Experimental & Avant Garde
Dead Lover
A foul-smelling gravedigger’s romance ends in tragedy, spurring her to attempt a resurrection through a madcap series of science experiments. Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s film is a zany DIY horror that zaps fresh life into Mary Shelley’s classic.
News From Home
One part city symphony, one part introspective meditation, one part epistolary text, News from Home is a structuralist masterwork by Belgium’s genius of contemplation, Chantal Akerman.
Divine Intervention
Palestinian visionary Elia Suleiman is at the height of his powers with this series of deadpan, interconnected, absurdist vignettes about two Palestinian lovers on either side of an Israeli military checkpoint.
Memory of Princess Mumbi
Can a filmmaker depict the future without AI? Damien Hauser crafts a genre-blending Afro-speculative fable about love, war, and the future of storytelling in a resurrected African kingdom. A micro-budget epic fueled by digital invention and heart.
5: The absurd & spiritual
Shorts from: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Portugal.
Fiume o Morte!
The Croatian city of Rijeka rediscovers its own past in this delightfully unconventional hybrid documentary about Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the city known in Italian as Fiume in 1919.
CycleMahesh
Suhel Banerjee's documentary blends realism and reconstruction to tell the story of migrant worker Mahesh, who cycled 1,700 kilometres to return home during the COVID lockdown. A poignant look at one of India’s most significant social issues: migration.
Your Touch Makes Others Invisible
Rajee Samarasinghe’s poetic debut, Your Touch Makes Others Invisible, blends allegory and testimony from Tamil women in war-torn Sri Lanka. Filmed secretly under military rule, it’s a haunting meditation on grief, survival, and the refusal to forget.
Secrets of a Mountain Serpent
Set in a remote Himalayan town in India during the Kargil War, Secrets of a Mountain Serpent weaves together personal desire and ancient folklore to ask a pertinent question: Can you belong to someone and still belong to yourself?