Θέσεις
UNLIMITEDΤiSFF would like to announce and congratulate the directors and their films which made the greatest impact on our Committee, for their cinematic, intellectual and human level.
As it can easily be understood, we do not believe in the word “best”..”best film”,”First Prize” etc.
And this is not the time to mention how many of our awarded films have reached the CESAR, MAGRITTE, OSCAR awards.
In our effort to promote memorable “quality cinema”, it is not the first time we make an exception and tribute films that are over the short film duration, such as, Alexander Kott’s poetic ISPYTANIE, Mieke Daneels’s daring ROUGE and Kaveh Nabatian’s KITE ZO A.
We thank from the heart all directors that honored us, DIMITRIA Arts Festival, ΒLIND Studio and each one of our old and new cinephiles that appreciate, love and support TiSFF of Thessaloniki.
Special thanks to European directors who wrote us and described TiSFF as “a daring, risk-taking, boundary-pushing curating”…Iconic curating, following TiSFF for years”…. “a reference point in terms of film selection”..”one of the most radical yet lyrical film festivals globally”.etc. etc.
SO, on with the same respect for human and cinematic values for our always totally independent 18th edition in 2024.
The TiSFF Committee:
BEYOND THE SEA
Hippolyte Leibovici, Belgium
25′
Lady Casca, a drag queen in her sixties, is about to go on stage at her cabaret for the last time. The next day, retirement by the sea awaits her. But her son Thomas, whom she has not seen for a long time, interrupts the festivities. He has sad news to tell her.
Director Biography – Hippolyte Leibovici
Hippolyte Leibovici is a Franco-Belgian film director. His relationship with cinema began at the age of thirteen when he would often hand out coffee on film sets in Paris. Gradually abandoning his schooling, his experiments with his camera would become the roots of his approach to filmmaking. He started making short films with minimal budgets, exploring both his technical skills and his desire to direct. At the age of eighteen, he began studying film directing at Belgian film school INSAS, where he met the team with whom he now works. He had his first success with the documentary MOTHER’S, which won close to forty festival awards and the very first Magritte for best short documentary. In 2023, he directed Beyond the Sea, a musical comedy that joins the arena of his previous film: the backstage of a cabaret. He is currently developing his first feature film.
BOLERO
Nans Laborde-Jourdàa, France
17′
Fran is in his hometown to rest and visit his mother. Following the jerky rhythm of Bolero, this journey along the paths of memory and desire will lead him and the whole village to a joyfully chaotic climax.
Director Biography – Nans Laborde-Jourdàa
Director Biography – Nans Laborde-Jourdàa
Filmmaker and actor, Nans has acted in films under the direction of Sophie Fillières, Julie Lopez-Curval, Sébastien Téot. He owns with Margot Alexandre the company TORO TORO, writes and directs several shows. In 2018, he directed between Japan and France Looking for Reiko, a short film produced by Margaux Lorier. In 2021, he directed the short film Léo by night produced by Paraiso Production, selected in Clermont-Ferrand, FIFIB and pre-selected for the César 2023.
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DATÆTERNA
Axel Chemin, France
23′
In the near future, a micro-worker performs tasks that are suggested to her. Between data center maintenance and data processing, she hesitantly searches for ways to feel emotions. Devoid of social links, this world is saturated with data.
Director Biography – Axel Chemin
A graduate of La Fémis specialized in editing, Axel Chemin edits and and directs poetic and political films using a variety of systems in images. An active member of the cinema department of Le Wonder artistic collective, he experiments, works and exhibits his films there.
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DEMI-GODDESSES
Martin Gerigk, Germany
7′
‘Demi-Goddesses’ is the second essay about still dominant dark aspects of our modern society. It is conceived as a surreal anti-patriarchal thought experiment and raises important questions about gender, power, and social change, prompting us to reflect on how historical patterns of discrimination and oppression might be either repeated or overcome in a reversed gendered world. It challenges the viewer to confront their own assumptions and biases, and to consider the possibilities of a more equitable society.
Overall, the intention of the film is that it will spark conversations and inspire the viewer to imagine a world where gender is not a limiting factor. At best, the audience will leave the theater with a greater awareness of the issues and a sense of possibility for a just future.
Director Biography – Martin Gerigk
Martin Gerigk (*1972) is a composer of contemporary music. His repertoire includes compositions for orchestra and chamber music, as well as several solo concertos. His compositions are performed nationally and internationally including in Korea, Japan, USA, England, Finland, Austria and Switzerland. In this context he works together with renowned international soloists and ensembles.
In addition to his compositional work he is known for his remarkable audiovisual art and experimental films which focus on inherent synesthetic connections of sound and visual perceptions. Besides creating interwoven aural and visual landscapes of music, nature sounds and video sequences one important aspect of his art is the illustration of the hidden poetry of nature phenomena and sciences.
