director / Balász Simonyi
screenwriter / Balász Simonyi
cinematographer /Balász Révész
actors /Lilla Sárosdi, Tara Kollarszky, Roland Kollarszky, Tamás Vavrik
producers / Gábor Osváth, Nóra Alföldi, Balász Simonyi

ABOUT THE FILM
This attempt at an anatomical representation of a “standard” terrorist attack is a simple, unremarkable story that follows the details of the everyday lives of a couple of randomly chosen people, their families, and their surroundings. Violence has become a part of our lives, penetrating our everyday and becoming commonplace. Through the eye of the outside, impartial, and formally uninterested observer, we follow the circumstances leading to an eruption of violence that will change the fates of the people observed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Balász Simonyi is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, producer, film and TV actor, and member of the European Film Academy born in 1980. His films have been distributed in over 20 countries and screened at numerous festivals, including Cannes, Sarajevo, Kraków, Seoul, Seattle, and Clermont-Ferrand. His feature-length documentary Ultra was named one of the best documentary films of 2017 by the European Film Academy.

director / Beraat Gokkus
screenwriter / Beraat Gokkus
cinematographer / Beraat Gokkus
actors / Ali Alwani, Hani Al Zeitan, Thelma Chikwanha, Elyse Ngabire, Ahmed Al Gabr, Murat Pomynytskyy, Oleksandr Pomynytskyy
producer / Beraat Gokkus

ABOUT THE FILM
Karam from Syria is a poet and journalist who, while in exile in France, lives in the Maison des Journalistes, an association that provides refugee journalists from all over the world with refuge in Paris. One day, Karam has the verses of a new poem in his head but has nothing to write it down with because he had lost the one pen that he uses for poetry. It is a pen that his late mother gave him shortly before she was killed in a bombing raid during the Civil War. As he embarks on a desperate search for the pen, Karam meets other residents of the Maison des Journalistes and engages in conversations that uncover details about their refugee status and existential troubles.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Beraat Gokkus is a Turkish director and journalist who studied Political Science at Istanbul's Marmara University before relocating to Paris where he has been living since 2016. He is an award-winning director, having won the Best Short Film Award at the Berlin Short Film Festival in 2017 for his short documentary Breakfast of Champions from the same year and the Best Short Film Award at the Berlin Independent Film Festival a year later. His films have been screened in competition programs at numerous festivals around the world. He is currently preparing a feature-length film, a documentary, and a new short.

director / Nastya Feschuk
screenwriter / Nastya Feschuk
cinematographer / Anton Kuleba
actors / Anton Chernichko, Viktoria Rudaya, Elena Fesick
producer / Yelyzaveta Bondarenko

ABOUT THE FILM
Dok u razgovoru s dvjema ženama odgovara na naizgled obična pitanja iz intervjua za posao, 27-godišnji Anton osjeća se prilično neugodno. Štoviše, njegova neugoda raste sa svakim novim pitanjem u odgovoru na koja sve više gubi sigurnost i samopouzdanje. Dok odgovara na odveć očita pitanja, kao i dok glavnoj urednici medija u kojem želi dobiti posao i njezinoj pomoćnici pripovijeda jednu od svojih priča, onu o dječaku koji je ljeto nevoljko proveo u dječjem kampu, Anton sve teže smislena pitanja razlikuje od provokacija. Njegov razgovor za posao tako se postupno pretvara u svojevrsnu ispovijed.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1993 in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, screenwriter and director Nastya Feschuk was already an avid lover of the seventh art at the age of 15. In the course of her studies, she was especially dedicated to philosophical reflections on film d'auteur, an extremely fruitful topic for analysis and interpretation. In 2018, she attended a documentary film workshop led by renowned Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Sergey Bukovsky, and this film, in which she aimed to point out the similarities between feature and documentary film, is her debut directorial project. The script is based on actual events from the life of Anton Kuleba, who plays himself in the lead role.

director / Farah Abou Kharroub
screenwriter / Farah Abou Kharroub
cinematographer / Farah Abou Kharroub
producer / Farah Abou Kharroub

ABOUT THE FILM
A Syrian boy is transporting water canisters on a wheelbarrow in a refugee camp located somewhere in Lebanon. When he runs into two of his peers, their aggressive attitude disrupts the boy's plans.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Palestinian producer, cinematographer, and director Farah Abou Kharroub was born in 1993 in Lebanon. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Film Directing from the Lebanese University in Beirut and has led several projects on MBC TV (Middle East Broadcasting Center TV) as director and producer. She has also collaborated on several projects in her home country as assistant director and is currently working on a Master's Degree in Film Directing at the renowned FAMU International Academy in Prague. On her own projects, she works as both cinematographer and editor, while her focus as a camerawoman and photographer is on documenting the stories and destinies of people from Palestine. Her previous short films Nafas, Florentina, and Summer have been screened at several festivals around the world, she has made a hybrid documentary titled The Seven Villages and is currently working on her feature-length debut The Wind Above the Clouds.

