When you sift through and focus on the most important things, that's the right moment to discover your authentic self. It is tragic and ironic that it required a novel deadly dangerous virus for silence to fall, for the world to slow down, and for us to finally hear someone nearby. Beneath the surface, lie humanity, devotion and sincere feelings.

Curated by Sasha Prokopenko

VADER (FATHER)

Isabel Lamberti

Netherlands / 2019, 24 min

The film explores the relationship of a dad and son who haven’t been in touch in the last years. While he tries to reconnect with his son in the present, he reflects with his girlfriend on the past.

BLESSED LAND

Pham Ngoc Lan

Vietnam / 2019, 19 min

A middle-aged woman and her son visit her late husband’s grave - situated in a former fishing village she hasn’t been to in decades. In the cemetery on the sandy dunes, they wander around for a long time without finding the headstone. Has her memory eroded, or has the grave been concealed somewhere underneath the green grass of the new golf courses? It’s true, for the nouveau riche, land for the living to play on is better than land for the dead to rest at.

FAVOURITES

Martin Monk

Austria / 2019, 18 min

After falling out with her mother, rebellious Sofia wants to hitchhike to Italy in search of her biological father. In haste, she stuffs a few things in her backpack and sets off in the early hours of a Viennese summer morning. When she meets middle-aged Michael, who reluctantly agrees to give her a lift, the two strangers develop an unlikely friendship on their shared journey through the Austrian south.

AN ARABIAN NIGHT

Pierre Mouzannar

UK, England, Lebanon / 2019, 33 min

Spending his last night as a civilian in his dream-like local tennis club, Michael, a young British soldier confronts a glimpse of the near future waiting for him on the other side of the night.