2021 Festival.

FAYA DAYI • Directed by Jessica Beshir

Documentary | 120 min

In her hypnotic documentary feature, Ethiopian-Mexican filmmaker Jessica Beshir explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents. Though a deeply personal project—Beshir was forced to leave her hometown of Harar with her family as a teenager due to growing political strife—the film she returned to make about the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant) is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration.

TRAILER | TICKETS

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Beshir is an Ethiopian-Mexican director, producer and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her short films have screened at festivals and museums around the world including the Rotterdam Film Festival, Hot Docs, IDFA, Tribeca Film Festival, Museum of the Moving Image NY and the Eye Film Museum Amsterdam. After being forced to leave her hometown in Ethiopia as a teenager due to political strife, Beshir returned to make a film about her city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export, the euphoria-inducing khat plant. Faya Dayi is her feature film debut.

FIVE TIGER • Directed by Nomawonga Khumalo

Narrative | 10:45 minutes | South Africa

Five Tiger tells the story of god-fearing woman finds herself in a transactional relationship as she tries to support her sick husband and daughter.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Nomawonga Khumalo is a Johannesburg-based writer and director whose short film, Five Tiger, was selected to play In Competition at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Five Tiger is Nomawonga’s writing and directing debut in the short film format. 

She is currently in pre-production on the feature-length narrative film, THE BURSARY.

EKSTASE • Directed by Marion Kellmann

Experimental Film | 11:27 minutes | Germany

Marion Kellmann’s film Ekstase is a montage of scenes from various silent films. Based on similar settings and gestures it explores the stereotype of women on the verge of insanity. In a repetitive montage the same symptoms and actions reoccur repeatedly in different places, different sceneries and with different people.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Marion Kellmann studied screenwriting at the Filmakademie Baden- Württemberg and graduated at the Academy of Media Arts, Cologne. She lives in Cologne and works as editor and filmmaker. Her films have been shown at museums and film festivals worldwide.

THE MOTHER • Directed by Kaytlyn Turner

Narrative | 9:54 minutes | Canada

The Mother follows a colonial trapper as he wrestles with his violent past alone in the wild.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Writer, director and producer: Kaytlyn is a filmmaker originally from Northern B.C. now living the cowboy dream in Alberta. Her work frequently features themes of loneliness, misogyny and finding the humour in all things sad. As a member of the International Cinematographer's Guild Kaytlyn brings her strong work ethic, hands-on approach and technical sensibilities to all of her projects. As an artist, she has always wanted to be described as uncompromising, but Kaytlyn has learned the hard way that film is always a compromise.

WITNESS • Directed by Kira Findling

Experimental Documentary | 3:16 minutes | USA

The filmmaker steps outside in a world where women go missing every day.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Kira Findling (she/her or they/them) is a filmmaker and writer based in Berkeley, California. She is devoted to telling stories about women and queer people. Her films have premiered at festivals across the United States. Kira is an assistant editor at Citizen Film, a non-profit documentary production company in San Francisco, and works as the director's assistant for feature doc Vivien’s Wild Ride. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2019.

THE LAST MAN • Directed by Bar Elyakim, Maya Kessel

Narrative | 27 minutes | Israel

On the night between her dress rehearsal and the grand competition, a young actress, Tamar, finally decides to confront the two dominant men in her life.

ABOUT DIRECTORS

Bar Elyakim is a filmmaker and actress and a graduate of Nissan Nativ Acting Studio in Tel-Aviv. She is the former artistic director at Edmond de Rothschild Cultural Center. She  wrote and starred in the award-winning play  `Last Seen'. She's currently developing a TV series and full-length film.

Maya Kessel is a filmmaker and an Opfir-nominated casting director. She graduated with honors from Sam Spiegel film school in Jerusalem.  Her three film shorts have screened internationally and won awards. She is currently .developing her first full-length film

ROQAIA • Directed by Diana Saqeb Jamal

Narrative | 11 minutes | Afghanistan

After surviving a suicide bomb attack, 12-year-old Roqaia finds herself in the middle of a media frenzy, as she deals with her trauma all by herself.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Diana Saqeb Jamal was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. She started her filmmaking journey as a documentary filmmaker. Her first documentary “Twenty-Five Percent” played a strong role in changing the European military policy to more human rights policy in Afghanistan. Her documentary film “Mohtarama” about Afghan women movement won several awards including the best documentary at Yamagata International Film Festival.

She is dedicated and passionate to tell stories about her homeland, Afghanistan, a country which is war-torn and whose children are traumatized in the face of violence. Roqaia is her debut short film. In this film, she tells the story of a child who might never get a chance to have a childhood.

Currently, she is developing her first feature film, “In the Walnut Shell”. 

