Do not look for the logic of what you are about to see — this is an unofficial slogan of our Animation Madness program. These are the cartoons that reload consciousness and open up new horizons of understanding animated films.

No more talking — true madness can not be described, it can only be seen and experienced.

And, as practice shows, it's best to do it in a friendly company of the same crazy like-minded people at KISFF.

The films contain several sequences with imagery and sustained flashing lights that may affect those who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or have other photosensitivities.

AWKWARD

Nata Metlukh

USA | 2020, 4 min

A short film about awkward social moments.

MERCURY'S RETROGRADE

Zohar Dvir

UK | 2020, 6 min

A millennial is looking for her magic 8 ball inside her unconsciousness.

BYE LITTLE BLOCK! | PÁ KIS PANELOM!

Éva Darabos

Hungary | 2020, 9 min

A young woman learns that soon she will have to move from the blockhouse flat she lives in. After receiving the upsetting news from the owner of the flat she is overwhelmed with emotions. Her teardrop of farewell grows into a concrete monolith. When the drop hits the ground a surreal panorama of the blockhouse area - she used to call home - unfolds...

EASTER EGGS

Nicolas Keppens

Belgium, France, Netherlands | 2020, 15 min

The Chinese restaurant is empty. Mister Ping is gone. The exotic bird’s cage stands wide open. No one knows what happened. Two friends, Jason and Kevin, see this as a great opportunity to catch the birds and sell them for a great amount of money. But catching the birds ain’t as simple as it seems…

BABY ANGER | BÉBÉ COLÈRE

Jonathan Vinel, Caroline Poggi

France, Italy | 2021, 13 min

A lost baby, confronted with a contemporary world and its empty spaces, asks himself how to grow up.

FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Zachary Zezima

France | 2020, 14 min

A young man is sexually assaulted and subdues, punishes, then befriends his own attacker while confronting his past and the ambiguities of sexuality. Part fiction, part non-fiction, part autobiography and part dream, Friend of a Friend attempts to broaden the conversation around abuse and its motivations and implications, as well as the survivor vs. assailant dynamic and results of ostracism.

COCKPERA

Kata Gugić

Croatia | 2020, 4 min

A short opera inspired by Aesop's fable The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle.

MEGAMALL

Aline Schoch

Switzerland | 2020, 4 min

In a world of escalators, figures pursue their desire to consume in a given rhythm. One of the figures is sucked in at the end of an escalator and finds itself in a quiet, weightless room, where it joins the playing group. Meanwhile, the escalator world is thrown into confusion by a chips-mad dog. When the dog is also sucked in by an escalator, a power struggle between the two worlds begins.

GHOST DOGS

Joe Cappa

USA | 2020, 11 min

A home-alone rescue pup is visited by a host of deceased pups in this mind-bending short.

How to live if you were born with Donald Trump's face? How can masculinity be tested at the badminton tournament? How to behave if you want to avoid hurting everyone's feelings? How to fit into the team of millennials if you've never had coffee before? Answers to these and other questions will be found in this year's selection of comedy shorts that are connected by the light satire of Western society.

Curated by Olga Gusiatynska

Death, Blood

MARVIN’S NEVER HAD COFFEE BEFORE

Andrew Carter

USA | 2020, 8 min

Marvin Wexler tries coffee for the first time and desperately wants to talk to someone about it.

SHUTTLECOCK

Tommy Gillard

UK | 2020, 13 min

Carl is forced to question what it means to be a man when a new, mysterious member of the badminton club joins in with the charity tournament.

SWIMMER

Jonatan Etzler

Sweden | 2020, 13 min

There’s a man floating around in an indoor swimming pool. The police order him to get out, to be arrested, but the man refuses. Swimmer is a humorous short film about a dramatic arrest that turns into an anticlimax.

MISS FORTUNATE

Ella Jones

UK | 2020, 15 min

Scarlet’s mum has died, leaving her with two cats, a huge tax bill and a crush on a boy she can’t talk to. A comedy-drama about grief, in which a young woman loses her mother, and finds herself.

THE AFFECTED

Rikke Gregersen

Norway | 2020, 13 min

Minutes before takeoff, a situation occurs, preventing an airplane from departing. In an attempt to prevent the deportation of one passenger, another refuses to sit down forcing the pilot to take a political stand.

BOUND

Joe Carter

UK | 2020, 14 min

When a single mum from Leith and a middle-class Scottish geek wake up handcuffed together, the differences in their lifestyles are put to one side as they attempt to break free in this farcical dark comedy.

GRAB THEM

Morgane Dziurla-Petit

Sweden | 2020, 13 min

Sixty-year-old Sally longs for love and happiness. Lately, her search has been complicated by the fact that she resembles the current American president. One man's crazy assault on the world is a lonely woman's burden.

COVID-19 pandemic re-actualized the issue of housing for the majority of the world's population. In 2020, rental strikes took place in the United States and Italy. At the same time the phrase 'cancel rent' consolidated the efforts of thousands of activists who demanded landlords to cancel their quarantine rent.

The films of this program tell about the struggle for the right to housing in several countries. And that gentrification is not about the development of business, infrastructure, and social life. It is rather about the displacement and eviction of people from their homes. The consequences developers and authorities tend to ignore.

Curated by Lena Syrbu

THIS IS MY LAND…

Salvador Miranda

Netherlands | 2019, 8 min

This is my land… is an experimental 2-channel film examining the trial of a woman whose home is threatened by a new development project. Her ideas of home, community and utopia are examined alongside those of the Developer, who acts as a witness in the trial. The film explores the use of language and rhetoric, as well as competing visions of progress and development.

BEFORE OUR TIME COMES

Chloé Terren

France | 2019, 22 min

Raphaël takes care of his grandmother's flat as she stays in a nursing home. He tells her what happens to the neighbors, what he sees through the window. But an urbanization project is underway and the towers are strangely getting empty... Raphaël, who doesn’t dare to tell the truth, began to lie.

