Playlist
<p>Every day, a father and his son jump with a parachute from their vertiginous cold house, attached to a cliff, to go to the village on the ground, far away where they sell the ice they produce daily.</p>
<p>Nestor, a man with a series of obsessive-compulsive behaviours, lives in an unstable boathouse that never stops swaying.</p>
<p>A pianist lives in a big city. Comfortable with his anonymity, and isolated from society in his flat in a communal residential building, he suffers from agoraphobia, a type of anxiety which stops him from socializing with people. When his medication runs out, he must leave the house and face his most irrational fears, but slowly he realises he’s not completely alone.</p>
<p>A father says goodbye to daughter and leaves. Just as the vast Dutch landscapes live out their seasons, the girl lives out hers. She becomes a young woman, has a family, and, as time goes by, she ages, but inside there’s always a deep longing for her father and a desire for a reunion.</p>
<p>The spectator is placed in the point of view of Frankenstein’s monster, who wakes up in a lab and makes his way through an alienating series of rooms, to an unknown end. An image is slowly built, to the rhythm of his pace, and ends with the meeting of a monster and his bride.</p>
<p>After arriving in heaven, Jerome goes on a search for his wife Maryline. In his search, he dives into a surreal and colourful world in which nobody seems to be able to help him.</p>
<p>Two secret agents, Claé and Bruó, working for enemy kingdoms, are dispatched to the Enchanted Forest. Amid forgotten ruins, pyramids, gas mountains and floating-rock deserts, they discover they’re on the same mission: to save the Perlimps from the terrible Giants that have surrounded the Forest.</p>
<p>Lizzie, a young girl with a tremendous fear of the sea, wakes up in her worst nightmare: the deep, dark abyss. Her struggle to resurface will turn into her most incredible adventure.</p>
<p>A short cross-stitched story about friendship and treason between a birdie, a baby goat and a fox inspired by a folk proverb “a friend in need is friend indeed”.</p>
<p>The nuns live in the monastery in contentment and harmony, fused together. One of the nuns finds a man underground while digging potatoes. The nun begins to dream of the man, goes mad and loses a common rhythm with others.</p>
<p>Family values are the most significant in life, therefore The Great Spideress creates a first man and teaches him the meaning of life, that will help a man to build his own family.</p>
<p>Muscle Man, the world’s cleanest superhero, embarks on a thrilling battle against a giant robot determined to reduce the city to rubble, but his obsession with order could lead him to his downfall.</p>
<p>In the kingdom of Stinky Scabiouse Village, King Emmanuel 1st ruled spreading terror until the peasant Maxe inadvertently changes the course of History.</p>
<p>Catalan writer-director Laura Ferrés’s alternately tender, clever, and mysterious debut feature mixes realism with melodrama in the story of a fiftysomething casting director who unwittingly befriends the woman who gave birth to and abandoned her as a teenager.</p>
<p>At war with the unicorns, the teddy bear army seeks to recruit young ones to defend the safety of their people. With no military experience, brothers Azulín and Gordi are sent on a dangerous mission to save the Magic Forest after enlisting. Winner of the Goya Award for Best Animation and selected for various animation (Annecy) and fantasy film festivals (Sitges), “Unicorn Wars” is the second feature film directed by Alberto Vázquez.</p>
<p>An inner journey through the universe of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), particularly their inability to stay still or quiet, and the feeling that they are trapped within themselves, fighting against their own view of the world and what is expected of them. After winning the Take One! with “That’s How it Was” (2016), Joana Nogueira and Patrícia Rodrigues return to Curtas.</p>
<p>Pascal Rivière works for the newspaper Mistral. One day, he discovers his death announcement in the classified ads section. It reads: It is duly acknowledged that Pascal will die at 45. For the last night of his existence, he finds himself at iNTELLIGENCE, a weird company which creates ghosts.</p>
<p>A mysterious community of animals has chosen to live self-sufficiently in the basement of a church. Sheltered from humans, they engage in various rituals.</p>
<p>After five years together, a young mixed race couple decide they want to get pregnant. Two years of efforts follow to make this work while trying to maintain the couple’s love and unity.</p>
<p>From his conception to his cinematographic death, this is the imaginary portrait of Polish director, Walerian Borowczyk, in a film that reveals a world which is as obscene as it is cruel. From Poland to Paris, the director goes on banal adventures, not apparently exciting, never forgetting to caress the erotic birds and the organic cameras in a phantasmagorical alphabet.</p>
<p>Fièvre, an enigmatic woman, collects dead animals in the wild. She brings them back to life through animated films. One day, a man comes to see Fièvre: his wife is dead…</p>
<p>According to an old English tale, Joan of Arc did not die in the fire. Her eyes were burnt with gun powder and she lost her virginity to a local man – ruining her perfect virginal reputation. As if she were a butcher, she was condemned to roam the battlefield looking for something that reminds her of life, looking for surviving female virgins.</p>
<p>An abandoned seaside resort and the end of a shoot for a fantasy film about the end of the world. Apocalypse and Joy, the actress and the director of the film, are on the verge of breaking off their relationship. To delay Apocalypse’s departure, Joy, the eldest of the two, tells her lover five dark stories about women who do not wish to get older. Five adventures, in which science fiction, vulgarity, necrophilia and poetry play an important role.</p>
<p>A son, his shy mother and unhappy grandmother share a desire for a different life to the one they have. They’re left to live them out in their dreams, fantasies or online. Diogo Costa Amarante’s impressive debut is a refreshing portrait of modern family life.</p>
<p>Little Pille goes to find her father’s missing socks under the bed, and discovers a fantastical world of forgotten things. There she finds that dad’s socks have laid an egg! Now Pille must protect the socks from danger until the tiny egg can hatch.</p>
<p>Alfonso, a young squirrel, always has his head in the clouds. He loves watching them and sometimes takes snapshots of them. His parents and friends find it hard to take his hobby seriously. But cloud-gazing is not always easy – Alfonso sometimes has to be as brave as some of the great explorers of our times.</p>
<p>This morning, Pompon is all shaken and excited: he had the dream of the Totem Tree! He has to go through the forest on his own and find the way to his very own tree. Eager to grow up, Pompon prepares for this enchanting initiatory journey.</p>
<p>Yuck! Kissing on the mouth is disgusting. But secretly, little Léo really wants to try it ...</p>
<p>In a fantastic medieval world, this animated drama features ogres, orcs, and witches with existential and romantic crises common to so-called normal humans. In addition to various selections, including in the International Competition at Curtas 2020, "Homeless Home" won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the prestigious Annecy festival.</p>
<p>Birdboy and Dinki lost their parents in a terrible environmental disaster that also devastated the island where they lived. Consumed by grief, Birdboy ends up living alone in the forest, while Dinki decides to embark on a dangerous journey in search of a better home. The first feature film by Alberto Vázquez (co-directed with Pedro Rivero), “Birdboy: The Forgotten Children” won the Goya Award for Best Animation and was selected for various international animation and horror film festivals.</p>
<p>Forgetful squirrel Ernst almost goes nuts looking for his meticulously hidden acorns. Only a shift in perspective can help him now.</p>
<p>This is the story of Liv, a girl with a big ribbon, and Bell, a colorful hedgehog, traveling in the flying house of Piggy, the inventor. Suddenly, one day, the flying house skyrockets and in no time at all, it's in outer space!</p>
<p>Once upon a time there was a little girl who was always distracted. With her eyes fixed on her phone, she couldn't notice the world around or who wanted to play with her.</p>