EMERGENCE • Directed by Clarissa Rebouças & Julie Bernier

Experimental | 11 minutes | Canada & Haiti

Katiana emerges. She finally takes her head off the water and she speaks for all Haitian women.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Clarissa Rebouças is Brazilian and has lived in Quebec since November 2015. She is a director, scriptwriter and editor. She has directed more than ten short fiction and documentary shorts around the world that have been selected in some international festivals. His short "Desvelo" (2012) has won seven awards in total. She participated in the Talent Lab of TIFF also in 2012. Currently she is developing her first feature called Cine Ruby.

A native of Saint-Bruno-de-Kamouraska, Julie Bernier obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi in 2013. Through performance, video and installation, she tries to raise social questions by infiltrating circulation and stimulating exchanges and human contacts. His work inspires him with texts of a documentary and poetic nature and it is this rich material that ignites his slams. The work of Last Thursday (pseudonym used when it sings) was seen in Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, Quebec City, Montreal, the Magdalen Islands and Chicago

TICKETS

ONE • Directed by Anouk De Clercq

Experimental | 6:19 minutes | Belgium

One is a film, a performance, a 21st century protest song, a call to action, a pledge, a commitment, a solemn undertaking, a summoning of consciousness, an instruction, a stand against mindlessness and distraction, an art of limits, an active silence, a difficult love. And an invitation. To drink in the vibrancy of life at all scales. To embrace complexity and attend to our world with a befitting vibrancy of feeling.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Anouk De Clercq explores the potential of audiovisual language to create possible worlds. She is interested in what lies behind ‘reality’ or in between the visible and the imaginary. She has received several awards, including the Illy Prize at Art Brussels in 2005 and a Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in 2014.Her work has been shown in Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, MAXXI, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ars Electronica, among others.

CHANGE THE NAME • Directed by Cai Thomas

Documentary | 19:52 minutes | USA

An intimate portrayal of Black youth organizing on the west side of Chicago, Change the Name follows a group of 5th graders from Village Leadership Academy as they embark on a campaign to rename Stephen A. Douglas Park after freedom fighters Anna and Frederick Douglass. Over the course of the three-year grassroots campaign the students tackle bureaucratic Chicago Park District systems, underestimations of their capacity to make change as well as a pandemic and a global racial uprising.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Cai Thomas is a documentary filmmaker telling verité stories at the intersection of location, self-determination, and identity about Black youth and elders. She grew up in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood and is deeply interested in stories rooted in place. Her most recent film Queenie about a Black lesbian elder premiered at NewFest winning the NY Short Grand Jury award. She is a NeXt Doc and Sisters in Cinema Fellow as well as a Mellon Arts Practitioner Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.

THIS IS THE WAY WE RISE • Directed by Ciara Lacy

Documentary | 12:16 minutes | USA

Filmmaker Ciara Lacy documents Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, a Kanaka Maoli wahine poet, activist and academic, and her continued work towards justice for Hawaii’s native population.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Ciara Lacy's interest lies in crafting films that use strong characters and investigative journalism to challenge the creative and political status quo. She has created content for film and television, managed independent features, as well as coordinated product placement and clearances for various platforms.

Her work has shown at festivals around the world as well as broadcast on networks including Netflix, PBS, ABC, and Al Jazeera. In the digital space, she has created content for notable outlets like the Guardian and the Atlantic Online.

DEAR PHILADELPHIA • Directed by Renee Maria Osubu

Documentary | 27 minutes | USA

With the help of their family, friends, and faith, three fathers unravel the incomparable partnership of forgiveness and community in North Philadelphia. With the help of their family, friends, and faith, three fathers unravel the incomparable partnership of forgiveness and community in North Philadelphia.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Renee Maria Osubu is a Nigerian-British photographer and director born and raised in London. She is best known for her photography series Dear Philadelphia, which is now a film available to watch on BFI Player. Dear Philadelphia, had its international premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2021, and won the Jury award for Best Short Documentary at Blackstar Film Festival 2021.

OK • Directed by Helga Davis & Anouk De Clercq

Experimental | 6:19 minutes | Belgium, USA

In the Summer of 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests in her country, Helga Davis wrote a text that voices her pain, her despair and also her hopes for the future. After collaborating on Helga Humming (2019) and One (2020), the text became the starting point for a new film and a first work co-signed by Helga Davis and Anouk De Clercq. 

OK scrutinises the relations between Black and White while searching for the essence of collaboration and caring about the other. Music by Vessel.

ABOUT DIRECTORS

Helga Davis is a vocalist and performance artist with feet planted on the most prestigious international stages and with firm roots in the realities and concerns of her local community whose work draws out insights that illuminate how artistic leaps for an individual can offer connection among audiences.

Anouk De Clercq explores the potential of audiovisual language to create possible worlds. She is interested in what lies behind ‘reality’ or in between the visible and the imaginary. She has received several awards, including the Illy Prize at Art Brussels in 2005 and a Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in 2014.Her work has been shown in Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, MAXXI, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ars Electronica, among others.