VERONICA

Talita Caselato

Brazil | 2020, 14 min

Dynamic portrait of the metropolis of São Paulo and of the activist Veronica Oliveira in her gentrifying neighbourhood. From a historical perspective, cleaning is often associated with slavery. Her Faxina Boa project fights for a positive, respectful approach to the profession.

THE HOUSES WE WERE

Arianna Lodeserto

Italy | 2018, 18 min

The first 50 years of the Low-Income Housing Institute created a veritable city within a city to deal with what has been and still remains the main and persistent problem of Rome: housing. But what is this city made of? Who gets left out?
The archives respond. The archives reassert.

Amorousness has many interpretations, and everyone experiences it differently. But no one will deny that it is through intimacy and love, among other things, we cognize ourselves.

This selection of Asian cinema is inspired by Wong Kar-Wai's iconic film, IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. After all, for us, these feelings are ephemeral, fleeting and unspeakable, and therefore even more valuable.

Curated by Sasha Prokopenko

THE MANILA LOVER

Johanna Pyykkö

Norway, Philippines | 2019, 27 min

During a trip to the Philippines, middle-aged, Norwegian Lars has met Abigail – the Filipina he wants to share his life with, but does she share his plans.

EXTRAVAGANTLY ORDINARY NIGHT | 奢侈凡夜

Yu-An Rao

Taiwan | 2020, 6 min

Her bright world became dark after losing sight.
One day, She met him, the person she had loved when she still could see…

SUNRISE IN MY MIND | TNGAIREAH KNONG CHET

San Danech

Cambodia | 2020, 14 min

A young woman working late at night at a beauty salon gives into her restrained interest in a young man who spends his evenings driving Phnom Penh's streets by motorbike as a delivery man.

200 CIGARETTES FROM NOW | 夏日美滋滋

Tianyu Ma

China, USA | 2021, 46 min

Summer 2019, Xia suddenly has a crush on a person who then seems vanished from the world. Fall 2019, Xia moves to Boston and throws herself into a faraway filmmaking dream with her struggling-actor friend Jie. While vainly searching for her crush, Xia makes all her effort to retain the summer, but the first snow still arrives on time.

Vietnam is one of the youngest countries, concerning its film history. Its development was slowed by wars, the division of the country into two parts and 50 years of socialism.

Despite that, emerging directors from Vietnam now confidently assert themselves in the international cinema arena, introducing their own cultural codes into the modern context and reflecting on the connection with their homeland.

Curated by Sasha Prokopenko

Blood

A TRIP TO HEAVEN | TTHIÊN ĐƯỜNG GỌI TÊN

Linh Dương

Viet Nam | 2020, 15 min

During a peculiar tour bus to Mekong Delta, 50-year-old Mdm.Tam bumps into her high school sweetheart. She's hopeful for a chance of reconciliation, but maybe he's not.

LIVE IN CLOUD-CUCKOO LAND | MÂY NHU'NG KHÔNG MU'A

Phạm Hoàng Minh Thy, Vũ Minh Nghĩa

Viet Nam | 2020, 20 min

A modern tale of Kafka in Vietnam — a country in the middle of a transformation. The film feels like a piece of cultural news with daily events: a wedding, traffic congestion, a robbery, a mystical metamorphosis and a love story.

THE ETERNAL SPRINGTIME | MÙA XUÂN VĨNH CỬU

Viet Vu

Viet Nam | 2021, 25 min

In a landscape on the brink of extinction, a son and mother trek into a native cave to be revitalized. By just quietly sitting together in their humble shelter, a loving energy is shared through these two human beings’ naked bodies. This personal portrait cuts deep into the vulnerable present of an ex-colonised nation transiting into the digital age. Seen from a first-person perspective, the film also explores a new possibility of storytelling.

THE UNSEEN RIVER | GIÒNG SÔNG KHÔNG NHÌN THẤY

Pham Ngoc Lan

Viet Nam, Laos | 2020, 23 min

Stories told along the river: a woman reunites with her ex-lover at a hydroelectric plant; meanwhile, a young man travels downstream to a temple in search of a cure for his insomnia.

Human rights are inviolable. However, children and young people face daily discrimination, limit access to education and social protection, harassment of their potential and even threats to their lives. Every year, millions of your peers fall victim to human trafficking, slavery and migration processes.

TEEN SPIRIT is a selection of six stories about children and adolescents from around the world that explain the importance of protecting children's rights as equal members of society, regardless of their origin, place of residence, race, language or religion.

Curated by Sasha Prokopenko

Suitable for people 12 years of age or older

Death, Kidnapping, Child Abuse, Human trafficking

AT HOME

Luisina Anderson

Argentina | 2019, 11 min

Two friends, Camila and Sofia, aged 12, are having breakfast one morning, dancing and playing throughout the house, while on tv a news program investigates a femicide.

IN THIS LAND WE'RE BRIEFLY GHOSTS

Chen-Wen Lo

Taiwan | 2019, 16 min

Myanmar, 2013. Based on actual events, this human tragedy follows a 12-year-old child soldier, Su Su Myat, and her mute brother, Tin Min, who are imprisoned after deserting their first combat mission. Punished with no food or water, Su Su Myat is forced to choose between killing her seriously ill brother for her own survival, or risk dying with him.

EXAM

Sonia K. Hadad

Iran | 2019, 15 min

A teenage girl gets involved in the process of delivering a pack of cocaine to its client, and gets stuck in a weird cycle of occurrences.

BROTHER

Beppe Tufarulo

Italy | 2019, 15 min

Two Brothers, One Dream, a Sea in Between.

COMRADES

Kanas Liu

Hong Kong | 2019, 15 min

The crisis caused by the “Extradition bill” has continued for more than one month since June 2019. As the HK government has not replied to the 5 major demands, citizens march and protest every weekend. The police continually escalates their force against protestors.
On 28th July, 2019, there was a clash between police and protestors in west Hong Kong Island. 49 protestors were arrested. Protesters helped each other to prevent anyone being caught alone.