<p>"The Gramophone" is an animated short and joyful non-dialogue children's musical being part of the "Clawlolo" series for children that originated from the imagination of twin brothers from Hungary six years ago when they were just 10 years old.</p>
<p>Every morning, Boris the village baker makes a fresh batch of crusty bread and pastries for all his neighbours until… Achoo! He can’t stop sneezing. He has become allergic to flour. How will he manage to keep baking for everyone in the village?</p>
<p>The Animanimals want to do a big musical performance but somebody got the wrong notes.</p>
<p>This is the story of Jo, a curious but lonely child, and his discovery of the world through the senses, for the first time on his own, in a portrait of the desire for independence in contrast to the comfort and longing of home.</p>
<p>Ten people enter a room, knowing only that they are going to be interviewed, but without knowing the content. During their time in the isolated room, with only a microphone, a computer, a camera and the interviewer, they explore their past, present and future.</p>
<p>In a memorable event in her life, Violet begins to heal the emotional traumas formed in her childhood with the help of a supernatural entity. Is it real or something that emerges as a product of her consciousness?</p>
<p>After a tragic accident, Renato, tormented by the loss of his best friend and his inability to play the violin, plunges into a deep depression, withdrawing from his family and friends.</p>
<p>Ema is a young woman who suffers from insomnia. In order to eliminate them, she follows various pieces of advice and tries multiple methods to finally fall asleep. However, in her last attempt to fall asleep, the line between dream and reality merges, leading her to question what has been real up until that point.</p>
<p>A group of friends are invited to a party where Afonso meets his former love. After an excessive consumption of drugs, he plunges into a hallucinogenic journey, where he faces his greatest complexes.</p>
<p>In a world where art is no longer valued, the curator of a museum is preparing to close the doors of the institution. As she faces the reality of adulthood and the difficulties that come with it, she tries to find the magic, hope and freedom she felt as a child in order to face her uncertain future.</p>
<p>In Caxinas, Vila do Conde, there are new immigrants coming from Indonesia. They work in fishing, represent 75% of the workforce, and without them, most of the boats would come to a standstill. Whaludin is one of the 500 fishermen. They all dream of a better future. The sea is their home, livelihood and way of life.</p>
<p>In a boarding house in the Vila Húmus, lost in the outskirts of a swamp, people survive a dark time. The writer K. Maurício dives deep in his work "The Death of a Clown", becoming hostage of impossible dreams. Pita, a facilitator, juggles words and people, enjoying a cynical game with those around him. Between crimes and hallucinations, between the gothic of the night and the decadence of the arena runs a hopeless story, based on the works of Raul Brandão.</p>
<p>One of the works that is part of the miniature film series, each up to 3 minutes long, which Quaintance is continually producing. Exploring a formal or conceptual idea, the filmmaking process oscillates between fluidity and improvisation, intensity and heavy editing. By combining archival material and original DV footage from High 8, instead of 16mm, these pieces are characterized by a more agile and intuitive approach.</p>
<p>An exploration of repetitive patterns, intertwining original material with found and archival footage, to create a weave of intermittent images, telephone narratives and sequential sounds, whose rhythm is reminiscent of a machine. "Repetitions" is an exercise that relies on audiovisual repetition as much as on the recursive echoes of the obstacles, struggles, and vulnerabilities that still mark the body of the working class.</p>
<p>An open letter with over 300 verses written by Pedro Pietri, a Caribbean poet who emigrated to the USA in 1947. Following the lives of four immigrants with identical paths, this epic poem – furious, desolate, and hopeful – is an ode to the end of ostracization, exploitation, and death of ethnic-racial minorities, celebrating the Puerto Rican people and recalling their dreams.</p>
<p>The second work of “The A.I.D.S. Trilogy,” a set of three short films commenting on the context in which it emerged, the HIV crisis in America. Crossing segments of Jean Genet's film “Un Chant d’Amour” with explicit pornographic images, Tartaglia explores the dynamics of the observed and the observer, to create an almost-manifesto that embodies what was concealed, condemned, and suppressed by the hysteria of the stigma.</p>
<p>A spoken word piece by Pedro Pietri on the universal experience of a worker who simply doesn’t want to work. During the HIV crisis, Pietri created a series of object-poems typed on envelopes, each containing a condom. Titled “Telephone Booth,” Pietri distributed them on the streets of New York, emphasizing his role as a poet-activist.</p>
<p>Morgan Quaintance, winner of the 2020 New:Vision Award, returns to CPH:DOX with a new and evocative work that combines found footage, analogue 16mm and satellite imagery – not to mention loops and repeats – in an investigation of temporal processes from two radically different perspectives: the physical being of the body and the planetary, geological conditions. Change and dissolution pave the way for new becomings in ‘Efforts of Nature’, which with a rhythmic and almost pulsating force insists on perception itself as a medium for new and transcendent insights. In a short period of time and with a number of striking film and video works, Quaintance has reached a unique level of abstraction, which here is allowed to reach new and dizzying heights.</p>
<p>Views of a trip through the country, and the unconscious. Scattered in textured, solarized, dragged enlargements and imbued with vaporous sounds, these are images that hand us over to the nostalgic memory of a journey that could have been ours.</p>
<p>A news segments from a false television program is used as an introduction to three short films that make up the “Barbarians Cycle” by Bertrand Mandico: “Rainer, A Vicious Dog in a Skull Valley”, “We Barbarians” e “The Last Cartoon”.</p>
<p>The end of the world and humanity seen through Mandico. “The Last Cartoon” is a film that questions cinema, its form, its future and its purpose, using authentic predictions (as well as absurd, pessimistic and optimistic ones) as a starting point. Organised in three distinctive parts, the film shows off tableaux vivants involved in moving images.</p>
<p>Octavia Foss wants to stage a female version of Conan the Barbarian in the theater. She makes a pact with a dog-headed demon to achieve her goals. This unnatural act will lead her and her troupe into a creative hell.</p>
<h6><span style="font-size:14px">On the set of a film in the making, four actresses take turns guiding us. They unknowingly drag us into their damnation.</span></h6>
<p>A man swims in the sea. As he does so, memories come flooding back. From his early childhood to his adult life, all the memories are connected to water. Some are happy, some glorious, some traumatic. This story will be the story of his last swim. It will take us from the source to the river – from the waters of childhood paddling pools to those of swimming baths, from a North African country to the shores of the Mediterranean, from Olympic stadia to reservoirs, from concentration camps to the paradise beaches of Réunion.</p>
<p>A contemporary revaluation of the religious festivities in the Azores, historically practiced exclusively by men. In this film, a group of women go on a pilgrimage around the Pico Island; on the way, one of them disappears, raising questions about their existence as individuals and as a collective of female bodies. They are bodies who walk, literally to break the bell jar of passivity, guided by action, ritual and resistance.</p>
<p>February 27, 1993, Strpci, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A passenger train traveling between Belgrade and Bar is stopped by paramilitary forces who, under the pretext of checking identification documents, are conducting an ethnic cleansing operation. Among the 500 passengers, only one man rebels against the illegal detention of innocent civilians. This is the true story of a man who could not remain silent.</p>