OCTAVIA'S VISION • Directed by Zara Zandieh

The film is inspired by the Parables of the African-American futurist author Octavia E. Butler, who died in 2006. Using poetic visual language, the story interweaves Butler’s worlds with contemporary issues of environmental degradation, far-right extremism, and social liberation. The poetic piece expresses a queer utopian imaginary, a longing to create out of the old something new.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Zara Zandieh (they/she) is a filmmaker born and based in Berlin. Zara studied 4 years at the Berlin-based self-taught and self-organized film school, filmArche. In 2018 Zara graduated as a master's student of Art and Media at the University of the Arts Berlin. The stories told through Zara’s projects are dedicated to a decolonial queer gaze that weaves complexities and multi-layered representations of post-migrant and marginalized subjects into poetic narratives. Zara’s works have been nominated for awards at various film festivals including International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, BFI FLARE Film Festival, HIFF-Helsinki International Film Festival, EIFF-Edinburgh International Film Festival, Queer Lisboa, Inside Out, and DokLeipzig.

EVERYTHING IN THE END • Directed by Mylissa Fitzsimmons

Narrative | 75 minutes | USA

Grieving from the recent death of his mother, Paulo has travelled from Portugal to Iceland, a trip they were supposed to do together. While there, news the world has been waiting for finally arrives. Earth will cease to exist in a matter of days. With only these last few days left and unable to get home he finds himself stranded in a small village where he spends his days wandering a delicate foreign land and encountering the people he will spend his final days with. Experiencing intimate and brief moments, allowing him these few last human connections.

A quiet, contemplative humanist story set in Iceland. Exploring themes of grief, death, and how in the end human connections allow us to forgive and accept.

TRAILER | TICKETS

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Mylissa Fitzsimmons is a Los Angeles based writer, director, producer, and photographer. Her award winning shorts include Mercy, That Party That One Night, and Who Decides. In 2016 she co-founded The Los Angeles Women’s Film Collective. She has worked as a producer on many short films and is an Executive Producer on and the feature film A Black Rift Begins To Yawn ( Slamdance 2020 winner ) Mylissa is a 2020 Lynn Shelton " of a certain age " grant nominee, 2018 Reykjavík Film Festival Talent lab alumni, 2017 Sun Valley Film Festival Film lab winner. She has been a finalist for various film programs including the HBO Directing Fellowship and a Screen Craft finalist for her short films and short story writing.

THE SPACE LADY • Directed by Sophia Feuer

Documentary | 16:55 minutes | USA

Space Lady is portrait of 71-year-old musician Susan Schneider (aka ‘The Space Lady’) who, after 30 years of homelessness and busking, is beginning to receive notoriety for her early contributions to electronic pop music thanks to its being shared online. Shot on 16mm, the film explores Susan's past as she tells it verbally, but focuses first and foremost on sensory, observational details from her present life in rural Colorado —namely, her struggle to reclaim the music from the pain that encompasses it.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Sophia Feuer is a New England filmmaker and multimedia artist based out of Brooklyn. Working primarily with 16mm film, her films question the boundaries of documentary and fiction, often using genre tropes such as sci-fi and horror. She is the current 2021 Valentine & Clark Emerging Artist Fellow at the Jacob Burns Film Center.

THE TRAIN STATION • Directed by Lyana Patrick

Documentary | 2:09 minutes | Canada

In this beautifully animated documentary short, filmmaker Lyana Patrick narrates her family's powerful story of love and survival at Lejac Indian Residential School.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Lyana Patrick is a member of the Stellat’en First Nation (Carrier Nation) on her father’s side and Acadian/Scottish on her mother’s side. She has worked in communications and education for 17 years, including as a journalist, communications officer, and documentary filmmaker. She holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia and is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University.

AIN’T NO TIME FOR WOMEN • Directed by Sarra El Abed

Documentary | 19 minutes | Tunisia

Tunis, November 2019. A group of women is gathered at Saïda’s, the hairdresser, on the eve of the presidential election. The salon is transformed into a town square, mirroring the internal turmoil of the country. In this female sanctuary, we get an intimate look at the county’s teenage democracy.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Sarra El Abed finished his studies in directing at UQAM in 2018, recipient of the prize for best fiction. “There's no time for women” is her fourth film. Varying between fiction and documentary, she likes to breathe fantasy into the ordinary and comedy into dramatic situations. Sarra El Abed finished her degree in film direction at UQAM in 2018, where she was awarded the best fiction prize for her graduation project. “There's no time for women” is her fourth film. Flirting between fiction and documentary filmmaking, she likes to breathe whimsy into the ordinary and comedy into dramatic situations.