director / Sara Dufossé
screenwriter / Sara Dufossé
cinematographer / Quentin Devillers
actors / Louise Manteau, Gaël Saudron
producer / Sara Dufossé

ABOUT THE FILM
On a sunny morning, middle-aged Louise is woken up by a severe toothache. When she tells her ex-fiancé Jérôme, with whom she broke off her engagement a few months earlier, he decides to stop by to talk to Louise and agree on the division of joint property. Many details of their relationship begin to surface in the course of their conversation in the living room, from their relationship to both of their parents, mutual distance and loneliness, to the recognition of what separated them – and the awareness of lingering mutual feelings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Belgian filmmaker Sara Dufossé was born in 1989 in Brussels, where she lives and works to this day. She attended the IAD (Institut des Arts de Diffusion) in her home country and graduated in directing in 2016. After collaborating on several projects as production manager, she founded her own production company La Ravageuse Saga in 2017. Dufossé made her directorial debut in 2015 with the short film Axelle, and the film that we are showing was previously successful at the Festival International du Film Francophone in Belgium, the Festival International du Film de Mons in Belgium and at the 22nd edition of the Barcelona Short and Animation Film Festival. The author claims that the film was created spontaneously, that it was written, produced, and fully realized in the span of only three months.

director / José Antonio Valera
screenwriter / José Antonio Valera
cinematographer / Inma Bernal
actors / Alberto García Tormo, Mariela Lucas, César Pérez, Karmen Heredia, Carlos T. Blanco
producer / José Antonio Valera

ABOUT THE FILM
The director of an audiovisual project invites the audience to get to know the creative process behind his work. We are invited into a space that resembles the inside of a cube and reflects the mind of the anxious director. The space is filled with people who want to help the director realize his audiovisual piece.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producent, scenarist i redatelj José Antonio Valera rođen je u gradu Bullasu u španjolskoj regiji Murciji, gdje i danas živi i radi. Završio je scensku i audiovizualnu režiju na Higher School of Dramatic Art (ESAD – Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático) u Murciji, a završio je i Madrid Film and Audiovisual School (ECAM – Escuela de Cine en Madrid). Dosad je realizirao pet kratkih filmova, a jedan od njih, film Intenso: theatrical confession of love, osvojio je prvu nagradu u kategoriji kratkometražnih filmova i dokumentaraca na Festival de Arte Creamurcia. Njegov kratki film El Mando ušao je u završnicu Ibero-American Short Film Festivala, a Valera je i član žirija na 20. Murcia International Film Festivalu (IBAFF – Ibn Arabi International Film Festival).

director / Fernando Vandekeybus
screenwriter / Fernando Vandekeybus
cinematographer / Ilton K. Do Rosario
actors / Alexander Wolfgang, Ella Kempeneer, Vaïk Géczy, Wald Janssens
producer / Fernando Vandekeybus

ABOUT THE FILM
In the dystopian world of an undefined future, four people are living in an underground shelter. In addition to the three young men, one of whom is trying to find some refreshment by submerging his head in an aquarium, there is also a girl, a gifted artist who spends her time drawing as one of the exhausted men rests his head in her lap. A large fan is constantly on to fight the overwhelming heat in the space they live in. However, the lighting is dim and the fan consumes a lot of electricity, which becomes especially problematic when the energy source is revealed…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Young Belgian filmmaker Fernando Vandekeybus is primarily an actor, known for his performance in the 2009 short film Autonomie de la volonté by his compatriot Antoine Cuypers, in addition to supporting roles in films made by his father, Wim Vandekeybus: the 2007 drama Here After and In Spite of Wishing and Wanting from 2002, the film adaptation of his father's performance Ultima Vez. Fernando comes from a well-known family of artists which includes his father Wim, predominantly a choreographer, and his father's brother, documentary filmmaker Lut Vandekeybus. The film we are showing is Fernando's authorial debut which he produced, wrote, and directed. In it, he expresses an affinity for existential drama set in the disquieting world of a dystopian future.

director / Raghul Sukumar
screenwriter /Raghul Sukumar
cinematographer / Varghese David
actors / Magizhmathi, Shakthi Karthik, Mahendran, Ramachandran, Thiyagarajan,
Karuppusamy, Tara, Sivaji Dasan, Krishnasamy, Poonguil Babu,
producer / Raghul Sukumar