GOOD NIGHT

Anthony Nti

Belgiu, Ghana | 2019, 20 min

A foreigner in Ghana gets an assignment from his gang to recruit kids for a risky job that will take place later that evening. He finds Prince and Matilda, two lively kids and good friends, and plans to hand them over to the gang. After spending the day with them, he starts to question his decision and how it will affect their future.

Once again, OUT & PROUD invites you to challenge binary, gender roles and talk openly about sexuality, identity and the ongoing civil rights fight of the LGBTQIA+ community.

BABYDYKE | BABYLEBBE

Tone Ottilie Frederiksen

Denmark | 2019, 20 min

While navigating the codes of the queer community, 16-year-old Frede follows her older sister to a party to try and win back her ex-girlfriend.

TRACING UTOPIA

Catarina de Sousa, Nick Tyson

Portugal, USA | 2021, 27 min

A group of teenagers discuss their ideas of a queer utopia. They build online safe spaces within a popular video game and create a manifesto for a more equal and just world where everyone can be their true self. In this moving short documentary, directors Catarina de Sousa and Nick Tyson prove there is much to learn from Generation Z. With humour and kindness, they illustrate the power of a community of love.

FARAWAY | LOINTAIN

Aziz Zoromba

Canada | 2020, 18 min

After being estranged from his family for his homosexuality, we observe a young Arab man over four seasons and from far away as he navigates his solitude - all the while attempting to reconnect with his mother.

ESCAPING THE FRAGILE PLANET | ΑΠΌΔΡΑΣΗ ΑΠΌ ΤΟΝ ΕΎΘΡΑΥΣΤΟ ΠΛΑΝΉΤΗ

Thanasis Tsimpinis

Greece | 2020, 17 min

A few hours before the world ends, two men have an unexpected encounter, while a strange pink fog is spreading throughout the city.

TRANS*GAZE

Rosa Wiesauer, Andrea B. Braidt

Austria | 2021, 20 min

The "gaze" is as elemental to film theory as salt is to soup. So when Rosa Wiesauer promises an "alternative regime of the gaze" (Robin McRuer) in her film title, the stakes are high! The so-called "male gaze" implies a paradigm that divides the pleasure of watching into an active masculine dimension of looking and a passive feminine dimension of being looked at. In order to establish this binary logic, traditional cinema initially hides the fact of the camera's gaze. Entirely in line with the tradition of feminist filmmaking, TRANS*GAZE breaks with this convention from the start: We see backstage lighting, stage markings and accessories. The subjects speak expressively and convincingly about what Jack Halberstam describes as "queer time and space" as they look directly into the camera: trans*gaze.

NONBINARY

Jeanne L'Homer

France | 2020, 6 min

During this pandemic, performers have had to reinvent themselves to adapt to our new virtual existences. How can we create immersive pieces for an audience of avatars on the Internet? With theatres, clubs and venues being closed in France, this issue has been prevalent in my work for the last few months. Last December, I was asked to create a piece to be performed live on Instagram. I decided to exploit the platform in itself, using its codes and tools to tell a story, a nonbinary manifesto. This work is part of a journey of analyzing the way we as human beings interact with the virtual world, and how feelings of immersion can be recreated by hijacking or following its codes.

In 2013, at the second edition of KISFF, we compiled a selection called UKRAINIAN FESTIVAL HITS. It was dedicated to Ukrainian films made from the declaration of independence until 2013, which were screened in Cannes, Berlin, Venice or other prestigious festivals. We managed to find five titles.

This program will be dedicated to those directors who have gone from a debut short film to a feature film during our festival's existence. Their short and feature films have also represented Ukraine at the most prestigious international film festivals, and the number of titles labelled as "Ukrainian Festival Hits" now has long exceeded a hundred.

Kidnapping

WITHOUT YOU | SENSIZ

Nariman Aliev

Ukraine | 2016, 15 min

A lone car drives across the vast expanses of the Ukrainian landscape. Two young men are travelling to celebrate their elder brother's birthday, but their plan is delayed when their car breaks down. The sun is going to set before long and there's little chance of finding help in this god-forsaken place. They eventually decide to travel the rest of the long journey on foot, to be with their brother.

THE SHOP OF SONGBIRDS

Anatoliy Lavrenishyn

Ukraine | 2018, 18 min

The seller of songbirds lives in a fantastic city. No one needs his goods. Once he rescues a magical bird. This event radically changes his life and puts him before the most important choice in life.

BETWEEN US

Kateryna Gornostai

Ukraine | 2013, 5 min

GRADUATION '97

Pavlo Ostrikov

Ukraine | 2018, 19 min

Roman lives a lonely life in a provincial city and works as a technician. For the first time since graduation, Liuda, his ex-classmate, comes back to town. Nobody has heard anything from her for twenty years, but Roman is set on not losing her again.

We look for and collect histories of our families in the stories of our parents and grandparents, family photos, archival documents. Some of us even manage to capture our way home.

A selection of films made by people whose families decided to migrate a long time ago. Today these directors tell about their parents' homes, reflect on their identities and ties with already distant home places.

Curated by Lena Syrbu

GALINAS FLORAL DRESSES

Maria Beierbach

Switzerland, Kazakhstan | 2020, 34 min

Born in Kazakhstan, the director experienced the consequences of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a child and emigrated with her family to Germany. Stepnogorsk, the small town of her childhood, which is not more than 120km from the Kazakh capital Nur-Sultan, remains her homeland. Mascha visits this place annually because Galina lives there. For social and political reasons, Galina also emigrated to the so-called "City of Hope" in the early 1970’s, which was notorious for its prosperity and the best working conditions at the uranium factory. Through conversations and archive material, the filmmaker learnt more about this mysterious place and this woman who is her grandmother. Through observations, she takes part in the happiness and suffering of the residents of Stepnogorsk, where time seems to stand still. Nothing changes, only Galina grows older and more forgetful. She lives alone, looks after herself and her dacha, the so-called allotment garden of theEast, which is her love and her life. They can only survive together. Galina's motto in life: "Take things as they come and prepare yourself well for death".