AGUILAS • Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, Maite Zubiaurre

Documentary | 14:14 minutes | USA

Along the scorching southern desert border in Arizona, it is estimated that only one out of every five missing migrants are ever found. ÁGUILAS is the story of one group of searchers, the Aguilas del Desierto, themselves largely immigrant Latinos. Once a month these volunteers—construction workers, gardeners, domestic laborers by trade—set out to recover missing loved ones referred to them by word of mouth, phone calls, or Facebook message. Amidst rising political repression and cartel violence, as well as the eternal difficulties of travel in the Sonoran Desert, the Aguilas carry out their solemn task.

ABOUT DIRECTORS

Kristy Guevara-Flanagan has been making documentary and experimental films for nearly two decades, starting with a 1999 experimental documentary about a blow-up doll. Her first feature-length film, Going on 13 (2009), covers four years in the lives of four adolescent girls; it premiered at Tribeca and was broadcast on PBS. Kristy also produced and directed several short films, including El Corrido de Cecilia Rios (1999) which chronicles the violent death of 15-year-old Cecilia Rios. It was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Her feature, Wonder Women! TheUntold Story of American Superheroines (2013), traces the evolution and legacy of the comic book hero Wonder Woman as a way to reflect on society’s anxieties about women’s liberation. The film garnered numerous awards, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens in 2013. Her recent short,  What Happened to Her (2016) premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian Film Festival, where it  received an honorable mention for best short. What  Happened to Her and her in progress feature documentary, Body Parts,continues her exploration on the themes of gender and representation.  Kristy’s work has been funded by ITVS, the Sundance Institute, the Tribeca Institute, Latino Public Broadcasting and California Humanities. She is now an Associate Professor at UCLA.

Maite Zubiaurre was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and grew up in Germany and Spain. She has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and is a Professor in the Humanities at UCLA. Before joining UCLA, Maite taught at UT Austin, UNAM (Mexico), ITAM (México), and USC. She is the author of numerous books and articles, and has recently published a co-authored monograph on urban humanities and new practices of reimagining the city (MIT Press), and a book on the cultural uses of contemporary waste that reflects upon urban refuse and upon the archival practices of the personal belongings that migrants leave behind along the US-Mexico border (Vanderbilt UP). She is presently working on a co-authored monograph on cultural representations of migrant death at the US-Mexico border; directing a research team working on a digital “thick” map of the US-Mexico borderlands; and co-writing and co-producing a feature documentary on border art with Emmy-awarded Tijuanan film collective Dignicraft. She is co-PI and core faculty of the Mellon Urban Humanities Initiative, where she teaches border studies and Mexican cultural studies and street art, and co-PI of the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on “Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism.” Maite Zubiaurre is also a visual artist and collagist: under the name of Filomena Cruz she has initiated a number of artistic interventions, among them her longstanding Venice, CA installation “The Wall that Gives/El muro que da.”

NO ARCHIVE CAN RESTORE YOU • Directed by Onyeka Igwe

Documentary | 5:54 minutes | UK

In Lagos, the former Nigerian Film Unit building was one of the first self-directed outposts of the British visual propaganda engine, the Colonial Film Unit (1932–1955). Today it stands empty. Its rooms are full of dust, cobwebs, stopped clocks, and rusty and rotting celluloid film cans. The films found in this building are hard to see, not only because of their condition, but also perhaps because people do not want to see them. They reveal a colonial residue, echoed in walls of the building itself.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Onyeka Igwe is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation, born and based in London, UK. Through her work, Onyeka is animated by the question — how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatial and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers to this question.

IN THE IMAGE OF GOD • Directed by Bianca Rondolino

Documentary | 15 minutes | Italy

Rabbi Levi was born on Long Island, New York, in 1957. Like his grandmother and his great-grandmother, he was intersexual at birth and, like them, the female gender was imposed on him. In the Image of God tells the story of his transition and his journey into his faith.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Bianca Rondolino is a queer director and author. She received a double degree in classics and art history in Rome and studied Documentary Filmmaking at the New York Film Academy of Los Angeles. In the Image of God is her first documentary.

MORE WOMAN, MORE CRY• Directed by Anne Haugsgjerd

Documentary | 23 minutes

More Woman, More Cry by Anne Haugsgjerd is a stunning film that captures the beauty and fragility of life. With vivid clarity, great imagination, and sly humor, Haugsgjerd provides thought-provoking reflections on family, art, aging, and the fluidity of time in a humorous and poetic way. Without embarrassment, but full of doubts, the film shows an emancipated filmmaker contemplating her life and asking the question: What next?

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Anne Haugsgjerd graduated as a graphic designer from Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has worked with film since 1980, first as an editing assistant. She then went on to direct her own films - often humorous and reflective, biographical and self-exposing. Her films were a mixture of fiction and documentary, highly unusual in the 1980s when she made her first film, Life in Frogner. Her filmmaking was inspired by Swedish filmmaker Eric M Nilsson, who also edited Life in Frogner. In the 2010s, Anne Haugsgjerd on several occasions became part of the program at the renowned film festival Kurzfilmtage in Oberhausen in Germany. In 2016, she was the subject of a film retrospective there, and in 2021, during the international film pandemic, the 77-year-old director's latest short film More Woman, More Cry (2021) premiered at the festival in the International Competition Program, where the film received an honorable mention.

