Short Joy

Silvan Skrivanic was the last inhabitant of a remote island in the Adriatic Sea, but even the traces of his existence are gradually disappearing – whether in the memories of others or in a landscape ravaged by a harsh climate. With the fading shadows of the human soul, it is as if life itself is disappearing from the island, leaving behind only the wind, the skeletons of animals and the inscriptions on the walls that have lost their meaning for others.“The traces of the last soul and the prints of its existence, the messages of a place where everything has disappeared.”

We all perceive poetry differently. For some, a poem is a rhyming text, for others a metaphysical experience. For director Kateřina Dudová, it is an experiment with three people who are close to her, whom she places in one room for three days, leaving them to their fate with the task of writing a poem. Sometimes the recording of real events is more poetic than the poem itself. “I was given the task of making a 'film poem', but I hate poems, so I'm looking for something… the feeling I want to get from poetry, how I feel. What is a poem?” – Kateřina Dudová

One of the qualities that is most ingrained in Eastern European culture is hospitality. Welcoming the guest, setting the table and making sure they return home full and satisfied. But what if a guest has dropped in uninvited and their hunger cannot be satisfied, no matter how hard we try? Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Tania Licheuskaya has been recording the first events at the Luninets air base in Belarus, and the black soup she cooks for uninvited guests from the neighbouring country becomes a symbol of resistance.“He breaks into your home without knocking, he is hungry and hopes you will feed him. He has always been hungry, and he likes to expand the boundaries of his appetite. This hunger has a dark history of liberation wars, peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations.”

When Tanzanian queer musician Tofa Jaxx discovered a brochure on AIDS in 2004, he decided to contact trans activist Aunty Ali, who knew from a young age that she was different from others. In a frank, extremely personal conversation, she then confides about her coming out, her love for men, or her experiences with prostitution and HIV.“Tanzanian customs and traditions do not acknowledge homosexuality, nor do they want to. They are contradictory and cold hearted because they are the ones who birthed us.” — Aunty Ali

Growing up in West Germany in the 1980s, Aline imagined a gregarious life on the other side of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, in communist Bulgaria, Veselina believed that everyone was happy under capitalism. In their collaborative hybrid documentary, they use their childhood fantasies to sketch a new utopia.

This film, at the intersection of visual art and documentary, reveals the shadowy past of the Dutch colonial empire through artfully edited archival footage. A dreamlike essay on the confectionery industry driven by the exploitation of Indonesian farmers, it also depicts the traditional rituals of the author's people and asks questions about modernity, the passage of time, the formation of memory and the nature of humanity.“Through the intersection of visual art and cinema, I plunge into Indonesia's haunting colonial past, exploring its hidden depths and intricate layers.” — Timoteus Anggawan Kusno

The year 2017 was marked by the suicide of a victim of paedophile priest James Brzyski, who by some estimates molested over a hundred boys in Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the survivors is comedian Gerad Argeros, who appears naked, literally and symbolically, before his audience. His cathartic stand-up show is both self-therapy and collective healing. To speak is not to let evil win.“I'm standing here naked in front of you and I don't care what you think of my little penis. I'm here to tell you what happens to children who are raped. They just disappear.”

Ritual dances, incantations and fetishes in an associative sequence of mystical scenes reveal the roots of the Afro-Cuban minority in Bauta, Cuba, whose colonial past is guarded by a statue of a slave in chains. Tobacco smoke and magical ceremonies awaken the spirits of ancestors and invite them to fill the forgotten places of cultural memory of a young generation searching for their identity in a post-colonial era of political instability and religious syncretism.“O my flesh, make me a man who always asks.” - Frantz Fanon

Footage of the everyday life of an ordinary Ukrainian family from the city of Svitlodarsk in the Donetsk region shows a life marred by the Russian occupation, where martial law has become the norm. The picture contrasts children's games, doing homework and having dinner in front of the TV with the panorama of the bombed-out buildings of a ghost town.“In war and the army, the worst thing is deathly silence. When there is silence, something is going to happen.”

