DOG and WOLF

TERESIA HALAMOVA, CZECH REPUBLIC
20′

Rudo is a 25-year-old stripper who has chosen to embrace a life of perpetual partying and sleep deprivation. As he navigates through the chaotic nightlife fueled by drugs and dance, memories of his ex-girlfriend Misha haunt him, reminding him of broken promises and lost connections.

Director Biography

Terézia Halamová (1993) is a Slovak director who earned her MA at FAMU in Prague. Her short film Sing for us (2020) premiered at Kaohsiung Film Festival in Taiwan and was screened at many international film festivals. It won the New Europe Talent Award and The Best Cinematography at the Zubroffka Festival and the Jury Award at the International Kinoproba Festival, among others. She also collaborated with foreign musicians, and her music video Move Honey won the Jury Prize at the Polish Papaya Young Directors Competition and was featured at the Berlin Music Video awards. With her feature debut film in development – The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, she was selected as a KVIFF Talent 2022 and presented the project at Karlovy Vary IFF. All of her films are connected by the themes of loneliness, growing up, and exploring intimacy. She repeatedly likes to work with non-actors and is interested in the plasticity of interpersonal relationships.

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HUN TUN

MAGDALENA HEJZLAROVA, CZECH REPUBLIC
14′ 58”

A young woman measures her strength against the king of chaos himself. The more she wants to win, the less she succeeds. Through a mythological story, the author looks back to the time when she discovered that there are things in life she will never control.

Director Biography

Magdalena Hejzlarová is a visual artist and stop-motion animation expert. She graduated from Prague’s Academy of Applied Arts and Design with her short HYPNAGOGIA (2017), premiered at Ji.hlava IDFF, depicting animated accounts of people describing their experiences of falling asleep. Magdalena worked at several art and animation studios in Prague & Rotterdam. She is a commissioned artist and animator and has collaborated on remarkable films like LA TRAVERSÉE directed by Florence Miailhe (Honourable Mention at Annecy 2021) or APART by Diana Cam Van Nguyen (BAFTA Student Film Award finalist). She assists artists with disabilities in a Prague-based art studio. Along with Hun Tun, Magdalena created a radio documentary and a podcast series for Czech Radio both concerning sleep and insomnia.

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GRANDMA NAI WHO PLAYED FAVORITES

CHHEANGKEA, CAMBODIA/FRANCE/USA
18′ 44”

During her chaotic family’s Qingming visit, dead Grandma Nai sneaks away from her peaceful afterlife after overhearing that her queer grandson is about to get engaged to a woman.

Director Biography

Chheangkea is a Cambodia-born filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York. He earned a BS in Architecture from MIT and an MFA in Filmmaking from the NYU Tisch Graduate Film program, where he was a Dean’s Fellow. He is a former Marcie
Bloom Fellow and a recipient of the Sundance Asian American Scholarship.
Through his films, Chheangkea seeks to showcase the complexities and nuances of queer and Cambodian stories. His upcoming short film, GRANDMA NAI WHO PLAYED FAVORITES, will premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. His
previous short film, SKIN CAN BREATHE, was a finalist of the 2022 HBO Max APA Visionaries competition and is now streaming on Max. His debut feature film, LITTLE PHNOM PENH, is currently in development, having been selected for the HamptonsFilm Screenwriters Lab, MunichFilmUp, and the NYU Purple List in 2024.

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NEXT

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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TOOTH & ROCK

KOSTIS ALEVIZOS, GREECE
19′ 19”

Margarita and her father, returning to Pylos, they will be confronted with the rapid tourist transformation of the place.
Margarita will become the cause for those old friends of his to mingle again and claim a spot, in the shade of the plane tree, taken over by tourists.

Director Biography

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YVES

CHARLOTTE ZWEERS/TOM DUPONT, BELGIUM
12′

Yves has spent twenty years behind the closed doors of prison.
Over time, his mind has become filled with Hollywood fiction. After serving more than two-thirds of his sentence, he is exceptionally allowed to leave the stress of his cell to visit his mother. During this temporary ‘exit’, where the harsh side of reality reveals itself multiple times, Yves is accompanied by a priest with whom he seems to share more than one might initially suspect…

Note: This story about human connection has been created and filmed within the walls of Oudenaarde prison. Both the story and the fake car for this fictional roadtrip were created by detainees, and during filming prisoners and other enthusiasts joined forces, coached and directed by Charlotte Zweers and Tom Dupont, as a part of Toms social-cultural research project.

Directors Biography

Charlotte Zweers (°1990)
is a writer and film director, living in Brussels (Belgium).
She first studied French and Spanish Literature before taking her first audiovisual steps in London.
She completed her studies in both screenwriting and directing at MetFilm School and RITCS School of Arts. She loves to experiment in the area of fiction, with shortfilms ‘Pero No De Agua’ and ‘OFFBEAT’ to her credit. She has worked as an assistant on different professional short and feature productions (‘Résumé d’un divorce’ by Peter Ghesquière, ‘REBEL’ by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, ‘H4Z4RD’ by Jonas Govaerts, ‘KRUMP’ by Cédric Bourgeois) and has directed a videoclip for open arts house Globe Aroma. She coached and directed a group of prisoners, together with Tom Dupont, over the course of several years, with one common goal: making cinema. Short film ‘Yves’ is the peculiar result of this intense and rich collaboration.

Tom Dupont (°1977)
is a Belgian writer and director in both theatre and film. He is known for his screenwriting for ‘Offline’, ‘Cargo’, ‘Albatros’, ‘Grond’ and ‘Holy Rosita’, and for his writing and directing work in many theatre plays. He recently directed his first short film called ‘Touch me’ and co-directed ‘Yves’, a roadmovie shot within the walls of a Belgian prison.

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AMBIGU

MIEKE DANEELS, BELGIUM
14′ 38”

A mother of four: a daughter, two sons, and a child transitioning from male to female. With her camera, she searches for words to capture the intangible. A poetic film about love, change, and finding space for everyone’s truth.

Director Biography

Mieke Daneels (°1978, Belgium) is a Belgium based film director, photographer, actress and visual artist.
Her work is exuberant, colourful and intuitive.
Sexual, sensual, explicit.
Dreamlike, associative, visual.
Poetic.

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BARLEBAS

MALU JANSSEN, BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS
19′ 59”

In 1595, a woman accused of witchcraft refuses to be silenced, leaving her free spirit and powerful voice to inspire a new generation.

Barlebas depicts the last days in the life of the headstrong woman Heylken (28). She is accused of witchcraft, just as she was about to leave her village for good.
While Heylken never gets to leave, she inspires young girl Griet (12) with her free spirit and powerful voice.

An experimental musical period drama, set in 1595 and centered on the persecution of witches in the Dutch South.

Director Biography

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STUPORIA

JOSHUA JADI, AUSTRIA
16′

STUPORIA is a deeply personal LGBTQIA+-themed story about a dancer who is forced to stop dancing after surviving a violent attack in a park. The film follows his emotional and physical recovery throughout a day as he finds the strength to heal and dance one last time. At its core, the film explores trauma, resilience, and the quiet power of reclaiming one’s identity through movement and art.

Director Biography

German-Hungarian director and writer. Berlinale Talents, Torino ScriptLab, Sarajevo Talents and Locarno Academy Summer School alumni as well as a member of the European Film Academy. His short films have travelled to over 50 festivals in the world.

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