SPIRITS & ROCKS: AN AZOREAN MYTH • Directed by Aylin Gökmen

Documentary | 13:37 minutes | Turkey

On a volcanic island, inhabitants are caught in an unending cycle: the threat of impending eruptions, and the burden of past traumas loom over them. Some draw upon myth and religious beliefs to interpret their precarious situation, while others demonstrate resilience, rebuilding their villages from the volcanic rocks. Mirroring the ethereal atmosphere of the island’s landscapes, the film gradually takes on the appearance of the myth it recounts.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Aylin Gökmen is a Swiss-Turkish filmmaker who holds a B.A. in Arts from Lausanne University and an M.A. in Documentary Filmmaking from the DocNomads program. Combining documentary and fictional approach, her works revolve around themes of memory, imagination and landscape, and have been screened internationally. In 2020, she founded “A Vol d’Oiseau”, a production society dedicated to the development of various Swiss and international projects. She is also a contributor and co-curator of the Docs in Orbit podcast.

BARE BONES • Directed by Meryem Lahlou

Experimental | 9:05 minutes | Morocco

It is not a hazard of life, nor an accident, nor a product of the imagination, but a strange in-between. An experience of end. An experience that cannot be attributed to anyone, because it belongs to no one person. To see your world suddenly collapse is to have to reinvent everything or surrender, to reclaim your life or end it, to reevaluate your beliefs or deny them. Bare Bones is a story of interpreting, extending, and questioning what makes us human.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Meryem Lahlou is a Moroccan artist who earned a master of architecture in Paris, and a master of science in fiction and entertainment in Los Angeles. She now works in various formats using the spatial design as a medium of storytelling.

ZONA • Directed by Masami Kawai

Narrative | 15:16 minutes | USA

ZONA takes place in the near-future Los Angeles, where a drought has worsened, and the water supply has stopped running. An old immigrant woman braves the city to search for water for her neighbor in need. ZONA takes place in the near-future Los Angeles, where a drought has worsened, and the water supply has stopped running. An old immigrant woman braves the city to search for water for her neighbor in need.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Masami Kawai is a Los Angeles-born filmmaker, who divides her time between Oregon and LA. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. Kawai participated in Film Independent’s diversity program, Project Involve. She was a selected director in the Francis Ford Coppola One-Act play series. She also received the Sarah Jacobson Filmmaking Grant, the Panavision New Filmmakers Grant, and a fellowship from LA’s Visual Communications, which supports emerging Asian American filmmakers. Her work has screened at various venues, including the Rotterdam Film Festival, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, Portland International Film Festival, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

THE FOURFOLD • Directed by Alisi Telengut

Animation | 7:13 minutes | Canada

Based on the ancient animistic beliefs and shamanic rituals in Mongolia and Siberia, an exploration of the indigenous worldview and wisdom. Against the backdrop of the modern existential crisis and the human-induced rapid environmental change, there is a necessity to reclaim the ideas of animism for planetary health and non-human materialities.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian origin. She creates animation frame by frame under the camera with mixed media to generate movement, and explore hand-made and painterly visuals for her films. Alisi is a Canadian Screen Award nominee and a Québec Cinéma Awards - Prix Iris nominee in Best Animated Film. Her work received multiple international awards and nominations, including the Best Short Film at Stockholm Film Festival (Sweden), Alisi's work has been screened and exhibited internationally, such as at Sundance (USA) and TIFF (Canada). Her work has not only been presented as animation and moving image artworks with the unique visual style, but have also contributed to ethnographic and ethnocultural research. Her recent work has been added to the permanent collection of Art Science Exhibits Berlin (Germany) that represents the leading-edge of art making with dedication to positive action for Earth's recovery.

PATTAKI • Directed by Evernale Moares

Narrative | 20:00 minutes | Cuba

In the dense night, when the moon lifts the tide, beings trapped in the daily life of water scarcity are hypnotized by the powers of Yemaya, the goddess of the sea.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Evernale Moares is a Brazilian filmmaker and a graduate from the International School of Cinema and TV (EICTV) in Cuba, specializing in documentary. She is creative director at the production company PÀTTÀKI AUDIOVISUAL and an associate at APAN - Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals. She was awarded the Willam Graves Film Fund (USA) on Firelight Media (2020), IDFA Bertha Fund 2021, and Sundance 2021. She's been selected to Director's Meeting on 34ª Talents Guadalajara (Mexico, 2019). Her films move between different genres and formats, highlighting the social, philosophical and spiritual issues of the black diaspora. Her last film PÀTTÀKI was premiered in Rotterdam and shown in Sundance, BFI, among others.

