MIA

ZINA PAPADOPOULOU, GREECE
18′ 52”

Mia wakes up trapped in an empty movie theater. On screen, scenes from her time inside the theater echo her every move. As the line between performance and reality blurs, she spirals through the stages of grief, until she chooses to rewrite the script.

Director Biography

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HEAVEN TO KNOW YOU

PHILIP J. GAY, FRANCE/UK
38′ 32”

After a traumatic childhood at the hands of her abusive mother and a difficult start to adult life, Lara relocates to NYC to start over, leaving behind a childhood of imaginary friends but also her dreams of song and dance.

Her troubles with alcohol and social angst soon resurface getting in the way of both her personal and her professional life, till one day hope comes along in the form of love.

She slowly lets him in after pushing him away but, despite attending therapy, her grip on reality loosens, casting doubt on both her sanity and his existence.
Still, Lara falls in love with him as he awakens her to a joy of life till then completely absent.
But, can you really live inside a Dream?

Director Biography

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SUNLESS

PHILIP BELL, U.S.A.

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TWO PERSONS EXCHANGING SALIVA

ALEXANDER SINGH/NATALIE MUSTEATA, FRANCE
35′

In a society where kissing is punishable by death and people pay for things with slaps to the face, Angine, an unhappy woman, shops compulsively in a department store. There, she becomes fascinated by an ingenuous salesgirl. The two become close, raising the suspicions of a jealous colleague.

Director Biography

Alexandre is a Franco-Indian visual artist whose work has been collected by the MoMA and Guggenheim Museum, New York, and CNAP, Paris.

Natalie is a Romanian-American writer, curator and filmmaker, with a PhD in art history and film.

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AUTOMAGIC

ASHOK VISH, FRANCE/INDIA
13′ 02”

On his return home, androgynous-looking Madhu attempts to seduce Ratnakar, his rickshaw driver, who is practicing celibacy in preparation for a religious pilgrimage.

Director Biography

Ashok was one of eight filmmakers selected for the ‘Director’s factory: Philippines’ through the Director’s Fortnight, Cannes
Film Festival and produced by Dominique Welinski of DW Productions. ‘Nightbirds’ premiered at the Quinzaine Des
Cinéastes, Cannes Film Festival 2024. Ashok’s film ‘Automagic’, produced by Claire Chassagne of Dolce Vita films won a post-production grant from the Région Île-de-France/ Paris Region and will premiere at the Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival in February, 2025. ‘Children Playing God’ was screened at the Sharjah Film Platform through the Sharjah Art Foundation and also exhibited at the Migros Museum, Zurich. Additionally, Ashok also works as a film programmer at the New York Indian Film festival, and Arthshila, a private art institution in India.

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TOUCH ME

TOM DUPONT, BELGIUM
18′ 13”

Dave, a divorced father, begins to lose himself in a destructive ritual. To protect his daughter, he tries to cut ties with her.

Director Biography

After his training in orthopedagogy, Tom Dupont graduated in 2005 as Master in Dramatic Art at Rits Brussels. Since then he has made several social-artistic theater performances at Theater Antigone (Kortrijk) and Victoria Deluxe (Ghent). He made a series of special performances with prisoners, asylum seekers and psychiatric patients. He wrote and directed performances for children at the Bronks Theater in Brussels. He received the Dutch-German ‘Kaas & Kappes’ prize for his second children’s play. His theatrical work is often described as accessible, tragicomic andabsurd.In 2013 he won the Flemish Film Prize ‘Ensor’ for his work on Peter Monsaert’s feature film ‘Offline’. Complex family ties is a theme that often recurs in his work. He made performances for ‘4 Hoog’ and ‘StudioOrka’ about death and farewell. This theme also recurs in the screenplay of ‘Cargo’, which he co-wrote with director Gilles Coulier. The film was developed within the framework of Torino Filmlab and won theBest Screenplay award at the Thessaloniki InternationalFilm Festival in 2017.In 2018 and 2019, Tom co-wrote the screenplay for the fiction series ‘Albatros’ for Canvas. The series won the ‘Prix Europa’ for Best European TV Series in 2021. Tom also collaborated on ‘Ground’ which received the Ensor for Best Screenplay in 2021, among other awards.

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STELLA ANYWAYS

YAN BERTHEMY, FRANCE
17′ 05”

In a Parisian square, three high school girls, Stella, Mila, and Elsa, share their experiences and desires. When Stella speaks up, her confession is intriguing: she is in a secret relationship with someone who has neither a phone nor a real identity, only a pseudonym. A revelation that casts doubt and unsettles the conversation.

Director Biography

21 year-old producer, director and distributor, he founded the production and distribution company FUSA FILMS in 2022, responsible for about fifteen short films screened at various festivals in France and SVOD platforms like Prime Video, Canal Plus, TF1, Outbuster etc.

He is studying cinema at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle university and he’s attending the European Film College in Denmark for 2025-2026.
He his influenced by genre cinema film directors like Dario Argento, René Laloux, Jonathan Glazer, Lucio Fulci, J.P Melville, Claude Chabrol, Yorgos Lanthimos, Bertrand Mandico, Sofia Coppola, Mœbius, Topor, Druillet, & more.

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PRAYER OF THE SEA

MARTIN GERIGK, GERMANY
6′ 30”

A composer recounts a dream from his youth that inspired the slow movement of his first string quartet, Prayer of the Sea. The dream, depicting a peaceful dissolution into the sea and wind, symbolized his future death. Decades later, rediscovering a drawing from the quartet’s premiere – perfectly capturing the dream’s essence – revived its emotions. Now older, he reflects on the dream’s message: a serene acceptance of life’s inevitable end.

Prayer of the Sea is an audiovisual elegy offering a calm perspective on the universal experience of passing.

Director Biography

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