ABOUT THE FILM
While a boy in the waiting room of a police station in an Indian city eats chips, his father is being severely beaten by an aggressive police officer in a nearby room. The policeman tries to force the boy's father to confess to a theft, doing it by order and under the supervision of the station commander. As the boy's mother is trying to enter the station to save her husband, the wrongly accused man might give in to the investigator's increasingly severe beatings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Young producer, editor, screenwriter, and director Raghul Sukumar is a student of film directing, and the film that we are showing is his debut project. Raghul is also a freelance photographer and designer, an author who, in his own words, strives to produce socially-conscious and relevant work, follows current trends and popular culture, and actively combines professionalism with creativity. His film is based on actual events and engaged with the issue of the abuse of police force in his home country. With the film, Sukumar wants to draw attention to the inexcusable fact that, according to human rights activists, as many as 30% of all investigations end with extorted confessions from those who are often not the real culprits.

redateljica / Avigail Graetz
scenaristica / Avigail Graetz
snimatelj / Eitan Herman
glumci / Gali Ashkenazi Levine, Esti Kosowitzki, Itai Chammah
producentica / Avigail Graetz

ABOUT THE FILM
As they embark on a romantic journey without their daughters, a young couple stops by the grandparents who will take care of their girls while they are away. Everything seems idyllic despite petty complaints that are not unusual in such situations up until the grandparents ask who would take care of the girls in case something happened to them. This seemingly unprovocative inquiry complicates the situation to the point that the young couple's departure becomes uncertain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producer, screenwriter, and director Avigail Graetz was born in Israel in 1975 to parents of American descent. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Film from Tel Aviv University and a Master's Degree in Creative Writing from Ben-Gurion University. She has written six plays that have been performed on stage and currently lectures on the Israeli society as seen through film at Ben-Gurion University and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herziliya. Her play Ona'at Devarim (Verbal Wrongs) was staged in 2006 at the Acco Festival of Alternative Theater in Acre, and her drama In Case I'm Not Around, which she directed herself, was featured at the 2016 Israeli Festival. Her debut novel A Rabbi's Daughter earned her the PARDES Fellowship by the National Library of Israel and the Jewish National Fund Hebrew Literature Prize. Graetz has published several short stories, publishes poetry, and authors the column Portion of the Week dedicated to Buddhist philosophy. The film London is based on her play of the same name which was staged in Tel Aviv in 2018.

director / Ziyang Liu
screenwriter / Ziyang Liu
cinematographer / Pengyu Qin 
actors / Kevin Stephen-Jones, Kwame Augustine, Aiden Felgate
producer / Ziyang Liu

ABOUT THE FILM
One evening, as he walks along the streets of a British city, a middle-aged man passes two men at the same time in a lit hallway: an older dark-skinned man and a young white man. A moment later he notices that his mobile phone is gone from his pocket and concludes that one of the men stole it. He confronts them and they both deny it, the dark-skinned man with noticeable fervour. This will shake the man, in part because he had a terrible day in which he lost his job and soon after his daughter after failing to protect her.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning producer, screenwriter, and director Ziyang Liu grew up in Shenzhen, China, where he was born in 1995. He earned a Master's Degree in Film Directing from the University for the Creative Arts in the UK in 2019 and is now pursuing an undergraduate degree in Film Production at the Shanghai Theater Academy in China. His films have screened at festivals around the globe, from Montreal to Warsaw, from China to Norway and Germany. His previous award-winning short film The Day I Met You was nominated for Best Short Film at the 18th Independent Days International Filmfest in Germany, while Ambiguous, another one of his shorts, was included in the InFocus: Shanghai Chine Cinema programme by the non-profit NewFilmmakers from Los Angeles. Under the Full Moon was inspired by the verses of the traditional Chinese song Shuidiao Getou by Su Shi.

director / Rock Brenner
screenwriter / Rock Brenner
cinematographer / Rémi Noëll
actor / Arnaud Delecrin 
producer / Rock Brenner

ABOUT THE FILM
We observe a young man sitting at a table, talking to a good friend, and slowly lighting and smoking a joint. While the young man rolls and enjoys the joint, his conversational partner is convincingly arguing the validity of his views. The film questions the meaning and value of a good friend and the importance of their opinion to us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Over the past decade, French editor, cinematographer, screenwriter, and director Rock Brenner has established himself as a low-budget film author. As a rule, he signs his projects in their entirety, having worked as a producer in the past four years and occasionally acting in his films since 2013. In the past eight years, his short films have screened at a number of festivals in France and abroad. He made his feature-length debut in 2017, the satirical comedy La Capitale du Bruit, also known as I Am Robert, whose protagonist fights noise pollution. In addition to the short film we are showing, Brenner recently completed another short titled Some Kind of Humanity which is being distributed to festivals around the world. He is currently co-authoring a collaborative feature-length film Quarantines.