LICHEN • Directed by ​​Lisa Jackson

Documentary | 11:37 minutes | Canada

This stunning otherworldly short film takes a deep dive into lichen, a species that confounds scientists to this day. Shot in macro 3D, Lichen offers us a look at this remarkable life form and asks what we might learn from it. Ancient and diverse, both an individual and a community, lichens can live in the most extreme environments, including outer space. This meditative film bridges science and philosophy, and the words of lichenologist Trevor Goward illuminate the terrain in poetic and thought-provoking ways.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

​​Lisa Jackson’s work has screened at SXSW, Berlinale, Hotdocs, Tribeca and London BFI, and aired widely on television. Her IMAX-shot short Lichen premiered at Sundance in 2020 and she’s made works ranging from VR to animation to a residential school musical. Indictment: The Crimes of Shelly Chartier won the 2017 imagineNATIVE Best Doc award and is one of the top watched docs on CBC. Her work has screened extensively in educational, community as well as museum and gallery settings.

WE’LL FIND YOU WHEN THE SUN GOES BLACK • Directed by ​​Anouk De Clercq

Experimental | 5:21 minutes | Belgium

Inspired by the Terella, a small magnetised model ball representing the Earth, used by scientists to investigate the aurora until the late 20th century. And by a Bertolt Brecht poem, written in exile in the 1930s: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing / About the dark times.” Music by Vessel.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Anouk De Clercq explores the potential of audiovisual language to create possible worlds. She is interested in what lies behind ‘reality’ or in between the visible and the imaginary. She has received several awards, including the Illy Prize at Art Brussels in 2005 and a Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention in 2014.Her work has been shown in Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, MAXXI, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Ars Electronica, among others.

AUGUST SKY • Directed by ​​Jasmin Tenucci

Narrative | 15 minutes | Brazil

As fires rage in the Amazon hundreds of miles away, a young nurse Lucia senses something rising in the air and begins to have doubts about her pregnancy. A reluctant favor to her ailing grandmother brings Lucia to a neo-Pentecostal church, where she becomes drawn by a charismatic young parisher and her faith.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Jasmin Tenucci is a brazilian filmmaker who has written, directed or produced films in Brazil, Iceland, Pakistan, and the United States. Her most recent short film, AUGUST SKY (2021), is a Cannes Short Film 2021 Official Selection. Previously she co-produced and associate directed the short film DARLING (2019) which won the Best Short Film prize at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. She has BA in film from São Paulo University and an MFA in writing and directing from Columbia University Film School. Presently, Jasmin is developing for two feature films: AUGUST SKY, based on her short of the same name; and THE SMALLEST WHALE IN THE WORLD, which won the 2017 Alfred P. Sloan Development Grant.

REBEL OBJECTS • Directed by Carolina Arias Ortiz

Documentary | 70 minutes | Costa Rica

Haunted by a long-broken relationship with her father, anthropologist Carolina Arias Ortiz returns to her childhood home of Costa Rica to repair their relationship while haunted by the otherworldly mystery of ancient stone spheres in this lyrical and poetic debut feature.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Carolina Arias Ortiz was born in Costa Rica, in 1987. At age 12, she migrated with her mother and sister to Brussels, Belgium. Her interest in understanding cultural differences led her to study anthropology, while her fascination with observing and listening to others piqued her interest in exploring cinema and audiovisual language. In 2010 she moved to Barcelona to study documentary film production, after which she returned to Latin America to work with various indigenous territories and women’s organizations. She currently lives in Costa Rica where she is working on her PhD in film and anthropology. She teaches courses in these subjects while developing documentary projects with her production company.

FLOWER BLOSSOMING IN OUR THROATS • Directed by ​​Eva Giolo

Experimental | 8:37 minutes | Belgium

Filmed in 16mm just after the lockdown caused by COVID-19, Flowers blooming in our throats is an intimate, poetic portrait of the fragile balances that govern everyday life in a domestic setting. The artist films a group of her friends in their own homes, performing various small actions in accordance with her instructions. Giolo chooses to walk a shifting line where gestures remain symbolically ambiguous, expressing a kind of violence that is not immediately recognizable. Hands try to support or escape, but also to grip or strike, in a subtle interweaving of sounds and references that adds to the viewer’s sense of tension and unease. A dialogue of gestures, made up of repeated visual sequences where time is marked by the spinning of a small toy top, as unstable and precarious as the balance of a relationship.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Eva Giolo is an artist working across film, video, and installation. Her work has been exhibited at Sadie Coles HQ in London, WIELS in Brussels, MAXXI in Rome, GEM in the Hague, BOZAR in Brussels, M HKA in Antwerp, Kunsthalle Wien, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence and major film festivals like Rotterdam, Viennale, FIDMarseille, Cinéma du Réel. She is a founding member of the production and distribution platform elephy.

