All Films

The 2,000,000 Calorie Buffet

2017 • 60 min • United Kingdom

The UK has seen a massive growth in the number of all-you-can-eat restaurants offering limitless servings of food for a fixed price. How do such businesses remain profitable and is it possible to beat the system?

Leap of Faith

2017 • 14 min

Kelly longs for a connection in a disconnected world and her goodlooking new neighbour might be just the ticket. But his odd behaviour soon has her questioning her own sanity. Is putting her life in jeopardy the solution to her problem?

The Labyrinth 1.0

2017 • 6 min • United States of America

The Labyrinth 1.0 is a poetic film essay that cites writer and poet Brad Johnson’s poem “The Labyrinth,” published in the anthology Milking Black Bull (1995). Sourcing 16-mm surveillance footage, 16-mm 1970s tearoom porn, and structuralist film footage shot in North Philadelphia, the work visually explores the concept of the labyrinth space as a site for cruising and gesture-based desire. Commissioned by Visual AIDS in 2017 as part of ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, a program of seven videos prioritizing Black narratives within the ongoing AIDS epidemic curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett.

Atonement

2017 • 24 min • South Korea

One day, Jinsu, Junyeong and Hangyu sleep over at Jinsu’s house. It is the first day Jinsu’s mother cooked beef bone soup. The boys decide to go to church together to get a 'gift voucher' but Hangyu keeps feeling uncomfortable because his mother does not like him going to church.

Trigger

2017 • 20 min • Japan

Love begins to grow between two ninjas from opposing factions. In this forbidden love, the Kunoichi who crossed borders is being pursued by the enemy. The only one who can protect her is another Kunoichi. Here a wager between love and death is about to take place. A Kyoto non-verbal action movie.

Heart of Gold

2017 • 55 min • Norway

In 1987, Virginia left her five children in the Philippines to work in Hong Kong. Today, 30 years later, she lives in Norway, and she is still providing for her growing family in her homeland.

Singer

2017 • 7 min • United States of America

A girl wants to be a famous singer.

The Caretaker

2017 • 16 min

Zoya is a young Pakistani cricket player and the lucky recipient of a life-changing scholarship. The only thing standing in her way? Finding someone to take her place as her ailing grandmother’s current caretaker.

Beyond The Night

2017 • 13 min • Indonesia

Dena met her long-distance girlfriend Acil, in the middle of the holy month of Ramadan. When they arrived at the boarding house and started to have fun, the gecko sounds accompanied them. Acil believes that if it sounds eight times, then it is not a gecko. Dena who did not believe, met the original owner of the sound.

Aga

2017 • 60 min • Iraq

Aga is a story about a Kurdish child who escaped the Ba'ath regime during the Anfal of his family and village. Aga is also a reminder of the suffering that Kurds have suffered at the hands of their enemies.

The World on a String

2017 • 7 min

After six years of marriage, Laura needs to find some solace - in the arms of a stranger.

Game of Cones

2017 • 23 min • Germany

Daydreamer Ben is hopelessly in love with his colleague Sophia from the ice cream parlor, yet unsure if she returns his feelings. In a moment of humiliation he rises above himself and finally overcomes his fear of making the first step. Between sundaes and cups of coffee: The beginning of true love.

Forgotten Activism

2017 • 15 min • Italy

Volonté, the militant. How many people know this singular and important aspect of the great Milanese actor's life? "Forgotten Activism" attempts to reconstruct a particular profile of the actor Gian Maria Volonté, the one concerning his political commitment, an aspect that is often neglected and ignored. A life spent on acting, but at the same time on politics, with the fixed idea of always wanting to change things and have his say, denouncing the abuses of power - as in the case of the anarchist Pinelli - and social inequalities. A character that can be defined to all intents and purposes as a fighter, a 'revolutionary in an actor's uniform', who exposed himself without trying to mediate his positions, sometimes extreme and as a true outsider.

To the Bone

2017 • 13 min

TO THE BONE is classic kitchen sink, British drama with a revenge twist. It focuses on the injustices of the work place and the ritualism of trade work and the dynamic between the old guard and the new apprentices.

30 Minutes with Laura

2017 • 9 min • Spain

A man receives a phone call. There is to go immediately to a restaurant, Laura has to talk to him. It's a matter of life or death.

Colorful Dreams

2017 • 5 min • Mexico

In a black and white world, a girl goes to sleep, finding dreams in color.

Zorn bakom kameran

2017 • 58 min

About the Swedish artist Anders Zorn's unknown passion for photography. Some of them models for later works and others are innovative photo experiments.

Rincón del ángel

2017 • 15 min • Argentina

A young man meets an old countryman who convinces him to dig a well in the middle of the field. When the old man refuses to reveal the purpose of the task, the young man warns that it could be something more than a simple gauchada.

One Shoe

2017 • 5 min • Portugal

A woman has just confessed and the Priest forgives her sins. She prays several Our Fathers without stopping, in continuous rotation. She is a beautiful woman, attractive and also, in her kneeling legs, we see that she only has one shoe, just one, the other is missing. We seek after the beautiful woman's missing shoe.

The Blind well

2017 • 8 min

Inside a small roadside salon, three men mock a newspaper photo of a fair-skinned groom who has married a dark-skinned bride. Their laughter is cruel, their views shallow. At that moment, a young man with dark skin walks in. Offended by their remarks, he challenges their narrow ideas and sparks a heated debate. What begins as casual gossip soon turns into a clash of perspectives on beauty, prejudice, and identity. The title “Pottakkinar”—literally “The Frog in the Well”—is borrowed from a Chinese idiom that describes a person too narrow-minded to see the vastness of the world. This intimate, single-location short film is a raw and unbiased reflection on racism and the everyday ignorance that feeds it.

Grape Leaves

2017 • 8 min • United States of America

Salma, a well-respected, Arab American professor, is stunned into silence after her world is shaken in the wake of an unthinkable tragedy. She is forced to rethink the relationships with those closest to her. How she reshapes her life will alter all she understood and trusted. With the love of her family, Salma regains the hope and strength she needs to ignite future change.

Reel Therapy

2017 • 8 min • United States of America

Two People Fighting Through Depression, Each Finding A Way, To Cope Through Film.

Landscapes of War, Landscapes of Peace

2017 • 49 min • Germany, Serbia

A journey through the chronology, aftermath and a potential conclusion of a military conflict, as reflected in the topographies that the war, either physically or contextually, shaped and altered.

Saturday

2017 • 20 min

Saturday focuses on the Seventh-Day Adventist (SDA) Church, an evangelical Christian denomination with an apocalyptic expectation, that celebrates the Sabbath and practices immersion baptism rituals on Saturday. Through the figure of the SDA Church appear the themes of hope for a better life and the desire to flee the daily mundane, which here manifests in a religious mode, but takes form elsewhere in the practice of particular dietary rules and extreme sports. Shot mostly in 3D, the film combines scenes recorded at SDA Church sites in the USA, Polynesia, and the Kingdom of Tonga with images of food, surfing, and medical tests; together, they immerse us in a parallel world of hope and belief – of transparencies and opacities. Meanwhile, text scrolling at the bottom of the screen materializes both a source of information and a desire to escape from it.