<p>Mert, a 30-year-old male, is employed at an abandoned-looking amusement park. He is grappling with an internal duality, while sensing a lurking identity bent on undermining him. Throughout the film, Mert interacts with various people and creatures, struggling to understand what's going wrong with his mental health. Despite his persistent pursuit of answers, Mert confronts a daunting struggle to delve into the depths of his psyche, hindered by a hesitancy to fully confront the mysteries within.</p>
<p>Men of many ages gather in a featureless room. We don't know much about them nor whether it is day or night. Only some signs spread out along the footage will allow us to learn something about their particular circumstances.</p>
<p>Sylvia Plath, American poet, travels back in time and befriends Belén Esteban, current Spanish TV celebrity. Two famous and antagonistic women from different eras, but both wrote that they were once happy in Benidorm.</p>
<p>Spending her summer in Mallorca, Antonia comes to recognize the latent similarities between her and her dead grandmother and discovers a power over her mourning grandfather. She can’t resist playing dress-up, but it becomes unclear who is inhabiting who.</p>
<p>The road holds a promise of freedom. In this 16 mm short it acts a form, metaphor and a cinematic mythology as a phantasmagorical mixtape about being and becoming a truck driver unfolds. Two parallel stories share a drivers cabin in this film. A truck driver shares his thoughts of being a trucker while playing music from different corners of the world; cliché, romantic, rowdy music. The other story breaks in, a driving teacher instructs someone on how to drive a truck. The two stories intertwine, the truck driver turns out to also be an artist, while the artist becomes a trucker. Day light shifts over into pink sunset. Somewhere between fantasy and reality emerges a haunted hill with a ghost fox as the truck descends into darkness.</p>
<p>When three sisters and their parents trade a safe and predictable life in Norway for the new uncertainties of vibrant 1970s Nairobi, Kenya, this family's life undergoes a complete transformation. This is also the story of someone who, in their formative teenage years and growing up in a loving family, suddenly finds herself grappling with the strong pull of individual needs. This is the third film by Torill Kove at Curtas, an Academy Award-winning director in 2007.</p>
<p>While spending the holidays at his grandparents' house in the countryside, a boy learns a cruel lesson in mercy. A regular presence at Curtas, Mário Macedo has already won the Best Director Award in the Portuguese Competition with “Skin River” (2021).</p>
<p>During a heatwave, an older businessman entertains two colleagues in his living room with an endless story, while his grown-up children seem to succumb to madness. As the story drags on, despite constant interruptions and the suffocating heat, the two guests realize they are trapped in what becomes a family confrontation of absurd and unpleasant proportions. A surreal and absurd black comedy, featuring original music by Todd Terje.</p>
<p>New York, 1995. The members of a dysfunctional vampire family are trying to reconcile with each other following the death of their father Dracula, murdered by Dr Van Helsing. Meanwhile, they are pursued by him and his unfortunate nephew. An ultra-stylised, post-modern vampire tale that brings the forces of love and the forces of destruction face to face in New York, the contemporary battleground for the eternal confrontation of vampire stories.</p>
<p>The world is a wonderful stage, but the casting is deplorable.</p>
<p>Moffy and Gregorio are two teddy bear brothers who venture into the forest to hunt unicorns, their favorite prey. Unicorns have a soft and delicious blueberry-flavored blood, essential for the bears to stay beautiful. "Unicorn Blood" has been selected for various prestigious international festivals and was awarded Best Experimental Short in Chicago.</p>
<p>Second animated short film by Alberto Vázquez, "Ramiro, Dirty Rat" is a surprisingly violent and brief short film (approximately half a minute) about the anxieties of a rat who is determinedly struggling to control his impulses.</p>
<p>Little Dinki begins a new day on her way to school with her beloved father, but a terrible nuclear accident will forever change life on the island where they live. Now, Dinki's fate may depend on the wings of her eccentric friend Birdboy, a rootless and introverted bird-boy who hides in the forest, abandoned to his fantasies. Co-directed with Pedro Rivero, "Birdboy" was selected for Annecy and distinguished as Best Animated Short at the Chicago festival and the Goya Awards.</p>
<p>Living Flesh is a visual journey that explores the limits of matter itself, leading us to question the extent to which the body belongs to us.</p>
<p>When an abandoned house is about to be demolished, a family confronts the space and the memories of what they once lived in. Houses can be demolished, but the memories that live in them cannot.</p>
<p>In a remote rural area, a woman on the run has a supernatural encounter surrounded by enigmatic sounds. As she immerses herself in that reality, she is confronted with unexpected phenomena that her rational mind cannot understand.</p>
<p>This is the journey of a young adult lost between the confusion and wonder of a new moment in his life. "Driving Nowhere" is, in essence, a road movie that explores the synergy of music and dance, resonating with emotions of alienation and challenge.</p>
<p>As Beatriz prepares to perform for the first time in the choir of the Catholic school she attends, she realizes that her body is changing. The journey she is about to embark on shows her that her body is more than just an instrument.</p>
<p>The seemingly extraterrestrial camera eye floats upside down through a palm grove planted in a strictly rectilinear manner. Nature is literally upside down and existing in an artificial order as a business game. Only at the crescendo of the strange, vibrantly smoldering soundtrack by Jung an Tagen does the gaze slowly turn clockwise. Then, cut: quietness, open space.</p> <p>At some point the logo “Valley Pride” can be read in the middle of the California desert, on oversized corrugated iron sheets, designating one of the most important commercial areas of US industrial agriculture. It’s an inhospitable place, whose increasingly bizarre unnaturalness is conveyed through Lukas Marxt’s unmistakable approach. Visually stunning, the monocultural agrarian symmetry and its ballet of irrigation testify to man’s self-extinction in the service of constant profit orientation – even if the necessarily anonymous workers return to the picture in this, Marxt’s fourth visual examination of the Imperial Valley.<br /> more: https://www.sixpackfilm.com/en/catalogue/2886/</p>
<p>Jonathas de Andrade, a Brazilian artist whose work revolves around social issues, engages in a dialogue between fiction and reality, tradition and negotiation with local communities. In this film, he proposes a reflection on generational changes, exploring the relationship between humans and pigeons. In front of the camera, pigeon fanciers and birds interact before the apotheotic moment of release.</p>
<p>Santiago in the shimmering summer heat. High-res images undergo a digital zoom which transforms spaces into surfaces and houses into textures. In between, there are the small gestures of everyday urban life. And two women in search of a place for their love.</p>
<p>Hormones pulsate to the rhythm of fourth-period marching band practice. Cheer for the boys! Stay upbeat! Feel the rush of desire! Breathe the rage in deep. Make sure you aren't late for the bell or he might make you stay after school, alone together. These are the lurking aggressions in Teen Girl Fantasy. But whose fantasy was it anyway?</p>
<p>Using 3D animation, English artist Nicolas Gebbe transports us to the artificial dream world inhabited by two families whose apparent harmony we see fade during a trip on a luxury cruise. Encounters and misunderstandings unfold under a façade of comfort where reality emerges, in a satire on the stereotypical relationships and hollow aspirations fueled by capitalism.</p>
<p>A poetic story of female sexuality through ages.</p>
<p>Having lost his glasses, a boy can only focus on one thing at a time. As his vision is drawn to the sounds around him, he will have to explore a blurry world of unfamiliar places and strange characters. Directed by Nicolai Troshinsky, a Russian-born filmmaker trained at the prestigious La Poudrière (France), "Astigmatismo" has been widely showcased, featuring in festivals such as Sundance, Annecy, and Sitges.</p>