His experimental films won several international prizes and were screened at noted festivals like Asolo Film Festival, International Digital Arts Festival Videoformes, Girona Film Festival, Salento International Film Festival, Columbus International Film & Animation Festival, USA Film Festival, New Jersey Film Festival, Sidney International Film Festival, Fargo Film Festival, Sherman Oaks Film Festival, Canberra Short Film Festival, Film and Video Poetry Symposium Los Angeles, Syracuse Film Festival or ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival.
DER TOTE
Samuel Segurado, Liz Manresa, Switzerland
24′
Not only death, but complete darkness surrounds him, time seems to have stopped. He doesn’t understand where he is. He also does not understand how he got here. But he has a guess for what reason he might be here. Music surrounds him. Melodies show him the way and lead us through the story. And then it can happen that the images disappear before our eyes and live on only in our minds.
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FABRIK
Sverre Aune, Germany
19′
Shot entirely in Digital Infrared, FABRIK follows a lone humanoid creature, fighting for survival in a forsaken world – living off oil-spills from self-operating factories. Her quest for oil takes her across the desert and into an unknown world of steam and machines.
Director Biography – Sverre Aune
Sverre Aune was born in Trondheim, Norway, in 1994.
Growing up in the Norwegian countryside, he started experimenting with film and video by himself at an early age, and at 19 he moved to Denmark to study at European Film College. A year later he moved to Berlin to finish a BA in Practical Filmmaking at MET Film School Berlin. He joined the German Film and Television Academy Berlin in 2017, where he’s currently studying Film Directing. As well as directing, Sverre works as an Editor, co-owns a film club, co-hosts a film podcast and writes most of his own scripts himself.~
HUBRIS
Jules de Niverville, Canada
29′
HUBRIS is an experimental docu-narrative that chronicles three individual journeys intrepreted by dance and circus artists, exploring a powerful storyline about climate change. Blinded by ego, their journeys sybmolize the collateral damage induced by a culture deeply rooted in individualism—serving as a metaphor for our environmental crisis and a need for a U-turn towards transformative change.
Director Biography – Jules de Niverville
A visual and media artist, Jules has been oscillating between photography and film for 30+ years. Following his Concordia University degree in filmmaking he was soon working in the industry as set decorator and assistant art director in both local and American feature productions, including television series and advertising. His photography has led to numerous publications; exhibited in group shows in Montreal and Brussels during their respective MOIS DE LA PHOTO, as well as solo shows around the world. His career has since shifted to cinematography and editing (with a specialization in dance for camera productions). His first film TWITCH had a successful run on the short film festival circuit with screenings in more than 50 festivals internationally, winning three awards. Jules’ second film PARLE-MOI/TALK TO ME also won multi-awards and garnered accolades in the festival circuit.
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ISTINA
Tamara Denić, Germany
28′
A committed photo journalist is threatened in Serbia, whereupon she flees to Germany with her daughter. But then she also experiences increasing hostility and violence in her new home due to her work…
Director Biography – Tamara Denić
Tamara Denić is born in former Yugoslavia 1992 In 2016, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in art and multimedia and a minor in media informatics at LMU in Munich with an interactive, experimental short film. After that, Tamara worked as a dubbing recording manager, film production and editorial assistant and video editor in Berlin. At the same time, she acted in independent theatre groups and experimented with video performances. However, Tamara soon devoted herself increasingly to narrative and documentary short film projects. Along side her film projects, paintings and photographs, Tamara experiments with animations and VJing. 2022 she graduated with a master’s degree in film directing at Hamburg Media School with a scholarship from Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation.
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KITE ZO A
Kaveh Nabatian, Canada
70′
In 1791, in Haiti, Dutty Boukman presided over a Vodou ritual in Bois-Caïman that led to the creation of the first Black republic. Since then, rituals of transformation and artistic expression have been at the core of a thriving culture as the country faces oppression, poverty, and natural disasters. “Kite Zo A” (Leave the Bones) is a sensorial film about rituals in Haiti, from ancient to modern, made in collaboration with poets, dancers, musicians, fishermen, daredevil rollerbladers, and Vodou priests, set to poetry by Haitian author Wood-Jerry Gabriel.
Director Biography – Kaveh Nabatian
Kaveh is an Iranian-Canadian artist whose evocative filmmaking has brought to life stories from the margins of society and across the world: Cuba, Haiti, Nunavut, India, and beyond. His film work ranges from “A Crack in Everything”, a feature doc about Leonard Cohen, to masterminding the Rotterdam-premiering, experimental, seven-director anthology feature “The Seven Last Words”, to his award-winning feature narrative debut, the Cuba-set and shot “Sin La Habana”.
