Category: program 2025

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program 2025

(PS)

Aleš Suk
(PS)
15 min
Synopsis
An impressionistic ballad about the only inhabitant of a remote island in the northern
Adriatic whose fate was marked by merciless nature of harsh climate and social system
of local authorities. The traces of the last soul and the prints of its existence, the messages of the place where everything seems to be disappearing.

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program 2025

Here and There 

Nadija Mustapić
Here and There 
17 min
Synopsis
The experimental film “Here and There “explores the fluidity of spatial concepts through scenes of rowing in an endless fog. By deconstructing the fixed boundaries between here and there, the film suggests that spatial belonging is never a definitive line on a map, but a continuous, fragmented process of negotiating one’s identity with the outside world. In the whiteness, horizons are erased and opposites dissolve; there becomes merely a postponed here, and the movement between them turns into a search for an image of a place that could entirely inhabit the narrator.

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program 2025

The Rain Will Weep

Damir Čučić
The Rain Will Weep
25 min
Synopsis
As a coping mechanism during the grim lockdowns during the global pandemic, Croatian filmmaker Damir Čučić started a project of exchanging video clips with a group of friends through social media. Superbly edited, The Rain Will Weep is created from the archive of more than 3,500 of those videos, portraying the world in a state of chaos that is sometimes violent, often very funny, but mostly absurd.

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program 2025

Hepingli Playthrough

Zheng Yuan
Hepingli Playthrough
36 min
Synopsis
In this simulated playthrough of a non-existent video game in the style of (and with original material from) 90s text adventures, an internal monologue reflects on the surroundings and state of the world. Non-chronologically alternating between chapters in the present and near or distant future, the player chooses between different options to progress. A nostalgic play on what we decide to forget and remember moving forward. Are you sure you want to overwrite this savefile?

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program 2025

Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air

Sam Drake
Suspicions About the Hidden Realities of Air
9 min
Synopsis
Fragmented records of events almost too sinister to believe: Cold War era covert radiation testing performed by the United States government on its citizens. The film grapples with the challenges of documenting the invisible, and capturing what is merely waves and frequencies. Shot on expired film, it is through the contaminated image and a complex soundscape that the unseen becomes manifest.

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program 2025

Medical Field Guide or Rules of Engagement with Native E-girls

Andran Abramjan, Jan Hofman
Medical Field Guide or Rules of Engagement with Native E-girls
22 min
Synopsis
Erotic geopolitics of the early 21st century (colorized). 
Through images shattered by point-cloud pellets, we dive into the consciousness of a drone pilot on a peacekeeping mission somewhere in a foreign country. While monitoring strategic objects of desire, he contracts a bug during an unprotected contact with the locals, which sets him on a quest to regain his immunity. A satirical phantasmagoria on today’s geopolitics – the perversions of war embedded in modern technologies. A large part of the film was shot with a depth camera.

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program 2025

Gerhard

Ulu Braun
Gerhard
11 min
Synopsis
An ecstatic biopic about the world’s most successful living painter. In vivid images, this AI hybrid film sheds light on the social role of painting in the tension between creativity, capital investment, and spirituality. We are currently in the transition phase from analog to artificial reproducibility. Gerhard’s unique painting techniques, especially squeegeeing, have triggered worldwide hype. His techniques and ideas are being adapted, refined, and improved by global “protagonists” and then flooded the markets (+ social media). The myth of the “genius” writes itself into the DNA of an increasingly uncontrollable creation chain as a fabulous and controversial homage.

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program 2025

Este no es tu jardín

Carlos Velandia, Angélica Restrepo
Este no es tu jardín
13 min
Synopsis
Rooted in wetlands, páramos and centennial forests at the verge of disappearing, memories and a speculated future collide. 500 years of exploitation, exile and resilience are nourished by a collective pain and a desire to crack through it all.

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program 2025

Empty Rider

Screenshot

Lawrence Lek
Empty Rider
15 min
Synopsis
Sentient self-driving car Vanguard-3181 stands trial for attempting to murder their parent company’s CEO. Rendered from the perspective of a surveillance drone, the project explores the legal and existential dilemmas that emerge from self-aware AI.
The AI judge Omega presides over the cavernous courtroom, empty except for a host of streaming cameras. Three testimonies present different angles on Vanguard’s status: Farsight Corporation attempts to pin the blame on their own self-driving car, claiming they acted autonomously and with malicious intent. Guanyin, Vanguard’s trainer and therapist, pleads the defence of ‘doli incapax’ – the presumption that a child cannot be found guilty of a crime. As Vanguard finally presents their own argument, we witness the protagonist present a novel argument for their own fate.

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Offline program 2025 program 2025

A Metamorphosis

Lin Htet Aung
A Metamorphosis
18 min
Not available for online screening
Synopsis
In the houses, after parting, Mothers were made up of tears. Sons were transformed into empty glass cups. And the lullabies became a curse. The film examines the suffering and resilience of the Burmese people by using the distinct political elements that have floated for several years on the ocean of political opera under repetitive military dictatorships in Myanmar.