Howling | Parsa Bozorgani | 8' | IRN
A few years ago, a video of stray dogs being killed by acid injection went viral. The brutal act was carried out by council workers in Shiraz, Iran. Despite the fact that this video swept across the globe engendering outrage and distress, no one assumed responsibility for the crimes or was reprimanded. However, for this film, the killer in question agreed to be interviewed. Parsa Bozorgani’s first film, Howling, has already been selected or nominated for various festivals internationally.
When the Light Goes Out | Tania Prates | 5' | PRT
When The Light Goes Out offers a glimpse into family, childhood, and social class in mid 20th century Portugal as well as reflecting on the role of photography in preserving history. Photographs from the Fotocine Fund that belong to the collection of the Municipal Museum of Coruche form the subject of this experimental video essay. Narrated sensitively by the Portuguese director Tânia Sofia Oliveira Prates, who works as a communication officer at the Municipality of Coruche, this film is a tender conversation with the viewer.
Tony Fraginals | Ben Young | 16' | GBR
Anthony Godby Johnson was an early 1990s New York City fascination: a boy who escaped years of horrific abuse only to discover that he was dying of AIDS. A boy who earned friends and fans worldwide — and who did not exist. Featuring Oprah Winfrey and the fragments of Johnson's long-forgotten television special alongside the first public glimpse of the hoaxer behind the fabrication, Tony Fraginals unravels the scandal from the perspective of Anthony’s childhood friend Tony. This is an act of narrative reclamation: a coming of age story set within the command center of an epic fraud.
Our territory | Mathieu Volpe | 20' | BEL
"A mesma luz, o mesmo calor. Um verão como os que me lembro... No entanto, outro território aparece agora na paisagem da minha infância.”. Estas são as palavras do realizador italiano Mathieu Volpe que, embora tenha nascido em Roma em 1990, viveu em Bari, na ponta sul da Itália, até os dezanove anos. Em Our Territory assistimos à saga do realizador no regresso às terras da sua infância, que já não são as mesmas. Sem nunca explorar a miséria, Volpe usa a câmara para humildemente conhecer aqueles que estavam ausentes das suas memórias de infância: imigrantes africanos de vários países como Mali, Senegal, Costa do Marfim e Burkina Faso
Excess Will Save Us | Morgane Dziurla-Petit | 14' | SWE
“The same light, the same heat. A summer just like those I remember... Yet, another territory has now appeared on the landscape of my childhood”' – these are the words of Italian director Mathieu Volpe, born in Rome in 1990 but who lived in Bari on the southern tip of Italy until the age of nineteen. Here we delve into the filmmaker's childhood land, now utterly changed. Never exploiting misery, Volpe uses his camera and humility to engage with those who were missing from his nostalgia-tinted childhood memories: African immigrants from different countries including Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.
Then comes the evening | Maja Novaković | 27' | SRB
Two elderly women live isolated in the hills of eastern Bosnia. Nature is the entity through which the women talk, listen, and relate. Then Comes the Evening reflects on the purity of this pastoral existence, as well as the strenuous work required. By fixating on songs and rituals to tame rain, hail, and immense storms, this film emphasizes both the import of cultural heritage and the splendour of nature’s indifference. Affection and intimacy between the women and with the landscape itself is carefully rendered through Maja Novaković’s focus on the tactile; on the textures of skin, earth and sky that, under her gaze, blend and unite.
Mensch Maschine Or Putting Parts Together | Adina Camhy | 8' | AUT
A true story is the starting point for a cinematic reflection that moves rapidly from the personal to the political. Instead of the synthesizer she wants, the protagonist, our first-person narrator, receives a food processor as a gift. Director Adina Camhy presents this feminist essayistic film as an audio-visual remix: an experimental collage of sound and image, sketch-like and associative. Semi cultural-studies analysis, semi subjective stream of thought, rather than providing answers Camhy’s film gently hints and suggests and, in so doing, subtly references the films of Harun Farocki.