EATING SOIL

Laura Weissenberger

Austria, Colombia | 2021, 26 min

Eating soil is an essay film that deals with the stories of Colombian women originating from director Laura Weissenberger’s memories and projections on her home country. It is exploring Colombian narrative culture based on the stories of a fictional family, which metaphorically represent a society rather than individual fates. Structured like a memory itself, the viewer encounters topics involving migration, hopes, regrets and approaches to life.

COMRADE TITO, I INHERIT

Olga Kosanović

Serbia, Germany | 2021, 27 min

A mountain slope, an orchard, a house. Idyllic pictures in southern Serbia. Three generations under the roof of the house that is being prepared for its transmission.
An approach to history that becomes part of one’s own. Home is complicated, inheriting may be a burden and Tito becomes a symbol for something that has been - a filmic examination of what remains.

WHERE HE WAS BORN

Laura Fong Prosper

Germany, China | 2020, 26 min

Documentary that follows the search of my roots and the finding of lost relatives in the house where my grandfather was born near Zhongshan, China.
In this film I touch subjects of life, death and identity. Being always a foreigner, even in my hometown, I never felt connected to any place or culture. I was always everything and nothing at the same time. Now, after this experience, I am starting to finally understand who I am and where I come from.

(OTHER) FOUNDATIONS

Aline Motta

Brazil | 2019, 16 min

(Other) Foundations (2017-2019) is the last installment of a trilogy that began in 2017 with "Bridges over the Abyss", followed by "If the sea had balconies". The film talks about the consequences of the journey that the artist undertook in search of her roots and questions the sense of belonging to a place that might not acknowledge its seemly evident kinship. It brings together Lagos in Nigeria, Cachoeira in Bahia and her home state Rio de Janeiro in Brazil through the waters and bridges that connect the three cities and their common ancestral background.

AT HOME BUT NOT AT HOME

Suneil Sanzgiri

India, USA | 2019, 11 min

Sanzgiri's father was 18 when India ousted the last remaining Portuguese colonizers from Goa in 1961. Combining 16mm with drone footage, desktop screenshots, and Skype interviews with his father, Sanzgiri utilizes various modes of seeing at a distance to question identity, the construction of memory and anti-colonial solidarity across continents.

How to live if you were born with Donald Trump's face? How can masculinity be tested at the badminton tournament? How to behave if you want to avoid hurting everyone's feelings? How to fit into the team of millennials if you've never had coffee before? Answers to these and other questions will be found in this year's selection of comedy shorts that are connected by the light satire of Western society.

Curated by Olga Gusiatynska

Death, Blood

MARVIN’S NEVER HAD COFFEE BEFORE

Andrew Carter

USA | 2020, 8 min

Marvin Wexler tries coffee for the first time and desperately wants to talk to someone about it.

SHUTTLECOCK

Tommy Gillard

UK | 2020, 13 min

Carl is forced to question what it means to be a man when a new, mysterious member of the badminton club joins in with the charity tournament.

SWIMMER

Jonatan Etzler

Sweden | 2020, 13 min

There’s a man floating around in an indoor swimming pool. The police order him to get out, to be arrested, but the man refuses. Swimmer is a humorous short film about a dramatic arrest that turns into an anticlimax.

MISS FORTUNATE

Ella Jones

UK | 2020, 15 min

Scarlet’s mum has died, leaving her with two cats, a huge tax bill and a crush on a boy she can’t talk to. A comedy-drama about grief, in which a young woman loses her mother, and finds herself.

THE AFFECTED

Rikke Gregersen

Norway | 2020, 13 min

Minutes before takeoff, a situation occurs, preventing an airplane from departing. In an attempt to prevent the deportation of one passenger, another refuses to sit down forcing the pilot to take a political stand.

BOUND

Joe Carter

UK | 2020, 14 min

When a single mum from Leith and a middle-class Scottish geek wake up handcuffed together, the differences in their lifestyles are put to one side as they attempt to break free in this farcical dark comedy.

GRAB THEM

Morgane Dziurla-Petit

Sweden | 2020, 13 min

Sixty-year-old Sally longs for love and happiness. Lately, her search has been complicated by the fact that she resembles the current American president. One man's crazy assault on the world is a lonely woman's burden.

KISFF looks back at the work of William Laboury, Paris-based film and music video director, editor and graphic and art designer.

We are focusing on the video clips directed by William, his award-winning short film that received the Grand-Prix at the 5th edition of KISFF, HOTARU 蛍, as well as the festival hits, PLAY DEAD and A THING OF THE MIND, and William's most recent short film, YANDERE.

Physical, Verbal abuse

A THING OF THE MIND

William Laboury

France | 2017, 20 min

Every since Ema has been electro-sensitive, she’s cut herself off from the outside world, and is holed up in her home far from electromagnetic waves. Using only her mind, she’s able to travel outside of her body. Until the day two robbers break into her home.

AGAR AGAR — FANGS OUT

William Laboury

France | 2018, 4 min

PLAY DEAD

William Laboury

France | 2016, 9 min

Tom is 16 years old, and he is the whipping boy of Evan who manufactures artisanal weapons. Since he survived the 'spudgun experimentation', he avoids passing Evan's place. However, Evan doesn't want to stop yet as the fun has just started.

BONNIE BANANE — L' APPETIT

William Laboury

France | 2016, 4 min

YANDERE

William Laboury

France | 2019, 21 min

Maïko is Tommy’s tiny holographic girlfriend. Her love for him knows no bounds. But when Tommy breaks up with her for another girl, a real one, Maïko experiences an intense new feeling and discovers the taste of her tears. Those tears will transform her flesh and give her a taste for blood…

HOTARU 蛍

William Laboury

France | 2018, 22 min

They told me : "You have a gift, Martha. Down here, your gift is useless. So we're gonna show you the most beautiful things. You're gonna have more memories than everyone else. And then, you will sleep. You won't wake up. But you will carry the most precious memories from Earth."