<p>One winter morning, a girl went out in search of firewood. As she ventured away from home, she came across a trail of blood and decided to follow it. With a raw and somber atmosphere inspired by the Spanish Civil War, "Zepo" was directed by César Díaz Meléndez, an animator with extensive experience as a director and collaborator on projects by Charlie Kaufman and Tim Burton.</p>
<p>Every night, a boy watches his father unloading a cargo of smuggled tobacco. One night, something out of the ordinary happens… "Soy una tumba" is a Spanish expression meaning that someone will keep a secret until they die. Khris Cembe is a longtime collaborator of Alberto Vázquez.</p>
<p>In his thirties and still living with his mother, a taciturn and tormented man has definitively lost touch with reality. One night, alone, he decides to free himself from his inner demons. Co-directed by Carla Pereira and Juanfran Jacinto, "Metamorphosis" has been featured in various international festivals.</p>
<p>An elderly businessman who evades taxes but practices philanthropy has a very peculiar way of thinking about solidarity. To gain popularity, he dedicates himself to creating problems for people so that he can help them. Combining technical skills with experimentation, director Genís Rigol Alzola develops impressionistic atmospheres.</p>
<p>José is a teenage pig living in a Spanish town, and he is the only pig in his family. One day, a new neighbor moves into the house next door, and José begins to understand who he really is. "Jamon" is a traditional animation film with backgrounds created using screen printing, produced at the National Film and Television School.</p>
<p>The screams and anguish of a cursed B-horror movie, shot in the late 1980s and never seen until now, creep through the streets of Andorra, creating a rift between the present and the past of cinema in the country. When the avenues are empty and the commercial fervor wanes, the question remains: can a country that is also a huge holiday resort become the ideal setting for a horror story?</p>
<p>Marguerite, still a child, experiences a triple mourning: the death of her mother at birth, the imminent death of her dog, and shortly after, the abrupt dismissal of her nanny, Barbe. Her childhood is built around great loneliness, having only animals and nature as companions. But under the watchful eye of a demanding father, immersed in classical culture, Marguerite finds solace in nature and prepares herself to become a writer.</p>
<p>Lourdes and Lana met telepathically using “sensory pills”, a technology that allows access to other people’s sensations from a distance. After months of relationship, Lourdes decides to visit the country house of her parents, Vicente and Carl, and introduce them to her girlfriend.</p>
<p>A suburb in Southern California comes together to create a community and heal from loss.</p>
<p>RIP, Rollostraat 18 and Sixth Form Acid are all part of a series of ‘miniature’ films that Quaintance is continually producing. These short films are all under three minutes long and allow the filmmaker to explore a single formal or conceptual idea. The process of realisation can either be loose and improvisatory or time intensive and heavily edited. Each of the films uses either archival material, or footage Quaintance has shot using a DV of High 8 video camera. Using these mediums, instead of 16mm, allows for quicker production and a more intuitive approach. ×</p>
<p>A voice-over by American psychologist Timothy Leary professes that psychedelic drugs trigger the expansion of consciousness. Meanwhile, the subtitles we read tell us about a teenager from 1990s South London who spends acid-infused weekends with a friend. Following both perspectives simultaneously is a mind-twisting exercise, but Morgan Quaintance’s seamless editing evokes that firm feeling when a connection is established between two people. But just like hallucinations, teenage friendships feel like they’ll last forever but rarely do.</p> <p> </p>
<p>The ‘Miniatures’ are an ongoing series of compact films Morgan Quaintance is continually producing. These short shorts are all under four minutes long and allow Quaintance to explore a single formal or conceptual idea. The process of realisation can either be loose and improvisatory or time intensive and heavily edited. Each of the films uses either archival material, or footage Quaintance has shot using a DV of High 8 video camera. Using these mediums, instead of 16mm, allows for quicker production and a more intuitive approach.</p>
<p>Rescued from the author's personal archive, this journey to Morgan Quaintance's bedroom at the age of nineteen traces a connection of past concerns, alive in the present. The decoration on the walls blends with the call of an expert in the divinatory practice of numerology.</p>
<p>By combining film footage, Google Street View, and VHS, Quaintance connects antiracist and antiauthoritarian liberation movements in South London and the South Side of Chicago with his own biography, symbolically referencing the regression of the Global South. A reflection on the potential of empowerment and mobilization, personal and community-based, sociopolitical and artistic, that contemplates the fading of these voices.</p>
<p>James Cleveland, gospel singer and musician, is the protagonist in this new gesture of music appreciation in Quaintance's cinema. The artist's preceding speech before launching into Breath On Me resonates over his almost frozen portrait.</p>
<p>Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to live in her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life.</p>
<p>A group of passengers cross a river on a small ferry. Fog, laughter, whispers and faces inhabit a floating, suspended space. Time passes, the shore is now closer and people prepare for another part of their journey. <strong>Aqueronte</strong> summons the essence of cinema to transport us to unreal spaces where life is crystallised in a changing landscape of light and shadow. In this cinematic trip, Manuel Muñoz Rivas reaffirms the fabulating power of moving images.</p>
<p>Driven by their desire for light and warmth, British teenagers take a trip to the Balearic Islands. They must absorb the sun and store it in their bodies to take it back to their cloud-covered kingdom. A surreal film about the real phenomenon of “balconing” which, in recent summers, has led to tragic, self-inflicted accidents particularly among young people travelling to Spain.</p>
<p>In northern Colombia, a group of queer activists use their extravagance to denounce the disastrous exploitation of the largest coal mine in Colombia through performative actions.</p>
<p>Weekend trips, city breaks, a detour into nature or once around the world. Barely a few days off, you're already gone. Never before has the desire to travel been so widespread and visited places so overloaded. What do we get out of it, other than the picture proof that we have been there?</p>
<p>On a sleepless night, Emília recalls a major trauma from her childhood. Amid vivid memories, she visits her parents, her sister, Manuel, and all the places of her solitude. A regular presence at Curtas as a director and producer, Luís Costa has already won the Audience Award in the Portuguese Competition with “Our Kingdom” (2020).</p>
<p>In the final days of summer, a young ornithology student is about to leave the rural area where he has spent the past few months monitoring a bird population. Before leaving, he enters the forest with a friend to remove the markers that delineate his study area. As night falls, the walk through the woods becomes a farewell enveloped in memories and silences that surpass words.</p>
<p>With the sea and an urban Algarve as backdrop, we follow the complete life cycle of a special mollusk called percebes. From its formation to the plate, we traverse different contexts that allow us to better understand this region and those who live here. Alexandra Ramires returns to Curtas after winning the Best Animation Award in the International Competition with “Tie” (2020).</p>
<p>An essay matching different acts of resistance and revolutionary struggle from the 20s to the present day. An alternative map of Manhattan that resembles Sebald's novels.</p>
<p>When New York con man Bill is betrayed by his mistress, he runs out of money. With few options left, he decides to meet up with his brother Dennis, a recent philosophy graduate. When they suddenly discover that their father, a professional gambler turned terrorist and long-time fugitive, may be in hiding, they embark on a journey to find him. While searching for their father, they confront their expectations of each other, of themselves and their attitudes towards women.</p>