director / Ramesh Laxmanrao Holbole
screenwriter / Ramesh Laxmanrao Holbole
cinematographer / Kumaara Swaamy
gactors / Hemant Kadam, Umesh Dhoot, Ramdas Andhare, Akshay Talikote, Datta Lawnde, Vitthal Kachare, Prafull Talikote, Aniket Rao
producer / Srinivas Rao Tamarala

ABOUT THE FILM
On a rainy night on a building site somewhere in India, a construction worker is day-dreaming about all the pleasures he will get to enjoy in the tomb one day, fantasising about all that he had been denied in his lifetime, from fine literature, the finest cigars and drinks to attractive girls. He sets out to wake his just-asleep colleagues who are complaining about being woken up so shortly after they fall asleep, but this is unavoidable as the boss is demanding that the construction site where they work be protected from rain.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Indian screenwriter and director Ramesh Laxmanrao Holbole was born in 1985 and lives and works in Pune, the second largest city in the Indian state of Maharashtra. This year, he earned a Master's Degree in Directing and Screenwriting from the Film & Television Institute of India in Pune. Before settling on filmmaking as his life's calling, Ramesh studied literature in Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language that is the majority language in Maharashtra, at Fergusson College in Pune. He is actively involved in numerous cultural and social activities and is the director of the Pimpri Chinchwad International Short Film Festival in Pune. His films have won numerous awards and recognitions at home and abroad, including at festivals in Italy and Romania. He is currently preparing his first feature-length documentary about the life and work of renowned Indian photographer Sudharak Olwe.

director / Bernd Trasberger
screenwriter / Bernd Trasberger
cinematographer / Vincent Seidl
participants / Felix Obermair, Jan Senn, Massimo Vitiello, Stefan Gamper 
producer / Bernd Trasberger

ABOUT THE FILM
Four young men are gathered around a copy of the Quaderna table, originally designed by Superstudio in the late 1960s for the furniture company Zanotta. As the four men take turns reading letters and excerpts from books that serve as witnesses of decades past, the simple-shaped table seems to be a direct link between them and the space they are in with the renowned architectural studio Superstudio. The studio was founded in 1966 in Florence by Italian Adolfo Natalini and Frenchman Cristiano Toraldo who were later joined by Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro and Roberto Magris, and Alessandro Poli. They are the reason that Superstudio played a key role in the radical new rethinking of architecture and design in the late 1960s.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bernd Trasberger is a German multimedia artist born in Mönchengladbach in 1974 whose works explore the transformations of urban spaces. All segments of his artistic creation, from painting and architecture to film, are inspired by modernism and modernist utopias from the period after the Second World War. His works have been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, including the Wende Museum in Los Angeles, Berlinische Galerie and the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin, Centrum Kultury in Katowice, W139 Gallery in Amsterdam, Maison Neyrand in Lyon, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna, and the Copenhagen Art Festival. Liebe Grüße aus Graz von Superstudio is Trasberger's first film.

director / Lendita Zeqiraj
screenwriter / Lendita Zeqiraj
cinematographer / Sebastien Goepfert
actors / Arti Lokaj, Rozafa Çelaj, Adriana Matoshi, Ilire Vinca,
Alketa Sylaj, Melihate Qena
producer / Bujar Kabashi

ABOUT THE FILM
While living under the same roof with several women belonging to different generations of his family, a boy from Kosovo named Genti fantasises about having a dog as a pet. But not only does the mother turn a deaf ear to his pleas, but the women Genti is surrounded with oppose each other loudly and increasingly temperamentally, falling into distressing discussions as they express their views on life, passion, and the patriarchy. When the whole situation ultimately gets out of hand, Genti decides to choose his own path, jumps over the fence, and ventures on a search for the puppy he longs for in the company of a Roma boy named Xeni.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producer, screenwriter, and director Lendita Zeqiraj, who sometimes signs her films as production designer as well, was born in 1972 in Pristina. This filmmaker and visual artist completed her graduate and postgraduate studies in Visual Arts at the Kosovo Academy of Sciences and Arts in Pristina and studied Film Aesthetics in Paris at Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis. In 2014, she was named National Film Author of the Year and received a recognition from the Kosovo Ministry of Culture, while her short films Balcony and Fence have screened at more than 250 festivals around the world. The 2013 film Balcony premiered at the 70th Venice Film Festival and travelled to festivals in Warsaw, Palm Springs, Busan, and a number of others, winning over 35 awards that include a Special Jury Award at the American Film Institute's Festival in 2013. The film Fence also screened at numerous festivals, including the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films ShortFest, and has been awarded at a dozen international festivals. The author made her feature-length debut in 2019 with the humorous drama Aga's House, which shares part of the plot and most of the cast with Fence.

director / Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap
screenwriter / Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap
cinematographer / Akashnadh NU.
actors / Maitri Das, Eemon Ray, Apurba Saha, Paarth Pratim Barua, Jitu Das, Pulkit Philip, Arnab Borah
producer / Sagar Mahindra

ABOUT THE FILM
Life in an Indian city seems to be devoid of feeling, its people seeming distant even though they share the same space. At least that is what can be inferred from the events of an evening when young Biswa, frustrated by the monotony of his hostel life, quietly talks on his phone to his girlfriend Mukuta who lives in the village of Assam. Mukuta's mother has died and the girl is keeping her lonely father company. During the telephone conversation, Biswa realises that Mukuta's relationship with her father and her home differs significantly from his relationship with the city he lives in. However, everything may not be as it seems at first glance…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The project, on which he is credited as screenwriter and director, was made by young Indian Maharshi Tuhin Kashyap as an exercise in long-shot directing with the elaboration of mise-en-scène in the second year of Directing Studies at the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute (SRFTI) in Kolkata. The film has already won several awards, including Best Student Feature Film Award at the International Moving Film Festival in Abadan, Iran, and third prize at the Brahmaputra Valley Film Festival (BVFF) in Guwahati, Assam in India. When speaking about his film, Kashyap points out that shooting long shots must always be thoroughly thought out, meaningful, and justified, because it is an aesthetic choice and a directorial approach that must correspond to the film's story. It is also an achievement of metacinema in which Kashyap, according to his own words, wanted to be present. He also emphasises that special attention was paid to sound, which to Kashyap is logical as film is an audiovisual medium.

director / Maurice Mbui Murage
screenwriter / Maurice Mbui Murage
scinematographer / Travers Jacob
actors / Cary Clankson, Christopher Lopez, Ilenea Antonizzi, Dario Greco, Brian D’agostino, Mauricio Pirella, Dario Dente, Michael Sanchez, Giuseppe Cavaliera
producers / Nick Wambugu, Christopher Lopez

ABOUT THE FILM
On a warm evening on the streets of Naples, a young man sees an attractive girl who has recently returned to the city and whom he has not seen for a while. Thinking a night of love and fun is ahead of them, he leaves a friend in a bar and accompanies the girl on a walk through the city streets, planning to stop by a restaurant to grab a bite at her request. But their plans are thwarted by an encounter with an armed store robber, who takes them as hostages after the robbery that they witnessed. That, however, might be just the beginning of their troubles.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in the Kenyan capital Nairobi where he still lives and works today, screenwriter and director Maurice Mbui Murage gained film experience by participating in the production of several commercials, television dramas, documentaries, and short films. He is also the founder of the production company Folklore Ltd., which he leads as creative director, all the while striving to approach each new project as innovatively and energetically as possible. He considers himself one of the most demanding creative directors in Nairobi and believes he and his collaborators gave their all to the realisation of the film that we are showing.

director / Joonyoung Kim
screenwriter / Joonyoung Kim
cinematographer / Joonyoung Kim
actors / Dooho Ahn, Haune Lee
producer / Joonyoung Kim

ABOUT THE FILM
A young couple passes their time in various ways in a cramped room. While the girl is writing something on the computer, the young man disturbs her with his guitar picking. After she fails to persuade him to stop, the girl gives him some money and sends him out.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producer, cinematographer, screenwriter, and director Joonyoung Kim was born and raised in Seoul. His filmmaking is mostly inspired by films he had watched as a teenager, and films were also what prompted him to hitchhike around Australia at the age of 18 and later travel across Korea. While serving military service in his home country, Kim wrote a short novel that won a South Korean Defense Ministry award. After completing his military service, he got a job as a carpenter, but felt that he wanted to become an artist and use his creativity to express himself. Guided by this drive, he soon decided to study film directing and now lives in Budapest.

director / Michael-David McKernan
screenwriter / Michael-David McKernan
cinematographer / Adolf Franz ´Burschi´ Wojnar
actors / Michael-David McKernan, Toni O´Rourke, India Mullen, Patrick Flannery
producer / Micheál Fleming