AQUI • Directed by ​​Melina Kiyomi Coumas (Portland Filmmaker)

Experimental | 4:09 minutes | USA

Aquí is an experimental 16mm short film exploring what home means to a multicultural young woman living in Oregon.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Melina Kiyomi Coumas (she/her) is a multiracial experimental filmmaker and photographer from the island of O’ahu. Currently based in Portland, Oregon, she shoots work primarily on celluloid film formats exploring themes surrounding memory, identity, and perception. Her work has screened at the Portland International Film Festival, NW Film Forum’s Local Sightings Film Festival, Engauge Experimental Film Festival, and numerous other festivals both locally and internationally.

HEAR ME SOMETIMES • Directed by ​​Sofia Theodore-Pierce

Experimental | 14:14 minutes

The monarch migration and an unearthed cassette tape correspondence form a storm speaking towards motherhood, loss, expectation, care and legacy.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Sofia Theodore-Pierce is a filmmaker working with idiosyncratic and somatic storytelling to explore the spaces we inhabit, psychically and geographically. Her work has been exhibited at festivals and venues such as Antimatter Media Art, Alchemy Moving Image Festival, Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, ICDOCS, and FRACTO Berlin.

EVENING SUN • Directed by ​Allyson Yarrow Pierce

Experimental | 5:52 minutes | USA

Evening Sun is the tale of two young people adrift on a hot summer wind, stuck on a small Greek island with nothing but their thoughts and memories to entertain them. Nothing to do, no one to meet, only by the land and sea reflecting their feelings of the passing of time and the turning seasons of their lives. Because love, like an apple, flowers, fruits, and when untouched, goes to seed. Even in Eden, apples must fall from trees.

SOUVENIR • Directed by ​​Gossing & Sieckmann

Experimental | 20:50 | Germany/The Netherlands

SOUVENIR explores the deserted inside of contemporary 36-hour- mini cruise ferry ships between the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and the UK. As a low-budget replica of luxurious Caribbean cruises, the ship is in a constant state of transit, never arriving at a final destination. On board settings and décor bear reference to a European colonial history of seafaring and trade while the actual ocean remains distant - in surveillance monitors, the on-board cinema and panoramic window fronts. A female voiceover is composed out of different interviews with seamen’s widows, somewhere in between dialogue and inner monologue, circling around topics of distant love, memory, fury and a departure from society’s expectations. Starting from a documentary observation of the inside space, the limits of outer and inner reality become blurred over the course of the film. Single souvenirs as fetishized objects turn into a unified ornament as the point of view shifts from the individual to the collective. The film as a souvenir itself opens up memories of a colonial past, drawing a connection between the ship as the largest arsenal of imagination and the nautic space of the cinema.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

As a director duo, Miriam Gossing and Lina Sieckmann have produced several short films on 16-mm film, in which urban and private architecture, hyper-staged environment, subcultural individuals, and the notion of desire are examined – combining documentary imagery with fiction and found footage. Their works are characterised by the depth of research and contact with communities and individuals, as well as by the clear lines in their approach to architecture and the worlds which shape desire, fear, anxiety, and alienation. Their films have been awarded numerous grants and scholarships and are shown internationally on film festivals and in art institutions, among them International FilmFestival Rotterdam, Edinburgh International Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Anthology Film Archives New York City, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart Berlin, MoMa Antwerp, Julia Stoschek Collection)

ONE THOUSAND AND ONE ATTEMPTS TO BE AN OCEAN • Directed by ​​Yuyan Wang

Experimental | 11:30 | France

One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean reflects on the experience of not being able to see the world with depth perception. Made up of micro- events from "satisfying video" that swarm on the internet, the abstract narrative unfolds through an appropriation way by referring to trance and minimal music. It's about a desire for groundless waves, blended with today's inexorable entropy of our information societies.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Wang Yuyan (b. 1989, China) is a filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist living in Paris. She graduated from Le Fresnoy - National Studio of Contemporary Arts in 2020 and Beaux- Arts of Paris in 2016. She takes inspiration from the endless media production underpinned by industrial productivity. Her works oscillate between film and installation, often in an immersive perspective with a disintegrating abstraction process.