<p>The film is a portrait of the director's father facing the end of his family business. Pere Ferrés is 53 years old and owns a bus company. Lack of money forces him to drive clients who destroy his vehicle to bachelor parties, but he is not prepared to lose his dignity.</p>
<p>The reality that surrounds us is an intense and increasingly dense sensory repetition. In this film, synchronisation and desynchronisation alternate in a mesmerising way, in a textural atmosphere.</p>
<p>Luam is a young man who has recently moved from the north-east of Brazil to São Paulo and finds himself alienated in his new life, facing expectations and disappointments while dealing with his goals.</p>
<p>In a rural periphery in the midst of transformation, agricultural machines devastate the fields and the places are haunted by an eternal gloom. Out of the flames, the bells are reborn, invoking the presence of the community.</p>
<p>The first experience of grief is hard to forget. With the death of his uncle, Alexandre tries to find ways to deal with his pain.</p>
<p>Teresa, a single mother, spends a day at the beach with her six-year-old son, Benji, and her sister Marga, who is back in Portugal for a summer vacation. What could have been a happy family day turns uncomfortable with Marga's constant critical comments about Benji.</p>
<p>Today, in Lebanon, power cuts are not an event, they are a new state. Even the national museum is often deprived of electricity. But visitors want to see, despite everything. Armed with their phones, they come to visit the traces of past civilisations as their world crumbles. And so, in the darkness, shadows appear and things organise themselves differently, strangely…</p>
<p>Here, where even monsters are political, the topography has its own memory. It has the mythological blues. Meanwhile, old gods are upset with us, and I am upset with my father.</p>
<p>Ainá Xisto, a Brazilian filmmaker and visual artist, shows us through her creation life as metamorphosis, as the possibility of transmutation or new ways of saying ‘I’. Amidst dreamlike 16mm landscapes, we approach a magical reality inhabited by real stories and characters, open to dialogue and to the other, in a more-than-human relationship.</p>
<p>Terminal Island is a portrait of Paradise Lost. Los Angeles, California is a place of immense beauty and a perfect climate, but it is also a nexus for ecological dread. Smoggy skylines, overdevelopment and the dying off of the iconic (and invasive) LA palm tree are some of the clues that Tinseltown is in trouble.</p>
<p>The director continues his mission to explore and push the boundaries of our sensory perception in new and surprising ways. In The Electric Kiss algorithmically generated images are harmoniously paired with a tantalising score by Jung An Tagen.</p>
<p>Loosely adapted from the tale “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” by Edgar Allan Poe, this film is a psychedelic profusion of artificial sets, feverish colours and bizarre waxwork. Terence Stamp stars as an alcoholic Shakespearian actor who arrives in Rome to do a “catholic western”, only to be haunted by surreal visions that lead to a night drive on a motorway to hell.</p>
<p>A dream-like portrait of a hangover after a decadent party. In an inebriated and extremist artistic scene in late 70s Japan, the director Shuji Terayama created a series of unforgettable and highly controversial short films. This short film is a part of the “Terayama's Experimental Image World” collection.</p>
<p>Using unseen footage of the film “Le Navire Night”, Duras traces a travelling shot through the streets of Paris, from the Bastille to the Champs-Élysées. The blue tones of early morning contrast with the urban tinge of traffic lights, cars and buildings. The colours extend themselves to the memories of millenarian hands which fascinate de the director as the carry with them the silent human condition – the passing of time.</p>
<p>A girl is strolling through the fields when a Japanese river otter catches up with her. The two try in vain to communicate while all the junk of humanity rains down around them.</p>
<p>A dialogue between a healer and the spirit of a man who died during the Massacre of 1953, committed by the Portuguese colonial government in São Tomé e Príncipe, which led to the creation of the Fernão Dias concentration camp, where prisoners were tortured and thrown into the sea. This is Sofia Borges's debut at Curtas, with a collaborative film involving actors, survivors, and family members of massacre victims.</p>
<p>This story of the relationship between father and son on the shores of the Bering Sea raises questions about generational patterns of education, questioning whether it's possible to raise a courageous human being not through strength, even when circumstances demand it, but through the gentle power of love that, by breaking patterns, creates an even more powerful inner strength.</p>
<p>In a continuous travelling, one cautiously advances towards the city, navigating through dim lights and neons that pierce an unusual night. The darkness hints at dreamlike moments that gradually materialize into staged elements and fanciful visions of a roadside landscape.</p>
<p>A vivid portrait narrated by its central figure, Barbara Samuels. A polymath, artist, Jamaican immigrant in the United Kingdom, and mother of Morgan Quaintance. Among family albums and drawings from her youth, accounts of the early years of the diasporic experience in an inhospitable London society emerge, and in an intimate tone, stories of personal liberation and artistic self-realization are recalled.</p>
<p>Between the studio and the living room in Paris, Torben Glarbo takes us on a visit to the Danish sculptor Sonja Ferlov Mancoba and her husband, the African painter Ernest Mancoba. This is a film-portrait focused on a figure who made a significant impact on Danish art history with her biomorphic and semi-abstract sculptures, rooted in processual spontaneity, found materials, and African art.</p>
<p>The construction of identity is explored in its inevitable link to memory, both innate and manipulated. Amid frequent dissonances between form and content, image and sound, "Missing Time" intertwines alien abductions, medical hypnosis, war, colonization and concealed histories to investigate the phenomenon of amnesia, whether unconscious or engineered, at the level of the individual or an entire nation.</p>
<p>An improvisation by dancer Cynthia Loemij to the sound of Eugène Ysaÿe's 3 sonatas for solo violin. In a continuous sway, Boer follows the body's movements until interrupted by the physical limit of a 16mm film reel, which lasts three minutes. Left in the dark but guided by sounds, the viewer is challenged - just like the dancer - to fill the empty spaces in an expansive exercise of memory.</p>
<p>Five teenagers commit a savage crime for which they’re incarcerated on a ship by a Dutch captain. Stuck on a cruise trip which becomes increasingly repressive, they rebel and arrive on an island with exotic plants and hidden pleasures. Mandico’s first feature film, “The Wild Boys” premiered at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics Week, having been elected as the year’s best film by Cahiers du Cinema.</p>
<p>As she ages, Oma's perception begins to change. Feeling that her mother can no longer live alone, a woman returns to her childhood home. While trying to adapt to their new situation, her mother seems to withdraw further into herself. Maria Trigo Teixeira makes her debut at Curtas with an animation that premiered worldwide at the prestigious Annecy festival.</p>
<p>After the fall of communism in 1989, colour TVs are no longer a luxury good in Poland. The screens in many Polish homes are beginning to look more like the reality outside the window. But is reality truly colourful?</p>
<p>Sometime in the 70s, a big family goes on holiday to hunt. One day, at dawn, a boy pays Clarinha a visit. They have sex, her mother walks in on them, the boy runs away, walks around naked, can’t leave the house. As if by magic, the doors are always locked, there’s always someone lurking in the corridor. The day goes by, the sun sets. The boy observes the family’s indolence, their fights, the crying between the cousins, the laughter between aunties. Can he leave? Can they?</p>
<p>Father and son are on their way to the airport to pick up a package from abroad. Amidst the numerous bureaucratic obstacles that arise during the journey, hope for real political and social changes in their country, Kosovo, fades away. They are left to find comfort and strength in the optimism they share about the future.</p>