The film contains scenes of abuse and sexual assault.

MOTORCYCLIST'S HAPPINESS WON'T FIT INTO HIS SUIT | AL MOTOCICLISTA NO LE CABE LA FELICIDAD EN EL TRAJE

Gabriel Herrera

Mexico | 2021, 10 min

There he sits proudly on his beautiful motorbike which he would never loan to anyone. He is certain that he alone can explore the jungle. A playful re-enactment with reversed roles that takes aim at the hubris of the colonial conquerors.

MAALBEEK

Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis

France | 2020, 16 min

Survivor but amnesiac of the attack at Maalbeek metro station on 22 March 2016 in Brussels, Sabine is looking for the missing image of an over-mediatised event of which she has no memory.

MOON | LUNE

Zoé Pelchat

Canada | 2020, 16 min

Babz Dubreuil, a lonely but endearing ex-convict, works as a cook in a suburban brunch restaurant. Despite her civilized conduct, she struggles to regain her place in society. Under the encouragement of an outrageous colleague, she finds the courage to ask an attractive customer to go on a date with her. It might be the beginning of redemption.

BEST POSSIBLE LIFE | MAAILMAN ONNELLISIN KANSA

Ville Hakonen, Jussi Sandhu

Finland | 2020, 13 min

The United Nations has selected Finland as the happiest country in the world twice in a row. Finns are still very skeptical about this recognition – we tend to see ourselves as melancholic, pessimistic and dreary. Is this really the best possible life? This poetic documentary plows deep into the nation’s soul and visits places where these Nordic people can be found at their happiest.

ORDERS

Aleix Pitarch

Spain | 2020, 30 min

April 2004. It's Friday, peak time. Somewhere in America, a phone rings. A voice on the other side of the line speaks: someone has reported a theft.

Discussions of gender identities and the right to them are still active in the media. Joan Rowling's transphobic posts, denial of access to women's restrooms, and the aggression of trans-exclusive radical feminists towards transgender people repeatedly raise questions about the concept of "femininity" and its limits.

How inclusive are feminist spaces for transgender people? Is "femininity" being undermined by queer theory and practice? And, in fact, what is a "woman" - the topic of conversation in the film of the same name and the core issue of the whole program.

Self-injurious behavior, Violence

WHAT IS A WOMAN? | HVA ER EN KVINNE?

Marin Håskjold

Norway | 2020, 14 min

A discussion occurs in a women's locker room when someone asks a transgender woman to leave. One in the locker room means that woman is something that you are born as and not something you can become. The discussion escalates continuously as more people interfere. Everyone with different thoughts about what a woman is.

QUEER CARRIERS: DOUBLE AND REPETITION | PORTADORAS QUEER: EL DOBLE Y LA REPETICIÓN

Ana Laura Aláez

USA, Spain, Japan | 2020, 15 min

With Queer Carriers, Aláez explores the degrees of rebelliousness in a given representation of plural femaleness via the use of image repetition in parallel with musical repetition. The video is based on a specific track produced in partnership with the electronic music project of the German musician Daniel Holc / Ascii.Disko.

POISON

Louve Dubuc Babinet

Belgium | 2020, 19 min

The world of work is increasingly uncertain because of technological disruption and labour reforms. The labour system is running out of steam. Poison is a queer BDSM porn actress. Far removed from the world of work, the monetary system and the lifestyle of an employee, she uses her stage performances to champion her causes, vent her anger and claim the right to decide what happens to her own body.

CAUSE OF DEATH

Jyoti Mistry

South Africa | 2020, 19 min

Women’s bodies are always at risk. An autopsy report describes the physical impact on the body that results in death but hides the structural and recurrent violence on women’s bodies that leads to femicide. Through archival film footage, animation and spoken word poetry an experience of structural violence against women is exposed.

CENTAURESS

Deniz Şimşek

Germany, Turkey | 2020, 8 min

Year 2003, footage from TV archives, the future president of Turkey speaks to his folk. An everlasting catchy tune from a juice commercial. In an instant of remembrance your memory gets you to fall through its own time and space.

GLORY TO MSTYSLAV

Maryna Nikolcheva, Maksym Vasyanovych

Ukraine / 2020, 28 min

Mstyslav was a street musician. He reckoned Christ was a gay and considered a friendship between a man and a woman impossible. This film is a last memory of him, the evidence of his courage, dignity and deep vulnerability.

RUINS IN REVERSE

Olena Newkryta

Ukraine / 2020, 25 min

Shot in the steppe-like landscape of southern Ukraine, the short film follows the transformation process of a vacant Soviet residential building. Built according to a standardized Soviet master plan, its layout is slowly being dismantled by individuals, who create new architectures from the extracted modules. Thus, the traces of private biographies and vestiges of past ideologies inscribed into the physical remnants, continue to circulate in the community and find their ways into new constructions.
Ruins in Reverse addresses this process of appropriation and utilization as a form of material engagement with the past as well as an act of self-empowerment. Considering on the one hand, the Soviet infrastructures and belief systems which continue to affect the everyday life; on the other hand, the massive political upheavals and privatization processes at the beginning of the 90s, the film raises questions on how individuals as well as communities deal with such asynchronicities, how they navigate between the socialist and capitalist ruins and which forms of reflection and interaction emerge.