ABOUT THE FILM
As he drives a taxi through the streets of Dublin on yet another evening, lonely young Dara picks up a quiet girl named Sara. As he realises that something is troubling the girl, Dara decides to try and cheer her up with a casual conversation, among other things about Beethoven, whose music is playing on the radio. But Sarah is a withdrawn person, anxious and broken-hearted, and though Dara's attempts keep failing, he is not discouraged.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael-David McKernan is an award-winning actor and director who lives and works in Dublin. Having finished Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin, he worked in theatres in Ireland and the UK. He acted in a prestigious production by London's National Theatre shortly before the start of the coronavirus pandemic and shared the stage with, among others, Ciarán Hinds and Dermot Crowley in the play Translations based on Brian Friel's acclaimed work. He also holds a degree in Film Acting from the Bow Street Film Academy and his screen acting portfolio includes the popular shows Red Rock and Quantico. The film Halo is his debut screenwriting and directing project, which premiered at Galway Film Fleadh and won the Best Director: Irish Short Award at the Cork International Film Festival. He has already completed his next film, the thematically timely short documentary How to Fall in Love in a Pandemic, which also premiered at Galway Film Fleadh where it was awarded in the Best Short Documentary category.

director / John Riddell
screenwriter / John Riddell
cinematographer / Damian Jenkins
actors / Adam Drummond, Tim Kurylowicz, Scarlett Ritchie
producers / Sophie Kurlyowicz, John Riddell

ABOUT THE FILM
As a man is standing next to a car in front of an abandoned production plant, another man is arriving by another car to hand over a bag of unknown contents. The first man allows the second man to open the trunk of his car and free a tied woman from it. Though that seems to be the end and the second man is expected to hurry away with the angry woman, the first man is not be able to start his car, which allows the other man to pull a gun from a hidden spot in his vehicle.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Australian John Riddell is an award-winning short film author and documentarist who lives and works in the Australian province of New South Wales, in the mountain town of Tumbarumba. In 2003, he earned an honorary degree in Film Studies from the Australian National University and has since built a career in the museum sector. His intensive work with other creatives and local government organizations on the creation of culturally relevant content has been recognized and awarded. Riddell claims to be a passionate filmmaker who likes to experiment and play with media conventions and preconceptions, and the film we are showing is exemplary of this. Over the last ten years, he has made a number of short feature and documentary films, participated in the realisation of the documentary series Talking Machines, and won multiple awards for his work, including at festivals in London and Los Angeles.

director / Pablo Olmos Arrayales
screenwriter / Pablo Olmos Arrayales
cinematographer / Luis Enrique Carrión
actors / Antonio Alcantara, Italo Maximiliano Concha Veloz, Aaron Gomez, Markin López, Helena Puig, Axel Zapien
producers / Braulio Fragoso, Pablo Olmos Arrayales, Eugenia Orozco

ABOUT THE FILM
Young Lili is excited and nervous about her evening date with Eduardo. She met him through an online dating app, so there is a level of uncertainty surrounding their first encounter. At first this seems to be justified as Eduardo is not only half an hour late for the date but is not answering her calls either. When he finally does show up and he and Lili go out together, she finds him to be charming, attractive, and a good listener. Moreover, she is having such a nice time that she agrees to stop by his house for dinner. Lili does not suspect that the seemingly perfect blind date is about to turn into something completely different as Eduardo has yet to show his true colours. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pablo Olmos Arrayales was born and raised in Mexico City and has been actively involved in film as a producer, editor, and director since 2003. He has directed commercial projects, mostly commercials, both in his home country and in Spain, and debuted as film editor, screenwriter, and director in 2003 with the short film Los Ventanales. His short films have screened at numerous prestigious festivals around the globe, such as the Cannes Short Film Corner, the Burbank Film Festival, Kosice International Monthly Film Festival, and Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya Festival in Sitges, Spain. The film we are showing is Arrayales' feature film debut.

director / Nitya López
screenwriter / Nitya López
cinematographer / Mikel Villegas
actors / Leire López del Pueyo, Ibon Belandia, Josu Eguren, Igotz Etxabe, Dani Leon, Brais Pampin Rey, Marianne Viville 
producer / Nitya López

ABOUT THE FILM
María returns from work earlier than usual because her boss gave her a day off for a special reason. It's Maria's birthday and she plans to spend it with her partner Jorge. But when she enters their apartment, María is struck by Jorge's lack of response to her greetings and questions. He has locked himself in the bathroom and seems to be hiding something from her. At first surprised, María soon becomes disappointed, offended even, although she is yet to find out the reason behind his behaviour.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producer, screenwriter, and director Nitya López was born in 1996 in Basque Country. He made his first short film Jesus is B(l)ack in 2018, produced partly by Caostice and partly through a crowdfunding campaign. He won The Best Young Filmmaker Award for the film in 2019 at the u22 Film Fest in Barcelona for authors under the age of 22. In late 2019, he wrote and directed a promotional short film for the album Hemen Herensuegeak Daude by the Spanish band Liher and directed his first music video for the band's song Teloia in 2020. The film we are showing is his second short film, which was included in the competition programme of a section of Notodofilmfest in 2019. He is currently working on his next short film titled Ecdisis. Story of the Insect Man.