<p>After many years spent experimenting with arcane, home-built electronic devices, the Portuguese musician returns to his guitar for a gorgeous ambient suite informed by drone music and vintage jazz.</p>
<p>In a mysterious tropical forest, an enigmatic figure appears who questions love and sensuality shrouded in pain.</p>
<p>Through the archives of French television, "Black Oyster" embarks on a journey to the jungles of Guinea-Bissau during the intense conflicts of the Portuguese Colonial War. It is a visceral testament to the brutal and unknown reality of war, highlighting the overwhelming pressure, violence, and psychological horror that Portuguese and Guinean soldiers were subjected to.</p>
<p>The decision to shut down Northern Portugal's largest oil refinery was highly contentious. This documentary delves into the reasons behind the shutdown and its implications for the climate crisis. Through a dialogue with ChatGPT, it offers a compelling examination of sustainability, the shift to green energy, and the future of our planet.</p>
<p>Zito is a young political prisoner whose family does not know his whereabouts. On the eve of a visit from Muxima's wife, an older prisoner, Zito tries to convince him to send a message to the outside.</p>
<h6><span style="font-size:14px">In a Germany in the not too distant future, queer people have become even more marginalized and under threat. On the last day of winter, Omar is released from prison and, unannounced, visits Ava.</span></h6>
<p>One of the leading names in experimental cinema, who has shaped the history and identity of Curtas, Austrian director Siegfried A. Fruhauf invites us on a twelve-minute dive into a dense and hypnotic ‘lunar sea’. Images and sounds crackle on the surface of the screen, taking us on an impactful sensory journey to times and places that seem both near and distant.</p>
<p>The Serra da Gardunha mountain range in central Portugal has long been associated with the unexplained. Over the years, alleged visions of saintly apparitions have given way to alien sightings, with witnesses reporting mysterious lights in the sky and rumours circulating that a UFO hangar lies hidden beneath the craggy rocks. Meanwhile, two friends speculate over the extent of the mountain’s power as they discuss whether its spirits might be able to offer relief to their old and heavily pregnant cat. In dreamlike 16mm, Alice dos Reis weaves together a beguiling and eerie portrait of a landscape imbued with unknowable magic.</p>
<p>The found fragments of exile bring life to an unfinished film started by a Brazilian artist who lived in Los Angeles. Working under a pseudonym, the unknown filmmaker lingers on absences, empty landscapes and disembodied voices. These visual vacancies act as apparitions of a distant Brazil wrought by US Imperialism and military dictatorship. An unfinished piece, the film portrays the lingering fragments of work as dispersed as the diasporic maker.</p>
<p>The first release by Little Egypt Collective stages a sound recordist reconnecting with the flat fields where once stood Pyramid Courts – the housing projects that formed the heart of the Black community of the Little Egypt region of southern Illinois.</p>
<p>Charline Dally, a Canadian artist whose multidisciplinary practice creates ambiguous spatialities, bridging the body and the environment, invites us in this film to probe small particles of meteorites, the terrain of an intriguing investigation into the origin of stars. Their irregular morphology unveils a mineral script that researchers are trying to decipher, until it mysteriously appears to come to life.</p>
<p>Earth has been abandoned long time now and the human race has found refuge in outer space. Three archeologists return to Earth to investigate where a mysterious five tone signal is coming from...</p>
<p>In Lesvos island an old abandoned dump lies on a mountain with two big craters. The craters are overflown by thousands of life jackets from the refugee waves. A worker is the only inhabitant in this place that resembles an alien planet or a new continent.</p>
<p>Advertising on outdoor panels was recently outlawed in Greece. As a consequence, there are now hundreds of blank panels that don’t carry a single message. But the empty images are the new message. And we’re not a part of that image.</p>
<p>Several types of people line up in seven different queues. The first person of each queue becomes the last of the next one, thus creating a massive human queue. But at the end of the queue, everything begins from back to front again.</p>
<p>A few weeks before the start of Euro 2004, Francisco, a twelve-year-old teenager, gets a new mobile phone, the first of his generation to have MP3. With it, Francisco will finally be able to impress Rita, the girl he is in love with. But on that day at the beach, Francisco will find out that his love is unrequited, while a chance encounter also goes unexpectedly. This film marks Frederico Mesquita’s debut as a director at Curtas.</p>
<p>The owner of a new architecture studio and his team join an irreverent and unusual team-building activity. The event goes wrong, and the architect is confronted with the harsh reality of the housing crisis in the social housing neighborhood undergoing gentrification. This is the national premiere of the film that earned Daniel Soares an honorable mention in the official short film selection at Cannes.</p>
<p>Mature women talk about their wedding, their first time, their intimate relationship with sex. In repeating these age-old rituals, the director questions her own condition as an unmarried woman with no children, and therefore the end of a mother-daughter chain-relationship.</p>
<p>Jean kills. He meets Claire, a virgin. Claire loves Jean. Through Jean's gestures, she recognises his clumsiness, his brutality, she recognises what obscurely keeps her out of the world. Stricken until then with despair, the despair of a life unlived, this encounter brings her back into the light. It's a tale. Love is what saves us, even if it is lost, lost at first sight.</p>
<p>Based on Haruki Murakami's novel of the same name, "Norwegian Wood" is a moving painting of saturated colors and sensitive compositions, set in Tokyo during the globally turbulent period of the late 1960s. This is a story of love(s), painfully tender, that follows a young university student and his encounters with infidelity, mental illness, loss, guilt, and tragic longing.</p>
<p>In a pandemic-era hospital, a robotic vacuum, bored by its repetition, decides to quit. Seeking a more meaningful existence, it ventures to a quiet Chinatown street. There, it encounters two solitary rabbits, each trapped in their own repetitive routines. As the vacuum befriends one of these characters, it finds a sense of community and begins to explore a broader purpose beyond its programmed tasks of cleaning. A dance ensues and for a time things are good. But all good things in life can't last.</p>
<p>Milazim, Fatmir and Liridon are veteran manual labourers who experienced accidents in their workplaces in Kosovo, Europe's youngest country. In this poetic experimental documentary tribute to a now almost extinct class of people, Ilir Hasanaj gives voice to gentle, sincere and dignified, but almost invisible individuals, who fell prey to harsh and primitive capitalistic machinery and policy in the Balkans. </p>
<p>João returns to the Alentejo village where he was born and here he reconnects with Sara and Manuel, old friends from teenage years whom life has separated. Gradually, between the past and present, memories of previous events that they might all prefer to forget resurface. This marks the return of Pedro Caldas to Curtas, where he has already won the Portuguese Competition twice, with “Application for a Job” (2000) and “Europa 2007” (2007).</p>
<p>Arnarstrapi, Iceland. In a cabaret, a female master of ceremonies seeks a final penetration as she’s performing an esoteric colonoscopy with a bizarre organic camera. The strange, sensorial and tangled atmosphere of “Prehistoric Cabaret” evokes the rebellious beauty of Terayama and the terminal melancholy of Fassbinder.</p>
<p>Two police officers interrupt a secret ceremony: a woman is gutted at the end of a garden to show her inner beauty. Presented in various forms, as to explore all possibilities, the sublime approach to the theme of absolute sincerity is explored through gore and levity. This film pays homage to New York’s 80s underground cinema.</p>
<p>In this first segment of the “loba trilogy”, an exploration of nature and the industrial, Rita Morais invites us to delve into the reminiscences of a gold mine excavated during the Roman Empire in El Bierzo, on the Iberian Peninsula. Accompanied by a small guide, we travel in 16mm through the labyrinthine forms that bear witness to the passage of time and human action on the ravaged landscape.</p>