SIMILAR IMAGE

Lera Malchenko, Oleksandr Hants (fantastic little splash)

Ukraine / 2020, 9 min

On the beach or in the forest, when you close your eyes, you hear the sound of water, wind, rustle leaves, insects. You can still hear the motorboat, ringtone, highway, drone buzzing, plant. When you just listen, the sounds mix; gently comes that all this nature is not the first or the second, it is the canvas, including you. But as soon as you open your eyes, you notice order everywhere. Human ordered the world more and more rapidly, until he found himself in the forest — unpredictable and magical * • It seems if you go deeper, you will have to expose yourself to danger and disappear * it also seems that this disappearance is not about absence, but about another form of presence.: *

SENSITIVE MATERIAL

Nataliya Ilchuk

Ukraine | 2021, 26 min

The film's starting point is a collection of randomly filmed instants of happiness and an accidentally captured audio recording. In a painful conversation, fifty-year-old Lilia speaks of her mental trauma as a result of her parents' constant disputes during her childhood, while her mother justifies the lack of love by the strict frames of a totalitarian society.

The topic of sexuality has long ceased to be a private matter. It's fun to talk about sex, and the Midnight Sexy Shorts program will show you it is possible in any form. Get ready to glimpse at the most remote corners of your consciousness, where the nature of your understanding of sexuality lies. Here, body language, unveiled human fantasies, and sensuality, fuse in real ecstasy.

No taboos or forbidden grounds. This is a case when ethical concerns and moral contemplations are better left behind the cinema doors.

Blood, Death

SQUEEGEE

Morgan Krantz

USA, Canada | 2020, 10 min

High-powered CEO meets high-rise window-washer for an erotic rendezvous on opposite sides of her skyscraper window.

FLEX

Matt Porter

USA | 2020, 16 min

Charles explores the gray areas of his own sexuality after going through an unexpected breakup.

ADALAMADRINA

Carlota Oms

Spain | 2018, 10 min

While she claims to be an expert in sex and love on YouTube, Ada can barely speak to her gym trainer, with whom she's madly in love with. When she sets her sights on him, everything changes.

HOLD ME TIGHT

Mélanie Robert-Tourneur

Belgium, France | 2021, 6 min

In the heart of a dark forest, two silhouettes meet, attract and repel each other in an explosive bridal
parade. Hold Me Tight is a bittersweet romance.

SUMMER HIT

Berthold Wahjudi

Germany | 2019, 19 min

Laia from Spain and Emil from Iceland are Erasmus students in Munich. After having sex for a couple of times, Emil professes his love to Laia - but she panics and runs away. Now the two have to figure out whether they are more than just a summer fling.

1-1

Naures Sager

Sweden | 2020, 7 min

Ayman's sex date with Jonas gets crashed by his friends Amirah and Samir which takes a positive turn.

HOT SPOT

Anaïs Couet-Lannes

France | 2021, 14 min

A “hot spot”, in genealogy, is a hypothetic zone of magma formation based within a planet’s coat. Nowadays, knowledge on hot spots is still very incomplete, as much as the ones about female orgasm. When Adèle has to deal with her parents’ funeral, she has an everlasting orgasm.

If you are bold and ready for mind games and absurd discussions on the most unexpected topics, your destination is SHORT ATTACK.

Verbal abuse

EAT THE RAINBOW

Brian Benson

USA | 2019, 20 min

EAT THE RAINBOW is a musical fable about an odd yet kind man named Bayani who moves into a conservative suburban neighborhood and disrupts the otherwise comfortable homogeny. He doesn’t look or act like anyone else which causes fear and panic and eventually a demand for him to leave the neighborhood. Cousin Wonderlette befriends Bayani and together they take on the opposition led by manipulative and unscrupulous realtor Lobelia Gerber.

HORRORSCOPE

Pol Diggler

Spain | 2019, 5 min

An ordinary schoolgirl's life unravels after an evil creature takes over her body. Only her mother, with the help of a strange doctor, will be able to save her.

WHITE GUYS SOLVE SEXISM

Christopher Guerrero

USA | 2019, 7 min

Plagued by nightmares of a broken world, Mike and Clark struggle to cope with their sorrow in a post-Weinstein culture. Revelations of the decades-long abuse by the infamous film executive has tainted every movie that has come to define them. These two cultural orphans begin to pick through Weinsteins films to uncover a pattern of sexism that has been all but clear to Mike’s beau, Veronica.

SEXY FURBY

Nicole Daddona, Adam Wilder

USA | 2020, 14 min

A suicidal girl's life changes when she encounters a man-sized Furby on a golf course.

BULLSHIT

Roxanne Stam

Netherlands | 2019, 5 min

BULLSHIT is a speechless tragicomedy about beautiful young Ella who works in a hip restaurant. When she has to poop she doesn't dare, there is only one toilet and she is the face of the joint. Moreover, she does not like to poop in public. When she has to go, her shit doesn't flush and someone is already knocking at the door... About embarrassing moments and keeping up appearances.

BROCCOLI

Eliott Fettweis

France | 2019, 19 min

Maurice and Julienne are expecting their first child. But the day of delivery, Julienne gives birth to a broccoli.

FLEX

David Strindberg, Josefin Malmén

Sweden | 2020, 4 min

He may be good enough, but is good enough? A slightly surreal comedic exploration of a bodybuilder’s self-loathing and self-loving.

MANEATER

Sandra Isacsson, Caroline Wallén

Sweden | 2019, 8 min

A group of men participates in a music video shoot. The female directors instruct them to eat bananas. But as simple as it may seem, the cast soon find themselves trying to fulfill the gradually more bizarre and challenging requests from the directors. How far are these men willing to stretch their boundaries? It's just bananas!

GOD'S DAUGHTER DANCES | 신의 딸은 춤을 춘다

Byun Sungbin

South Korea | 2020, 25 min

A transgender female dancer, Shin-mi, gets a call from the Military Manpower Administration, to attend for the Military Service Examination. Shin-mi, with everything in readiness, takes her steps to the Military Manpower Administration.

MY OWN LANDSCAPES

Antoine Chapon

France | 2020, 19 min

Before going to war, a former military game designer made video game scenarios that prepared soldiers for cultural shocks, and that healed trauma. Once back from war, his relationship with his identity, with life, and with the video game, changed.