UNICORN HUNT • Directed by ​​Birgit Rathsmann

Experimental | USA

A group of twenty people gathered in a park in Brooklyn to hunt a Unicorn.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Birgit Rathsmann grew up in Germany and Indonesia. They are a filmmaker, animator and artist, connecting with audiences in galleries and cinemas. “Malpaso”, their recent collborative exhibition exhuming the history of a river valley beneath a reservoir in Chiapas (MX) was presented at The Clemente (NYC). “Room for Storms” turned satellite footage of hurricanes into a public cinematic event at the East River Band Shell, NYC and into a gallery exhibition at Alterna/Corriente in Mexico City. “October 18, 1977” was an exhibition created from 22 artists’responses to the jail death of the Baader Meinhof Group at Gasser/Grunert gallery (NY). Their documentary film about women martial arts heroes in films from Hong Kong played at film festivals and independent cinemas. Animations which they created in collaboration with a number of comedians including Lorelei Ramirez, Mary Houlihan, Tim Platt and Ikechukwu Ufomado have been screened on Comedy Central and at film festivals. They organized a series of public conversations at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, most recently “Four Dialogues About Artists, Audience and Community”.

AMAHUBO • Directed by ​​Buhlebezwe Siwani

Experimental | 11 minutes | South Africa

A video showcasing poetry titled 'Sizokhungwa Ngani?' written by FossilSoul in collaboration with Buhlebezwe Siwani for her project 'Amahubo'; commenting on land, religion and spirituality. The poem states how religious movement has stripped our spiritual selves from the sentiments of the life we inherited through the land of our ancestors. The poetry asks repeatedly how our spirits will be appeased.

ABOUT DIRECTOR

Buhlebezwe Siwani was raised in Johannesburg, due to the nomadic nature of her upbringing she has also lived in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu Natal. Siwani works predominantly in the medium of performance and installations, she includes photographic stills and videos of some performances. She uses the videos and the stills as a stand in for her body which is physically absent from the space. Siwani completed her BAFA(Hons) at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA at the Michealis School of Fine Arts in 2015. She has exhibited at the Michaelis Galleries in Cape Town, a site-specific exhibition in collaboration with APEX Art, New York City,Alexandra township, Commune 1, and Stevenson in Cape Town. She lives and works between Amsterdam and Cape Town.

CHRONICLES OF HER • Directed by Taghrid Abouelhassan, Maysoon Khaled, Rim Mejdi, Emna Najjar, Farah Shaer Jordan

Narrative | 105 min | Jordan

This anthology brings together five stories from five Arab countries, including Jordan, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt and Morocco, dealing with gender equality, equal access to education, decent working conditions, domestic violence, physical abuse, and discrimination against women.

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ABOUT DIRECTORS

Maysoon Hbaidi is a Jordanian film director and screenwriter. Her first short documentary "Sara" got selected at the Short Documentary Competition in Malmo Arab Film Festival and Palestine Cinema Days as well. Hbaidi is passionate about creating new perspectives and authentic narratives in the Arab cinema, which deal with social issues that reflect an honest point of view as filmmakers and members of society.

Emna Najjar is a filmmaker and journalist. She obtained a PhD. in Information and Communication Sciences from Sorbonne University in France. Her first short film, "Bitter Honey" (2014), was selected in the competition of Carthage Film festival JCC in Tunisia. Her second film, "Waltz of Dawn" (2018), has participated in several festivals. She is currently working on other scripts, documentaries, and series, and is also working on developing a feature film.

Taghrid Abdel Maksoud, an Egyptian screenwriter and director. Taghrid wants to tell the stories of the vibrant personalities and the culture where she comes from with an emphasis on women. She hopes to show never seen before female characters in her films and to inspire the viewers to have a better understanding and a more empathetic view of them. Taghrid is the writer/ director of Mercy Table one of the five combined films of the feature-length narrative film Chronicles of Her.

Farah Shaer is a Lebanese director, actress, and socio-political activist. Farahs debut short fiction film "I Offered You Pleasure" (2012) was selected at Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival and Busan Film Festival among others but got banned in Lebanon by the government. In 2015, she was awarded a full-ride scholarship to pursue an MFA in Film directing at UCLA. Farahs latest short film "Soukoon" was selected at acclaimed festivals such as Telluride Film Festival, Palm Springs film festival, CINEMED Film Festival among many others. She received several awards on her short films including the Motion Picture Association of America Award, James Bridges Award of an Outstanding Director, Delia Salvi Memorial Award for Directing the Actors, UCLA Directors Spotlight Award among others. She had also co-produced and acted in the Lebanese feature film Heaven Without People that won the Jury Prize at Dubai Film Festival (2017) among many other prizes in film festivals worldwide. Farah Shaer is currently in the script development writing stage of her debut fiction feature film.

Rim Mejdi was born in Marrakech, Morocco. She attended the School of Visual Arts Marrakech where she received a B.A and an M.A in film directing Out of town, her Masters' final study film, which was screened in several festivals: Locarno, Cairo International Film Festival, and Carthage Film Festival among many. In 2018, she co-founded Tifaw Films with Nabil Merrouch and produced his short Jayeen. In 2019, she directed Childrens Game produced by Nabil Merrouch. She is currently developing Plum Season, her first feature fiction film. She co-founded, with Nabil Merrouch, SAAED Meetings, a new platform for Arab emerging filmmakers.