<p><em>Quebrante</em> follows Ms. Erismar, a retired teacher and spelunker, as it traverses the caves, ruins, and phantasmagorias of the Trans-Amazonian Highway – still a fresh scar of the wrecked dream of Brazil’s history – portraying its stones and ghosts.</p>
<p>Eva Giolo, a Belgian artist whose work explores the possibilities of film, video, and installation, presents us in her second appearance at the festival with a lyrical portrait of Fogo Island in Canada, re-situating us in nature, in the act of observing and waiting, while we meditate on the relationships between our bodies and the landscape, consciousness, and the circular rhythm of time.</p>
<p>Often working with images from British state archives to reflect on imperial legacies, filmmaker Miranda Pennell, in her third appearance at the festival, takes us to Gaza in December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media raises questions about what it means to be a spectator. What we see and read, beyond the shapes and colors that document reality.</p>
<p>Throughout a night out in downtown Tijuana, Laura waits for her destiny to arrive.</p>
<p>Using a simple camera movement, “Downside Up” explores and revisits the potential relationships with the earth’s soil. The point of view continually orbits around places, objects, people and events. The observations accelerate gradually to reveal a two-faced ground that turns like a flipped coin and slows down again to oscillate around the earth’s extremities.</p>
<p>“Hommage à Beksinski” is a short film commissioned and produced by Anna and Piotr Dmochowski for the first exhibition, that lends the film its title, of the Works of Polish artist, Zdzisław Beksiński, in the Galerie Valmay in Paris.</p>
<p>An allegorical story about the relationship dynamic of two independent sisters and how it changes with the appearance of a stranger in their remote and carefully guarded house. One sister, Violet, is a disfigured writer that lives in a dark room, hidden from life. The other sister encourages Violet’s fear of life and is content taking care of her.</p>
<p>A young woman enters a house, a dark corridor in a thriller. As she forces her entry into an unknown place accompanied by the spectator, the processes of production of a film image begin to collapse. The rooms begin to mirror into each other, become out of focus, as the crackle of cutting and background noise – the noise of the film material – become louder and more piercing.</p>
<p>Paying homage to Georges de La Tour, Godard reproduces of the artist’s painting in a cinematographic tableau vivant. Filmed in 1981 and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, it was edited in 2006 in the context of the “Voyage(s) en utopies, Jean-Luc Godard, 1946-2006” exhibit and the Pompidou Centre.</p>
<p>The fragmented memories of a voyeur told in 3 chapters: “I grew up”, but I continue to fall; “The stalker”, who loses his foot; “Memory” and regression.</p>
<p>Mary, Billybud and Fumbleton are the stars of the 80s TV show <em>Wander to Wonder</em>. After their creator dies, they have to fend for themselves in the studio. As their hunger grows, the show becomes increasingly grim.<br /> <br /> This sinister stop-motion film – made with a remarkable attention to detail – was selected for the 2023 Venice Film Festival. Previously, filmmaker Nina Gantz made the animated short <strong><a href="https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2016/films/edmond" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Edmond</a></strong> (IFFR 2015), which won multiple awards – including a BAFTA.</p>
<p>Accompanied by two botanical guides, a group of hikers embarks on a journey through the enchanting landscapes of Arrábida Natural Park. As they traverse the park's diverse flora and fauna, they uncover evidence of a troubling transformation: rather than the work of nature, it becomes clear that human intervention is reshaping this once-pristine environment.</p>
<p>Archive and reenactment tell the story of resistance via television broadcast in 1980s Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Radiant Neurologist Katerina and Yannis, a former well-respected doctor, are heading off to a deserted seaside resort. Silence spreads in the car as they travel across sandy dunes in a windy autumn, matching the less-than-pleasant occasion: Yannis had been called to identify the victim of a tragic accident at the hospital of the small town. When the local policeman informs them that the victim’s vehicle had plunged over the parapet of a stone bridge and leads them to the morgue, Katerina sees her worst suspicions confirmed. Together with Yannis, but also on her own nightly excursions to a mysterious, rustic beach bar called Arcadia, they begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together, revealing a haunting story of love, loss, acceptance, and letting go.</p>
<p>A father is obsessed with a piece of wood and a businessman is looking for a lost hammer. Strangely, a baby tells us about the contradictions inherent in life. "The Final Nail in the Coffin", using a quirky and humorous style, constructs an insightful critique of society. (Catarina Pontes)</p>
<p>Lili is a 10-year-old girl who hangs out with boys a lot. In the summer, she was used to always swim without a bikini top, but this summer her mother is forcing her to wear one. This brings up a question... why does she have to cover her chest when the boys don't? (Carolina Oliveira)</p>
<p>In this short animation we follow Gigi, from a little mermaid in disquiet to the radiant woman she is today, in her difficult gender transition, presented in a humorous but also delicate way. (Renata Figueiredo)</p>
<p>"Raja" is a stop motion short film that tells the story of a little girl who, when overwhelmed by the powerful force of her shadows, finds a light. Thus begins her journey, taking her to a world between worlds, where she searches for something long lost: hope. (Pedro Nunes)</p>
<p>A short animated documentary exploring the immigration experience through the eyes of a little Israeli girl learning how to swim with clothes on in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>Leo and Diana, a wealthy couple, meet Salif and Yousef, two scrap dealers, at a recycle center. Offering them more junk, Diana invites them to their mansion, but the immigrants actually might be the ones with something she wants.</p>
<p>Cássia lives with her alcoholic father and his illegal fighting roosters. Between taking care of her father, driving his taxi to make a living, and tending to her favorite rooster, Cássia lives a life devoid of any hope. Gradually, she will try to free herself from what seems to be a life condemned to a spiral of familial subjugation. This film marks Rita M. Pestana’s debut as a director and her first participation in Curtas.</p>
<p>Embarking on a motorhome journey, a group of four friends share intimate conversations, confronting the complexity of the feminine universe in the 21st century. As time goes by, reality blurs with dreams, raising questions about the nature of their own existence. Margarida Vila-Nova returns to Curtas with this film, which features Madalena Brandão, Benedita Pereira, Mariana Norton, and Rita Silvestre.</p>
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<p>This video is the result of an audiovisual test where 5400 images were sequenced</p>
<p>Club Makumba was born from the union between Tó Trips (guitar), João Doce (drums), Gonçalo Prazeres (saxophone), and Gonçalo Leonardo (bass and double bass), for a free, spontaneous, experimental, and tribalist musical exercise.</p>
<p>Angolan director and screenwriter Pocas Pascoal reminds us that it's time for a change, proposing through this film a look at colonialism, capitalism and their impact on global biodiversity. We observe that the destruction of the ecosystem goes back a long way and is already underway through land exploitation, big game hunting and the exploitation of man by man.</p>
<p>In his third appearance at Curtas, multidisciplinary artist and American filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson takes us on a black-and-white film journey through Detroit Zoo, introducing us to Maya Perry, who speaks poetically about the return to nature of the crested toad, a species whose large golden eyes can only be found in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.</p>
<p>An imaginative film about the digestive process as a condition for our physical existence - and as a prism for an intellectual journey through the cultural history of the body.</p>