EYES AND HORNS | 아이즈앤혼즈

Im Chaerin

South Korea, Germany | 2021, 6 min

The exploration of masculinity begins with the Minotaur, a mythical creature the artist Picasso used to portray himself in his etching print series. The Minotaur goes through a violent struggle between being male and female. Finally, the lines blur, and the boundaries of sexes disappear.

THE KILLING OF ČÁHCERÁVGA

Miracle Workers Collective

Finland | 2020, 29 min

Miracle Workers Collective’s film work The Killing of Čáhcerávga (2020) is a collision of five different short films that, together, tell a disjointed, communal narrative. Employing a call-and-response strategy, the film expresses a politicised dialogue around indigeneity, movement, and migration in contemporary Europe. The collective share an interest in exploring the potentiality in disciplinary disobedience. Travelling through dreamscapes, lonely snowy plains, absurdist capitalist underwaters, greenhouse gardens, and desert landscapes, the film stretches into a practice of impossible spatial rules, strange dialogue practices, and inconclusive, unresolved scenic endings.

HOMO DEUS. DIVINE HUMAN

Julia Deglina

Ukraine | 2021, 19 min

After rave Nazar and Ulya climb on the roof to have sex, and notice a guy about to jump down. They save guy who is under psychotropic drug. Ulya insists on not leaving guy in such a state, Nazar is forced to agree. They spend the day caring for the guy. What supposed to be one-time sex and suicide turn into friendship…

SOON AFTER MIDNIGHT

Dmytro Koval

Ukraine | 2021, 29 min

A young guy from the generation of dreamers tries to escape from obsessive thoughts and goes for a walk along the deserted streets of small fictional town. Strange things happen to him while walking and the reality of what is happening starts to give in to doubt more and more. Where is this journey leading him? To what depths of the city and himself is the main character ready to descend?

SAD PORTRAITS

Vitalii Kikot

Ukraine | 2021, 30 min

Love triangle between a cashier and two security guards of a small supermarket in a provincial town.

The topic of sexuality has long ceased to be a private matter. It's fun to talk about sex, and the Midnight Sexy Shorts program will show you it is possible in any form. Get ready to glimpse at the most remote corners of your consciousness, where the nature of your understanding of sexuality lies. Here, body language, unveiled human fantasies, and sensuality, fuse in real ecstasy.

No taboos or forbidden grounds. This is a case when ethical concerns and moral contemplations are better left behind the cinema doors.

Blood, Death

SQUEEGEE

Morgan Krantz

USA, Canada | 2020, 10 min

High-powered CEO meets high-rise window-washer for an erotic rendezvous on opposite sides of her skyscraper window.

FLEX

Matt Porter

USA | 2020, 16 min

Charles explores the gray areas of his own sexuality after going through an unexpected breakup.

ADALAMADRINA

Carlota Oms

Spain | 2018, 10 min

While she claims to be an expert in sex and love on YouTube, Ada can barely speak to her gym trainer, with whom she's madly in love with. When she sets her sights on him, everything changes.

HOLD ME TIGHT

Mélanie Robert-Tourneur

Belgium, France | 2021, 6 min

In the heart of a dark forest, two silhouettes meet, attract and repel each other in an explosive bridal
parade. Hold Me Tight is a bittersweet romance.

SUMMER HIT

Berthold Wahjudi

Germany | 2019, 19 min

Laia from Spain and Emil from Iceland are Erasmus students in Munich. After having sex for a couple of times, Emil professes his love to Laia - but she panics and runs away. Now the two have to figure out whether they are more than just a summer fling.

1-1

Naures Sager

Sweden | 2020, 7 min

Ayman's sex date with Jonas gets crashed by his friends Amirah and Samir which takes a positive turn.

HOT SPOT

Anaïs Couet-Lannes

France | 2021, 14 min

A “hot spot”, in genealogy, is a hypothetic zone of magma formation based within a planet’s coat. Nowadays, knowledge on hot spots is still very incomplete, as much as the ones about female orgasm. When Adèle has to deal with her parents’ funeral, she has an everlasting orgasm.

The search for a better life is almost always related to labour and employment. But most migrants have to work for employers who seem to have no idea of decent working conditions.

Instability, insecurity, precariousness in the stories of people whose lives and labour have been influenced by borders and their limits.

Curated by Lena Syrbu

Homicide, Death, Animal Abuse

OTHER THAN THAT, I'M FINE | ONUN HARİCİNDE, İYİYİM

Eren Aksu

Germany, Turkey | 2020, 14 min

Joining a recent wave of immigration from Turkey to Germany, Aslı is new in Berlin. She auditions for the voice of the audio guide for an archaeological museum, facing her with objects from her home country, including a monumental Zeus Altar. Her encounters during the rest of the day further reveal the absurdity of out of placeness.

ETERNAL GUEST | EWIG GAST

Maximilian Karakatsanis

Germany | 2020, 9 min

My grandfather was one of the very first labour migrants of the recruitment agreement between Germany and Greece. A short poetic documentary about longing, family and being a so-called guest worker.

THE BRICKS | LOS LADRILLOS

Tito Montero

Spain | 2020, 19 min

On his first trip to the States, Tito Montero follows Eduardo Galeano’s footsteps through the streets of Chicago to trace a possible route to Haymarket Martyrs’ Monument, symbol of the global struggle for labor rights and origin of the annual celebration, every May 1st, of the International Workers' Day. The words of the filmmaker and his family working history mix with those of the Uruguayan writer and other literary references to compose a personal and collective journey through space and time.

LILI ALONE | DUO LI

Zou Jing

China | 2021, 22 min

Lili, a young mother, lives with her gambler husband in a remote part of Sichuan. Lonely and poor, she heads for the city in a bid to earn enough money to save her dying father.