On September 22, 1998, the Iranian poet Hamid Hajizadeh and his nine-year-old son Karun, whose name symbolically refers to Iran's longest river, were brutally murdered in their home in Kerman. The documentary film, based on the statements of the survivors, tries to sensitively reconstruct one of the many terrible, politically motivated events that took place in Iran at the end of the previous century, and draws us into the fateful day with the help of detailed shots of the objects in Hamid's study.“And he asked, which one torments the other one; The places or the memories…?” — Shahriar MandanipourSource: Berlinale Talents

“If a house is like our body, where is its heart located?” asks the narrator of the film, who is also one of the residents of the house in question. As we observe her and her partner going about their daily activities, the violent history of the place is revealed in hints as it comes back to life years later.

The hearing-disabled village of Dhadkai at the foothills of the Himalayas has been perplexing experts. It is not clear why only people with disabilities are born here. Yet locals drum and whistle to see if a newborn can hear and produce sound. This sensory-saturated observational portrait of a community amidst a majestic landscape raises the question of whether we need words to connect to the world around us.“According to the village´s beliefs and experiences, if the newborn cries loudly but keeps its eyes closed for the first two days, it might be deaf.”

During the summer holidays of 1994, an act of sexual violence took place in the Austrian alps. Nineteen years later, Philip Treschan confronts his mother with his trauma in a documentary essay. The family album is a nostalgic illusion, a gateway to an unspoken reality and a tool for an intimate conversation with the past and for piecing together the fragments of memory into a comprehensible whole.“Memory is not an unchanging vessel for carrying the past into the present; memory is a process, not a thing, and it works differently at different points in time.”Source: Philip TreschanTrigger warning: Film deals with topic of abuse.

A short poetic essay depicting a young girl, Faustine, explores the relationship between the director and the protagonist and how the film camera, as a silent, omnipresent mediator, defines it. With a certain amount of self-reflection, the film understands documentary film as a medium that has a dominant power over the subjects it captures by locking their souls and likenesses forever into the cinematic image.“The act of looking becomes tangible through technology, superstitions and phantasmic vision. A film, it states, is a space that takes a real-life person hostage, engulfs, and seals them in forever.”

Hard work, insecure earnings and a whole family in debt. These are the circumstances faced by gem prospectors in the abandoned mines of Myanmar. After mining was banned, the local population has been drawn to them, hand-picking through thousands of stones, eager to find the right one – and the better life it will bring.“Sometimes no matter how much you dig, you don’t find a thing. But one good gemstone can make you rich.”

Not far from the Estonian border is the Russian town of Pechory. When it was occupied by the Estonian army after World War I, a Danish cameraman came along with the soldiers. The director's great-grandmother appears to be in the footage. This formally playful film uses archival footage and animation to tell the moving life story of this courageous woman.

According to recent findings in astrophysics, the universe is structured as a four-dimensional web-like network. Yet similar structures are created by organisms many times smaller – known as slime mold. Can the parallel between the realms of biology and physics help us understand the mystery of our changing and intricate reality?“The cosmic web is part of the universe's large-scale structure. It is composed of dark matter, gas, and galaxies.”Source: Astronomy Magazine

A cross between a reportage film and a video essay, the film follows an ordinary evening with the Pugnant Film Series, a Greek independent organisation that organises unconventional screenings for audiences who want to see the most interesting things from the world of independent, auteur and experimental film. This time, the venue for the cinephilic event is an abandoned house in the centre of Athens. Its empty spaces are transformed into cinema halls, which, through the influence of culture and a shared cinematic experience, momentarily return to life. “The empty houses are ours to do what we want with them.”

The populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) organised a train for its supporters on the national holiday of Unification Day to visit celebrations culminating in the nationalist speeches of AUR’s President George Simion. The observational footage of passengers and participants in the grand convention brings to light the dangerous rise of the far right in Romania.“We need leaders who love their country, their people and those people’s values.”

Dao comes from Laos, but she has been living in France for many years. Set mostly in the Laotian jungle, the film is a dream and an idea of her return to her own essence. In the meditative rhythm of a slow human stride, we dive into a woman's memories of home, rituals and the family she had to leave behind.

The main character of this black-and-white impressionistic essay is a river, and the camera adopts its perspective. It flows through the landscape, sometimes peacefully, sometimes wildly, affecting the lives of animals and people alike. For some, it is a source of inspiration and a part of folk rituals.