<p>A post-modernist stage adaptation of a Greek tragedy takes place in an Athenian theatre. Every night, the guests take their place and the play begins. Suddenly, the stage lights switch off. Seven young people with guns rise from the audience and storm the stage. They introduce themselves as the tragedy’s Choir and invite the audience members to participate on stage. Slowly, fiction and reality fuse together and the audience is left to question if this is all part of the play or not.</p>
<p>On a beautiful autumn day, in Montsouris Park in Paris, Jacques and Nathan are looking for interesting people to shoot their documentary. They chance upon Pierre and Martin, two odd dodos about to have an unusual experience.</p>
<p>Based on one of the tales from the Decameron, “The Convent Gardener” reflects the story of the young gardener Masetto and is told in two moments: a young man/woman who pretends to be mute to get a job as a gardener in a convent inhabited by various women/men. After its international premiere in Riga, this film marks Patrícia Neves Gomes’s first appearance at Curtas.</p>
<p>A talking crocodile is, in fact, Juan, an immigrant from Panama on his way to the United States, who was swallowed by it and survived. Feeling so comfortable inside the reptile, Juan decides to remain there forever, leaving Camila, his wife and companion, alone on an unpredictable journey northward. There, his daughter anxiously awaits their return.</p>
<p>The dawn light emerges in a pink sky overlooking towering apartment buildings. It’s the beginning of a 24-hour odyssey set at the heart of a social housing neighborhood in a Parisian suburb, following the lives of Yves, a Berlin artist in his early thirties, Hamza, a 14-year-old deaf boy, and Déborah, a lonely basketball coach, whose lives intersect without ever meeting each other.</p>
<h6><span style="font-size:18px">Traveling through the abyss, underworld demon Rainer recounts the six lives of Conann, perpetually put to death by her own future, across eras, myths and ages. From her childhood, a slave of Sanja and her barbarian horde, to her accession to the summits of cruelty at the doors of our world.</span></h6>
<p>A portrait of the life of Alma, a girl who wakes up every day with a different condition and undergoes physical changes. This condition reflects her state of mind. Alma drifts further and further away from those around her. Until one day, she notices that everyone suffers from the same condition, all with their own problems and difficulties. (Joana Meneses)</p>
<p>By living their days as if they were all the same, the workers in a company are compared to ants because, like ants, they only have one job - to work non-stop. At the start of another apparently normal working day, one of the workers realizes that something is different, that perhaps there is life outside that office. Will the workers be able to break free from their current state and find freedom? (Ana Martins)</p>
<p>Vibrant, colourful, hand-drawn animation in which a group of manta rays rise up against humankind.</p>
<p>In an attempt to sell strangely furnished houses with high rents, a real estate agent is confronted by the new and old residents of the city and by her own problems. (Eduarda Silva)</p>
<p>The story of a girl who flees her land, which is at war, and becomes a refugee - the kind of refugees that thousands of people find in Europe today in search of a safe home, the kind of refugees that thousands of people ignore in the Mediterranean. (Maria Gil)</p>
<p>Four kids from the refugee camp in Bethlehem decide to visit the sea for the first time in their lives.</p>
<p>A man wanders through an abandoned hospital. Years after their last encounter, someone whose life he saved seeks him out in his old office to try to compose a memory of their shared past. This is Margarida Assis’ directorial debut at Curtas.</p>
<p>Derya is pregnant, but she hasn’t had sex. As we gaze into her life, a housekeeper in the height of a dry summer, signs of the supernatural and the divine emerge, prompting us to question the true origin of her mysterious pregnancy.</p>
<p>Three brothers travel to Istanbul to undergo a hair transplant. Upon arrival, they hear the clinic can only accommodate one of them. As the tension between them rises, the group dynamics reveal their different personalities, along with their insecurities – which only seem to grow with age. A stop-motion film with a healthy dose of humour and a great deal of attention to detail.</p> <p><em>– Koen de Rooij</em></p>
<p>La Jetée, is a 1962 French science fiction featurette by Chris Marker. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel. It is 28 minutes long and shot in black and white.</p>
<p>After witnessing an old dark stormy cloud rain in pain and die in sorrow, Noma, a puffy white cloud realises that her daughter Mixtli, a dark stormy cloud, is in danger of raining prematurely.</p>
<p>R. D. Laing, the (anti)psychiatrist from Glasgow, was hard to ignore in the 1960s and 70s due to his radical stances on psychiatry and the way mental illness was socially perceived. Fowler interweaves archival footage of Laing – therapy sessions, colleagues, and critics – with his own film material, resulting in a collage as unconventional as the figure it portrays.</p>
<p>A former saboteur returns to work and a magician reveals all of his tricks. An action short film about the shared adventure of cinema and all of its special effects.</p>
<p>A recently retired father invites his son to help him with the cherry picking in the garden. The father is in no hurry to finish the cherry job though, as he tries to catch up with his son. The cherries remain in the background.</p>
<p>The giraffe is the animal with the biggest heart. The distance between its head and its heart is three meters, so the heart is big enough to send the blood all the way up. When the giraffe is lying down, its heartbeat touches the ground-it goes underground. All animals are tuned to the heartbeat of the giraffe. In the heart of the summer, in the midst of the tropical heat, the giraffe's heart is no longer heard, the animals are thrown into confusion. As they search for this beat, it is then that the strangest things happen.</p>
<p>Martina is a good immigrant. At least she has always done her best to be regarded as such in Germany. But then she meets young Dunja during a short vacation at Lake Starnberg. Dunja is self-confident, non-conformist and, above all, she stands by her Yugoslavian origins - unlike Martina. Suddenly, Martina is forced to confront a part of her identity that she has repressed all her life.</p>
<p>Carmen was born in 1935. As a child, she watched how they took members of her family away. After 14 years as a cloistered nun, she managed to get expelled from it. She promised herself to own her life. Today, she is 86 years old, and she is going to take a decision: Carmen is going to commit suicide.</p>
<p>From a fixed point of view, we witness a tense bus ride in Brussels, when Samuel – a Congolese immigrant – gets on to voice his discontent with Europe.</p>
<p>Barbara, a 30-year old single female, is the typical example of a modern woman: a “working girl” living in a fast lane. Barbara is completely hooked on her smartphone, but her routine is about change when a mysterious balloon, seemingly sent from the sky, floats into her life.</p>
<p>In an apartment located within a city on lockdown, a day spans from early spring until late summer. A couple is unable to find each other. While Alba searches inside the house for a feeling of optimism, Xavier escapes into the garden, where he minds his plants. There, he makes friends with a child, who awakens his spirit, but also his biggest ghosts.</p>
<p>Gala and Viktor are searching for their Heaven on Earth. Even during the war. That's why they buy an abandoned house in the Carpathian Mountains and start repairing it. It's a place of peace and calmness, where they can grow their own food, be silent, be defenseless, and drink coffee overlooking the mountains and a stork's nest. But winter comes, the apple tree in the yard freezes, and the War reaches Heaven.</p>
<p>A stigmatized character struggles with all aspects of his own frustration on his way to be transformed into a Pearl.</p>
<p>Claude Conseil lives with her husband in a house in the middle of the woods. She spends her time listening to birds. One day, mysterious phone calls break the calm of the forest.</p>
<p>An ethnographic exploration of the work and daily life of non-player characters, the digital extras in video games. Their labor loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.</p>