directors / Fu LE, Adrien Gontier
choreographer / Fu LE 
cinematographer / Adrien Gontier
actors / Longmen AN, Roxane Colson, Anne Constance SIX
dancers / Morgane Bellefet, Candice Besserve, Lorena Bianco, Eva Colpacci, Pedro Gomes, Valentine Malan, Lucie Mariotto, Gustave Pariente, Lisa Pleintel, Stéphanie Poey
production / Tetrapode, Famous, La Fabrique de la Danse

ABOUT THE FILM
In the course of 12 minutes in a hall in Paris, 40 amateur dancers use dance and choreography to create an illusion of a growing crowd and symbolically convey current worldwide events. Associative depictions of migrations, gatherings, large protests and manifestations, or scenes from daily life on the streets of big cities are unveiled in front of the viewers. As an individual faces the movement of masses, the viewers observe his simultaneous attempts to resists the masses and surrender to their flow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fu LE is a French award-winning filmmaker and choreographer, part of the French dance group Tetrapode. He graduated in Sculpture from the Art Crafts National School in Paris before undergoing training in contemporary dance and physical theatre in South America and Europe. He recently visited Taiwan, where he devoted himself to researching social issues related to urbanization. He is currently working within the interspace of sculpture, dance, and video with the aim of combining visual art with the intimacy of the bodily senses. He strives to shoot films in a single shot or as close to one as possible and choreographs the movement in his film with refined precision.

director / Szu-Wei Chen
screenwriters / Szu-Wei Chen, Constance Tsang, Alexander Yarber
cinematographer / Chris Chen
actors / Eleven Lee, Haosong Yang, Kean Tan
producers / Szu-Wei Chen, Tarek Aryani

ABOUT THE FILM
One morning in a small apartment in Chinatown, New York, a young attractive Chinese woman is listening to radio news on the start of the construction of the border wall between Texas and Mexico while saying goodbye to a man she had just provided with sexual services. As the client is leaving, a young man, another one of her clients who harbours special feeling towards her, is climbing the stairs. He tells her that he is travelling to Texas that day to find work on the construction of the wall. She is not indifferent to this and gives him some money when he suggests she came with him. A sad Chinese song is playing on the radio as he leaves and the girl greets the next client…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producer, screenwriter, and director Szu-Wei Chen is of Taiwanese descent and currently lives in New York City where he is pursuing a Master's Degree in Film at Columbia University. Growing up, he developed an interest in film under the influence of the works of directors such as Edward Young and Lou Yen. As he currently lives in the United States, he is trying to transpose their film language into films of his own which are marked by his experience of the New York everyday. His previous film Jay won the Alternative Spirit Award LGBTQ Short First Prize and the Youth Jury Award Best LGBTQ Film Grand Prize at the 2019 Rhode Island International Film Festival and screened at a number of other festivals, including BFI Flare, Palm Springs ShortFest, and HollyShorts Monthly Screening series. The film we are showing had its world premiere at the Maryland Film Festival this year.

director /Arjanmar H. Rebeta
screenwriter / Arjanmar H. Rebeta
cinematographer / Martin Andres
actors / Tracy Quila, Edward Escriber, Mario Escriber, Mark Henry Escriber, Jerrone Valenzuela, Lavisha Jusayan, Edward Monteroso, Glen Sastrillo
producers / Arjanmar H. Rebeta, Khaye Medina, Andy Valenzuela

ABOUT THE FILM
From the very beginning of his boxing career to the claiming of the champion title, Paco “The Hammerhead” De Ocampo was the favourite of his fellow Filipinos who rooted for him wholeheartedly. However, at his peak, Paco becomes addicted to illegal substances, which ultimately leads to his professional and personal fall. As expected, this reflects on the support from his fans and nation who turn their backs on him, but Paco finally braves another shot at returning into the ring and regaining his title of champion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arjanmar Hernandez Rebeta is a professional photographer and filmmaker born in the Philippine city of Cabusao. He is the owner of the production company Mediarama Creatives & Pelikmata Productions, which he founded after completing all of his courses in Art and Philosophy during his Film Studies at the Asia Pacific Film Institute. In his explorations of film as a medium, he attended numerous workshops, sponsored by the Film Development Council of the Philippines, and lectures by prominent and award-winning directors such as Brillante Mendoza, Babyruth Villarame-Gutierrez, and Ramona S. Díaz. He is currently studying screenwriting under the mentorship of renowned screenwriter Ricky Lee. Arjanmar Hernandez Rebet's films, such as the photo-documentary VIVA INA about the Peñafrancia Festival, which had been in production for five years, have been screened and awarded at a number of festivals in the Philippines and around the world, including the US, Canada, Belgium, Australia, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and India.

