queen Mary, University of London. He lives and works in Mexico City and New York.

Synopsis

 Concertina is an interlocking narrative film that jumps between parallel realities as two sets of brothers discuss their dreams of one another.

Biography 

 Majid Al-Remaihi is a filmmaker and film programmer from Doha, Qatar. His short film “And Then They Burn the Sea” premiered at Locarno in 2021. He produced it under the mentorship of Academy Award-nominated director Rithy Panh and with the support of the Qatari Film Fund.  Currently, he is developing his next short film.  Majid is also part of the Film Programming team at the Doha Film Institute.

Synopsis

 And Then They Burn the Sea is an elegiac contemplation on familial memory and loss. Filmmaker Majid Al-Remaihi ruminates on the experience of witnessing his mother’s gradual and terminal memory loss over the course of many years. Weaving a personal family archive, reenacted dreams and rituals, the film underlines the promise of cinema as a medium for memories even at their most irretrievable.