BLANCHE

Joanne Rakotoarisoa, France
25’34”

Director Biography – Joanne Rakotoarisoa

Les jours heureux

Johanna Legrand, France
15’47”

Director Biography – Johanna Legrand

Trained in screenwriting by LA FEMIS in Paris and the Conservatoire d’Ecriture Européen Audiovisuel, Johanna explores, through her films, radical proposals that oscillate between different genres, on themes such as death, violence, sexuality .

She received several writing grants from the CNC for her television and cinema projects and signed several societal units, accompanied by Scarlett and Lincoln TV.
His feature film, Les macaronis, is a finalist for the Junior Prize for Best Feature Film (Ex-Sopadin) and selected for the DreamAgo international residency in Switzerland and the VILLA MEDICIS in Italy.
Happy Days, produced by Orphée Films, is her first production.

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The Blue Girls of Summer

Geneviève Boiteau, Canada
15′

Chloé and Clara leave Montreal together for their childhood cottage. While looking at the lake, they get to know a new perception of themselves and time. The two women observe each other, discuss and run in the forest: one to escape her body and the other to inhabit it.

Director Biography – Geneviève Boiteau

Born in Quebec City, Geneviève has been working professionally as a production designer since obtaining a bachelor’s degree in film production at Concordia University in 2018. She mainly devotes herself to fiction while working as a director, first with Pissenlit (2018), now with Les filles bleues de l’été (2023).

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for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world

Gala Hernández López, France
18′ 35”

A woman dreams of the American cryptographer Hal Finney. A major economic crisis affects the cryptocurrency market, tens of thousands of people are cryogenized waiting for a better future. Are they suspended or falling into the void? What strange relationship do we have with the future?

Director Biography – Gala Hernández López

Gala Hernández López is an artist-researcher and filmmaker. Her work articulates interdisciplinary research with the production of essay films, video installations and performances on the new modes of subjectivation specifically produced by computational digital capitalism. She examines from a feminist and critical lens the discourses and imaginaries circulating in virtual communities as symptomatic fictions of a state of the world. Her work has been shown at Berlinale, DOK Leipzig, Cinéma du Réel, IndieLisboa, Transmediale and the Salon de Montrouge, among others. Her film “The Mechanics of fluids” was selected for the César awards 2024 and won the Experimental Work Award 2023 of la Scam (France), among a dozen awards. She is a PhD candidate at the University Paris 8, where she is developing a research-creation project on screen capture and where she has taught for 3 years. She has been an Associate Professor (ATER) at the University Gustave Eiffel and a visiting researcher at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf (Germany) thanks to a DAAD research grant. In 2023-2024, she is an artist in residence at the French Academy in Spain – Casa de Velázquez. She co-directs the research and creation collective After Social Networks (www.after-social-networks.com). She regularly gives workshops and lectured-performances, in places such as the Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf, Beaux-Arts de Marseille, The Photographers Gallery or the Locarno Film Festival. www.galahernandez.com

Dinosauria, We

Maxime-Claude L’Écuyer, Canada
5’05”

Dinosauria we, is an experimental short film, that explore the consequence of human kind corruption, ultra capitalism and the exploitation of natural ressources in a dystopian post-apocalyptic vision of the end of the world imagine by poet Charles Bukowski.

Director Biography – Maxime-Claude L’Écuyer

Three Legs in the Evening

Niyalic Khun, Cambodia
10’11”

In a world where the Khmer Rouge achieved its ultimate goal, Man wanders the post-apocalyptic city of Phnom Penh. Through the old world, he rediscovers Man’s first impulses of humanity; at the rebirth of a world that Man has yet to imprint language, art, structure, and culture again.

Director Biography – Niyalic Khun

Niyalic Khun is a Cambodian filmmaker born amidst the age of artistic revival of Cambodia. His opposing academic and professional backgrounds, going from political science to international law, to contemporary theatre constitute a vital touch to his artistic work.
Niyalic’s first short film draws inspiration from the identity complex of Cambodia, the Khmer people, its reawakening, and his experience in creating a contemporary art space.
He co-founded សាលា សិល្បៈ សម្ដែង (The Acting Art Academy) in 2022, a Cambodian non-profit performing arts center dedicated to training aspiring actors for cinema and contemporary theatre.
Through these projects, Niyalic continues to challenge the current status quo of the art industry in Cambodia.

Director Statement

The Khmer Rouge regime is a difficult yet prevalent topic in Khmer art. It is this fear of imagining ourselves being able to commit heinous acts that drive the work of memory. Three Legs in the Evening is a film that faces these imaginations in a hypothetical world stripped of euphemism.
Hence, the vision for Three Legs in the Evening was to explore this constant cycle of destruction and reconstruction of humanity, and how fast it will inexorably spin before it finally ceases; whether resulting in the eradication of humanity or its true enlightenment to elevate from this cyclic path.
Alongside adopting a capitalistic economic model, the age of digitalization, and the recovery from the genocide, the film challenges the notion of the Modern Cambodian person. It is ultimately an experimentation of sound, body movement, and frame.
Three Legs in the Evening mirrors the balance between our nature and our legacy to shape the human trajectory.