As a composer and trumpet player, he’s toured the world and released several critically-acclaimed albums with his Juno award-winning band Bell Orchestre.
MADELEINE
Raquel Sancinetti, Canada
15′
Every week, two friends born 67 years apart share their life stories in a senior home’s living room. The younger friend convinces the 107-year-old lady to join her in an adventure: a road trip to the sea.
Director Biography – Raquel Sancinetti
Raquel is a Brazilian-Canadian filmmaker. With a background in film post production, she earned her degree in Film animation at Concordia University in 2013 and since then has been working on independent films. Her graduation film “Cycle” has played in several festivals around the world and won 4 prizes.
MIDNIGHT SKIN
Manolis Mavris, Greece
40′
NOTHING HOLIER THAN A DOLPHIN
Isabella Margara, Greece
The two fishermen find a dolphin accidentally caught in their nets. The dolphin in its turn finds a fisherman drowning in the water. In this small Mediterranean village, an ancient myth unexpectedly comes to life.
SÈT LAM
Vincent Fontano, France
23′
The two fishermen find a dolphin accidentally caught in their nets. The dolphin in its turn finds a fisherman drowning in the water. In this small Mediterranean village, an ancient myth unexpectedly comes to life.
Director Biography – Vincent Fontano
As a student of the Réunion conservatory in 2009 he holds an atypical course through the literary creation scene on the island. An avid reader of James Baldwin, Dany Laferrière and Tony Morrison, and writer and stage director for the Ker Béton company, he invites the audience to reflect on Reunion island society and the world in general.
In 2013 he changes medium and pivots to cinema with his short film « Blaké » which he writes, directs and stars in. The film gets noticed and earns the France Télévision prize and the SACD prize.
Following this first success he directs his second short film, « Sèt Lam », in 2021. In this modern allegory, deeply anchored in Réunion culture, he touches on spirituality, heritage and the strong link with our ancestors, all narrated by a grandmother, the powerful and matriarcal face of a society built around orality.
THE MECHANICS OF FLUIDS
Gala Hernández López, France
30′
In 2018, an incel called Anathematic Anarchist posted a suicide letter on Reddit entitled “America is responsible for my death”. The Mechanics of Fluids is an attempt to find answers to his words. A virtual drift through the internet in search of his digital traces that ends up being an inner journey between our connected solitudes.
Director Biography – Gala Hernández López
Artist filmmaker and researcher based in Paris and Berlin.
She is a contractual PhD Candidate in Aesthetics, Sciences and Technologies of Arts at Paris VIII – Vincennes Saint-Denis University, ESTCA laboratory. Her research-creation projet reflects on the screen recording as a media in the post-internet era. She also teaches film studies, filmmaker’s writings and amateur aesthetics at Paris 8 University. She co-founded and co-directs the research-creation association After Social Networks. She is currently a visiting PhD researcher at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Germany). In 2022, she was the recipient of a doctoral research scholarship by the German DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst).
Her film La Mécanique des fluides is supported by the CNC – DICRéAM and the EUR ArTeC. She has edited several issues of journals (Contratexto, Images Secondes), published in international academic journals (Interfaces, Digital War, Marges, Augenblick) and participated in collective works, such as Captures d’écran (Yellow Now, 2022) or L’art tout contre la machine (Hermann, 2021). She is currently coordinating a major on open source counter-investigations for the journal Multitudes.
Her work combines interdisciplinary research with the production of audiovisual artistic forms about the processes of individuation and the new modes of subjectivation produced specifically by computational digital capitalism. Particularly interested in approaching from a feminist, poetic and critical prism the discourses and imaginaries that circulate in eminently masculine online communities, her mid-length film La Mécanique des fluides is the first of a series of experimental audiovisual essays that will be followed by Cashflow Quadrant, both proposing a reflection on the politics of the representation of contemporary masculinity on the internet in its articulation to algorithms and digital flows of data, signs and capital.
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TO READ THEM POEMS
Alexis Chatzigiannis, Greece
24′
A road trip with a truck driver and a poet leads them to a grotesque and risky poetry slam. But its Christmas and miracles happen.
Born and raised in Athens. Studied Documentary in the University of Aegean. Has directed a lot of documentaries screened in festivals & greek TV and also short fiction films screened in festivals all over the world. To read them poems is his last film.
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WENDIGO
Félix Bouffard-Dumas, Canada
14′
Through an exploded mosaic, the film proposes an experimental interpretation between the Wendigo’s legend and the Quebecers’ insecurities of their identity.
Director Biography – Félix Bouffard-Dumas
Degree holder in cinema (specialization in editing) from UQÀM university, Félix Bouffard-Dumas begins his career as an editor and director of short films.