director / Shona Dutta Charlton
screenwriter / Shona Dutta Charlton
cinematographer / Pascale Neuschäfer
actors / Zara Aslam, Alicia Simai-Kral, Ambika Mod, Ruchika Jain, Melissa Suppiah, Jean-Pierre Boriau, Fagr Elkady
producer / Shona Dutta Charlton

ABOUT THE FILM
Leila is a 13-year-old girl of Bangladeshi descent who lives in East London with her family. She is anticipating an arranged and imposed marriage to a much older man, and her older sister Rukhsana might help her avoid this fate. Rukhsana empathises with Leila as she has lived through a similar situation, and she might get additional help from Leila's girlfriend Margot. In the meantime, a goat is sacrificed before the wedding ceremony to pacify the extremely religious relatives.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Producer, screenwriter, and director Dutta Charlton is of Indian descent and has twenty years of experience in directing short feature and promotional films and documentaries. Her work is mostly tied to television, including prestigious broadcasting companies such as Discovery Networks International and the BBC. She has produced and directed a number of documentaries and currently makes short and Super 8 films. She was chosen to participate in the Think-Shoot-Distribute programme at the London Film Festival organized by the British Film Institute in 2006, received support from the Hubert Bals Fund in 1997 at the Rotterdam Festival and from the Charles Wallace Arts Trust two years later. Under the mentorship of Directors' Guild, she participated in the filming of the popular series Holby City and Silent Witness. She was selected to participate in the Directors UK Inspire Programme in 2019 and won the Arri Trinity Challenge a year later. Her recent short films have been screened and awarded at several festival.

director / Toni Meštrović
screenwriter / Toni Meštrović
cinematographer / Toni meštrović
producer / Toni Meštrović

ABOUT THE FILM
A camera submerged under the sea films the events on the surface as the silhouettes of two human bodies enter the frame. A man and a woman are performing an act in which they enter the frame by swimming from opposite sides to meet at the centre and begin rotating. The woman is rotating the man as she swims before the figures gradually distance themselves from one another and, still floating on the surface, exit the frame on opposite sides.

director / Ricard Carbonell Sauri
screenwriter / Ricard Carbonell Sauri
cinematographer / Ricard Carbonell Sauri
producer / Ricard Carbonell Sauri

ABOUT THE FILM
Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory is the first film by the Lumière brothers Auguste and Louis, inventors and pioneers of cinema who screened the film on 22 March 1895 to showcase the Cinématographe, their new invention that they patented on 13 February of the same year. The film is a black-and-white silent documentary that contains all types of camera shots and demonstrates that its makers were familiar with the simplest forms of editing as well. The film we are showing is an homage to the epoch-making Lumière documentary.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ricard Carbonell Sauri holds a PhD in Filmology from the Complutense University of Madrid and degrees from the Universities of Barcelona, Madrid (ECAM – Escuela de Cinematografía y del Audiovisual de la Comunidad de Madrid), and Cuba (EICTV – Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión). His films have screened at more than 150 festivals around the globe and won numerous awards. He has been awarded at festivals in San Francisco, Vienna, Berlin, Stockholm, Sofia, Bucharest, Madrid, and Barcelona, among others. He also works as a film professor at the TAI (Transforming Arts Institute) Arts School at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid.

director / Luis Galindo
screenwriter / Luis Galindo
cinematographer / Luis Galindo
actress / Ariadna Llussa
producer / Luis Galindo

ABOUT THE FILM
As a young dancer performs her dance act in a space within an industrial plant, the camera follows her movements, hiding behind columns and in that way highlighting the juxtaposition of the physical expression of her dance and the static parts of the plant. Highly aestheticized and sensual scenes arise from the contrast.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luis Galindo is a Spanish screenwriter and director of several short film, documentaries, and video clips whose works successfully participated at a number of festivals in his home country and abroad. His previous feature film Kurczak advanced to the finals and won second prize in the 5th edition of the competition in Navarre, the Spanish autonomous community known as the "land of film" for hosting numerous national and international film projects. He founded the production company Luis Galindo Audiovisual, focused on the shooting and post-production of music videos, commercials, and video clips. Over the past 12 years, he has collaborated on more than 50 feature films made by several production companies, including Tornasol Films, Fernando Test PC, Oria Films, Morena Films, and many others, performing various jobs and functions.