400 CASSETTES

THELYIA PETRAKI, GREECE
14′

After a lesson about cosmic archaeologists and a water fight in the schoolyard, Elly steals Faye’s soul and Faye gives Elly a rare birthday present. But then, under a sky full of stars, a song from the past will remind the girls that nothing really lasts forever.

Director Biography

Thelyia Petraki, holds a BA in Filmmaking (CalArts USA), and an MA in Visual Anthropology (UCL UK).
In her works, the boundaries between memory, dreams and reality tend to blur. Her films are a perpetual gaze to the human behavior in an attempt to understand human condition through the cinematic lens. Lately, she combines and experiments with various analogue formats, along with recycling found footage, creating this way a mosaic effect. She also tends to study the past in order to understand the future.

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PERFECTIONIST

MARINA PETRENKO, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
5′

We are so different, and we are together yet…

Director Biography

Marina Petrenko is a Russian theater and film actress, producer.
In 2008, she graduated from the Faculty of International Relations of the Kyiv International University. In 2011, she graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School. Course of Roman Kozak and Dmitry Brusnikin. Among Marina Petrenko’s acting works are such films as: “On the Game”, “Schism”, “A Matter of Honor”, “A.L.Zh.I.R.”, “Cathedral”, “Hotel” and many others. In 2019, Marina Petrenko founded the film company “Marusya Production”, which is engaged in the production of feature films and series. The company also had released the play “Field” at the Praktika Theater. In 2023, she became a student of the Higher Classification of Film Actors and Scriptwriters. Workshop of feature films of A.B. Muradov and A.M. Dobrovolsky.

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WE DREAMED IN PLACES THAT NO LONGER EXIST

GIORGOS EFTHIMIOU, GREECE
5′ 30”

The filmmaker recalls a day with friends in an abandoned factory in Elaionas, an area of Attica. This factory no longer exists.
The filmmaker is wondering, why all the places where he once felt free no longer exist in this “New World”?

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SOMEONE TO STEAL HORSES WITH

DYLAN PAILES FRIEDMAN, U.S.A.
9′ 30”

A rainy morning is interrupted by the radio. A horse’s voice transports the daily commute in Los Santos, San Andreas to a remote broadcasting station in an unspecified location. He’s written a novel reflecting on the past. An ancestral memory. Movement and time become uncertain—we traverse abandoned histories through valleys and train tracks. Among the spoor is a longing for connection, a lost sense of value, a desire to be stolen.

Director Biography

Dylan Pailes-Friedman is a filmmaker and multimedia artist born and raised in NYC currently based in Glasgow, Scotland. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Pratt Institute in 2017 with a BFA in Film/Video. His short films engage themes of intimacy, mental health and collective memory. They have screened in numerous Oscar Qualifying, EFA, and BAFTA Qualifying film festivals around the world.

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DAMMEN

GREGORY GRAESSLIN, FRANCE
14′ 59”

Two young women are enjoying the wild surroundings of an isolated lake. It’s a sunny day.

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CONFRONTATION

MARIE ABBENANTI/SANDY PUJOL LATOUR, FRANCE
29′ 11”

Behind closed doors of the police station, Maxime, 17 years old, is gonna have to face her greatest fear, be confronted to her godfather who raped her when she was a child.

Directors Biography

Sandy studied the editing at ESRA in Nice. Marie studied theater in Avignon Conservatory. They met in 2018 during the editing of Marie’s school short film that she directed at University of Corsica. From this meeting was born a common desire of cinema. « Confrontation » is their first joint project.

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DO WHATEVER

FARID AZIZ, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
18′ 58”

There are two types of people—birds and the others. Not everyone is born with the ability to fly.
And when two completely different people end up in the same family and then find themselves confined together—in a car, a house in the woods, then a car again—each tries to pull the other to their side.
One pulls up, the other pulls down…

Director Biography

Aziz Farid was born on 02/28/1987 in Moscow.
In 2010, he graduated from the Economics Department of the Russian State University of Economics, which did not become decisive for him, and his participation in student KVN led him to work on entertainment television, where he tried himself in various roles and subsequently went into advertising. He started out as a producer in advertising and gradually became a director.
He has been actively shooting commercials as a director for the last 6 years, the desire to make films has been inspiring and was the main goal. This short meter was the debut.

