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ANNA KEROVA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION
29′ 10”

A woman confronts increasingly eccentric officials to process her documents. Little by little, she is consumed by the nonsensical bureaucratic system.

Director Biography

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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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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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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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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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STEPMOTHER

NEGAR NAGHAVI, FRANCE
16′ 

Iran, isolated mountain. A wooden cabin. An old healer gives birth to… a turtle.

Director Biography

I am Negar Naghavi an independent filmmaker. After I graduated from the university in the field of theater, I follow the cinema and I have been working in cinema since 2019. I made my debut in 2020 with my short film “A shared path” which was accepted by many festivals like Clermont-Ferrand film festival or LA Short Film Festival.

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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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