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Familes’ Albums

Moïa Jobin-Paré, Canada
8′

What Men Do For Love

Sai Karan Talwar, United Kingdom
14’57”

An aging dentist kidnaps a young man with intentions of killing him because he’s had an affair with his wife, but an unlikely connection starts to form between them.

Director Biography – Sai Karan Talwar

Sai Karan Talwar is an award-winning writer and director. Sai is currently a fellow in the BBC Writersroom Writer’s Access Group and is a 2023 Alumni of the Disability Belongs Entertainment Lab, with over forty accolades as a writer in some of the most esteemed screenwriting competitions. His Debut ‘GHANIMAH’ is a BAFTA & BIFA Qualified Short Film that has been selected at just over 60 film festivals, including OSCAR-accredited festivals, with over a dozen wins and nominations; the film is about Islamic enrolment into the British Military. His upcoming short ‘What Men Do for Love’ is a 15-minute single-take film about the masculine ego at breaking point; the film is currently BIFA Qualified and has been selected by BAFTA and OSCAR accredited festivals.

Film has always been a passion for Sai since growing up in his late Grandfather’s video shop. Initially working with MADE in 2016, a charitable organization with a vision to reduce discrimination against BAME & LGBTQ+ Londoners. With MADE, he ran filmmaking workshops and screening events, held exhibitions at BFI Southbank and co-produced over 30 short films with 100,000+ online views. He worked in production companies such as Origin Pictures and 42 Management and Production within the development departments. He studied Economics and Finance at Durham University, which led to his undergraduate dissertation: ‘What are the key determinants of success for the box office within the UK motion picture industry?’, which received a first.

Director Statement

I strongly believe that “What Men Do For Love” has the potential to significantly contribute to the dialogue surrounding toxic masculinity, misogyny and their affects on men’s mental health and challenge the existing stigma on a global scale. Post-COVID, loneliness has been a significant issue affecting men’s behavior, leading them to engage in immoral actions and concerning attitudes.

This pattern is evident worldwide. What Men Do for Love is an exploration of the masculine ego at breaking point. A provocative, profane yet tender piece amidst the overwhelming unbridled testosterone. We are typifying an account of the broken male ego, where many projects don’t choose to delve into, men can’t seem to open up their emotional state of mind. What on the surface alludes to a revenge plot is more of a red herring for a film that is actually about lost love to another, and the emotions one feels as a result. In such circumstances, revenge may be hugely desired, but that it is not something that many of us get the opportunity or inclination to go through with.

Going against the grain of a film that can very easily be reduced to genre thrills and violent sensationalism. The single location I would hope augments the sense of loneliness and accentuates Charles’s pain, only exemplified by the choice of black and white. We had a day and a half for rehearsal, and then we shot within half a day in a single take, out of fourteen takes we used the last one. We believe this escalates the tension of the scene, as well as, present a more natural and vulnerable performance from our actors. A film about love and loss with an important message; love hurts, but revenge will not take the pain away. Thus bringing the vulnerabilities of how men deal with mental health issues.

The script was an Official Selection at the HollyShorts Screenwriting Competition 2023, A Quarterfinalist at the ScreenCraft Short Film Screenplay Competition 2023, and a Semifinalist at the ScreenCraft Film Fund Fall 2023. However, although of the accolades for the screenplay, I had to self-fund in order to get it made.

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-200 degrees

Nikolas Passaris, Greece
14’08”

A young couple discovers the true nature of their relationship after a -far from successful- ski trip.

Director Biography – Nikolas Passaris

Nikolas Passaris, an Athens based Film Director, realised his MFA studies at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts of Chapman University in 2012. Since then he has been directing TV commercials and music videos. He has earned multiple awards for his work and his music video for Marina Satti, Mantissa, went viral with over 56 million views.
His short film “at dawn” that he directed for the 2009 Gogreen 48hourfilmfestival was granded the runner up best film award.

Director Statement

During Covid lockdown a lot of relationships came to the test. Being stuck with your significant other every single day with no room to escape, created a prism under which every small thought or feeling was magnified, and it filled you up until you would burst.
Like many others, I went through this “incarceration” with my partner and despite the uniqueness of this global crisis, a lot of these magnified feelings seemed familiar.
That’s when I realized that I had put myself in this situation before willingly, without the force of an obligatory lockdown.
When you fall in love with someone you attach yourself so much to the other, that you start pushing away everything else. And there is a thin line on how much of your life you will push away before the relationship becomes toxic.
With this film my intention was to explore this thin line, in an imaginary situation where seemingly the characters are victims of fate, but they are the ones ultimately choosing to be together. I perceive this film as a black comedy where the two protagonists are condemned to go through the cycle of an oppressive relationship, again and again.
My main goal is to make the two protagonists believable and relatable. Ideally everyone who watches this film will laugh and feel intimate with what is happening between the two characters and at the same time ponder when a behavior is ok and when it starts being abusive.

The North

Sveta Gertman, Russian Federation
24′

Cold weather come to the world. A young family was broken. They come to parental home to let parents know about their divorce. On the way to the lawyer, they are overtaken by a snowstorm.

 

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SCALE

Joseph Pierce, United Kingdom
15′