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PASTA NEGRA

JORGE THIELEN ARMAND, CANADA/COLOMBIA/VENEZUELA/BOLIVIA
14′ 

Three Venezuelan women cross the border into Colombia to buy a packet of pasta.

Director Biography

Jorge Thielen Armand is the Venezuelan-Canadian filmmaker of the feature films LA SOLEDAD (Venice, 2016) and LA FORTALEZA (Rotterdam, 2020). In 2021, he was named a Guggenheim Fellow. Jorge recently finished the short film PASTA NEGRA (Sundance, 2025). He is a partner of the production company LA FAENA.

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THE SPECTACLE

YASMIN VAN DORP, SWEDEN
20′ 23”

The Spectacle is a short reflective documentary that sheds light on the evolving nature of travel behavior in today’s digital age. Filmed in various locations across South Norway, Lapland, and Türkiye, the film unravels the transformation of serene landscapes into bustling tourist attractions.

Filmed in tableaux vivant shots, The Spectacle reveals a stark reality: as travelers embark on what they perceive to be unique journeys, their focus has shifted from experiencing the essence of a place to merely capturing its highlights for online sharing. This collective detachment from the places we travel to emphasizes a growing tendency to view the world through the lens of a camera rather than through our own eyes.

From daily swing photoshoots in flowing dresses against the windswept backdrop of the Cappadocian desert, to going on tours to indigenous Sámi villages in Lapland, and recording TikTok videos on top of a 1,000-meter-high rock in Norway, this film delves into the other side of the perfect vacation photo. It exposes the repetitive choreography that defines modern tourism, presenting it as a grand spectacle—a public performance where, in the quest for “authentic” experiences, tourists often go to extreme lengths, sometimes even risking their own lives or the safety of their children.

The Spectacle prompts us to reconsider what we truly gain from these so-called authentic experiences, and to reflect on the cost, both to ourselves and to the natural world.

Director Biography

Yasmin van Dorp (The Netherlands, 1996) is a Dutch filmmaker, dividing her time between Stockholm and Amsterdam. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the Netherlands Film Academy in 2019. Following her graduation, she worked as a documentary line producer and researcher on several award-winning documentaries. In 2022, Yasmin decided to change course and moved to Sweden, where she pursued the Film & Media master’s program The Art of Impact at the Stockholm University of the Arts. There, she conducted artistic research on how collaborative filmmaking can illuminate new pathways for interacting with the world around us. She received her master’s degree in 2024, with additional courses in Writing and Philosophy. Her work critically reflects on how human beings maneuver through modern times. The Spectacle is her short film debut as a director and had its world premiere at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in 2025, where it won the Full Frame President’s Award for Best Upcoming Filmmaker. The film is currently screening at film festivals worldwide. Yasmin is now developing her first feature documentary, selected for the IDFA Project Space 2025 development lab.

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DELULU

MICHALIS ALEXAKIS, GREECE
14′

A running child, a farcical family mess, and a dose of absurdity.

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HAWK BOY SLEEPS AMIDST VISIONS OF FIRE

MAURICIO SAENZ-CANOVAS, MEXICO
18′

The hawk boy believes he has the power in his eyes to be enlightened. His transfiguration into a bird of prey leads him to fly over a burning territory in search of carrion for the pack. In his attempt to please the clan, the predator gets so close to the fire that he thinks he has gone blind, or has he entered a dream in which he is vanishing within the smoke? Kamikaze bird that has embarked on a journey to a savage place of no return. A representation of the state of overflowing violence brought from drug trafficking through the oneiric vision of a marginal teenager recruited by a cartel.

Director Biography

Mauricio Sáenz-Cánovas (b. 1977, Matamoros, Mexico) is a visual artist and filmmaker with an experimental praxis that blends fictional elements into predominantly ethnographic and social contexts. Selected festivals include International Film Festival Rotterdam, AFI Fest, Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, among others. He received an honorable mention in the experimental shorts category in Slamdance in 2020, a nomination for the Dialogue award in the European Media Art Festival in 2017 and was also nominated for the LOOP Discover award in Barcelona that same year.

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