OSLO

Shady Srour

Israel, Germany, Palestine | 2019, 16 min

Ziad, a Palestinian day labourer, is denied entry into Israel for work that day. The East Jerusalem border guards offer no explanation. Not wanting to return home empty-handed after promising his daughter meat for dinner, he needs to get creative. The journey back is long, and what he encounters in the dry mountains challenges his dignity.

Do not look for the logic of what you are about to see — this is an unofficial slogan of our Animation Madness program. These are the cartoons that reload consciousness and open up new horizons of understanding animated films.

No more talking — true madness can not be described, it can only be seen and experienced.

And, as practice shows, it's best to do it in a friendly company of the same crazy like-minded people at KISFF.

The films contain several sequences with imagery and sustained flashing lights that may affect those who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or have other photosensitivities.

AWKWARD

Nata Metlukh

USA | 2020, 4 min

A short film about awkward social moments.

MERCURY'S RETROGRADE

Zohar Dvir

UK | 2020, 6 min

A millennial is looking for her magic 8 ball inside her unconsciousness.

BYE LITTLE BLOCK! | PÁ KIS PANELOM!

Éva Darabos

Hungary | 2020, 9 min

A young woman learns that soon she will have to move from the blockhouse flat she lives in. After receiving the upsetting news from the owner of the flat she is overwhelmed with emotions. Her teardrop of farewell grows into a concrete monolith. When the drop hits the ground a surreal panorama of the blockhouse area - she used to call home - unfolds...

EASTER EGGS

Nicolas Keppens

Belgium, France, Netherlands | 2020, 15 min

The Chinese restaurant is empty. Mister Ping is gone. The exotic bird’s cage stands wide open. No one knows what happened. Two friends, Jason and Kevin, see this as a great opportunity to catch the birds and sell them for a great amount of money. But catching the birds ain’t as simple as it seems…

BABY ANGER | BÉBÉ COLÈRE

Jonathan Vinel, Caroline Poggi

France, Italy | 2021, 13 min

A lost baby, confronted with a contemporary world and its empty spaces, asks himself how to grow up.

FRIEND OF A FRIEND

Zachary Zezima

France | 2020, 14 min

A young man is sexually assaulted and subdues, punishes, then befriends his own attacker while confronting his past and the ambiguities of sexuality. Part fiction, part non-fiction, part autobiography and part dream, Friend of a Friend attempts to broaden the conversation around abuse and its motivations and implications, as well as the survivor vs. assailant dynamic and results of ostracism.

COCKPERA

Kata Gugić

Croatia | 2020, 4 min

A short opera inspired by Aesop's fable The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle.

MEGAMALL

Aline Schoch

Switzerland | 2020, 4 min

In a world of escalators, figures pursue their desire to consume in a given rhythm. One of the figures is sucked in at the end of an escalator and finds itself in a quiet, weightless room, where it joins the playing group. Meanwhile, the escalator world is thrown into confusion by a chips-mad dog. When the dog is also sucked in by an escalator, a power struggle between the two worlds begins.

GHOST DOGS

Joe Cappa

USA | 2020, 11 min

A home-alone rescue pup is visited by a host of deceased pups in this mind-bending short.

Filmmaking is always collective and involves dozens or even hundreds of people. Instead, directing is mostly individual, 'auteur'. However, for film collectives, the filmmaking process is no longer an individual experience. It becomes more horizontal, inclusive and open to experiments.

For some film collectives from this program, filmmaking merges with activist practices. The directors reflect on anthropo(capitalo)cene, speciesism, climate change, and extractive capitalism. They politicize migration, criticize colonialism and patriarchy, speak on behalf of marginalized and racialized people of colour.

SIMILAR IMAGE

Lera Malchenko, Oleksandr Hants (fantastic little splash)

Ukraine | 2020, 9 min

On the beach or in the forest, when you close your eyes, you hear the sound of water, wind, rustle leaves, insects. You can still hear the motorboat, ringtone, highway, drone buzzing, plant.
When you just listen, the sounds mix; gently comes that all this nature is not the first or the second, it is the canvas, including you. But as soon as you open your eyes, you notice order everywhere. Human ordered the world more and more rapidly, until he found himself in the forest — unpredictable and magical * • It seems if you go deeper, you will have to expose yourself to danger and disappear * it also seems that this disappearance is not about absence, but about another form of presence.: *

LITTLE LOWER THAN THE ANGELS

Neozoon Art Collective

Germany | 2019, 14 min

The Found Footage Film explores the relationship between religion and speciesism. The main focus is on the numerous Youtube representatives of creationism and the idea that man is the undisputed pinnacle of creation. The experimental film collage moves between old and new worlds of images of religious clients and questions the reasonableness of anthropocentric beliefs.

GATED COMMUNE

Camel Collective

US | 2018, 9 min

Gated Commune is a video informed by Camel Collective's interest in the language of sustainable development, global metabolic processes, and the planning of the built environment. Footage is drawn from an archive of still and moving images harvested from online sources, and the voiceover consists of a hypothetical account of two future tendencies in architecture and the social behaviors that the built environment generates and reinforces.

THE KILLING OF ČÁHCERÁVGA

Miracle Workers Collective

Finland | 2020, 29 min

Miracle Workers Collective’s film work The Killing of Čáhcerávga (2020) is a collision of five different short films that, together, tell a disjointed, communal narrative. Employing a call-and-response strategy, the film expresses a politicised dialogue around indigeneity, movement, and migration in contemporary Europe. The collective share an interest in exploring the potentiality in disciplinary disobedience. Travelling through dreamscapes, lonely snowy plains, absurdist capitalist underwaters, greenhouse gardens, and desert landscapes, the film stretches into a practice of impossible spatial rules, strange dialogue practices, and inconclusive, unresolved scenic endings.

DAY IN THE LIFE

Karrabing Film Collective

Australia | 2020, 32 min

One of the Karrabing's most stirring and direct films, Day in the Life depicts obstacles encountered across four points of their day. A multilayered hip-hop soundscape sees helpless statements by white media make way for the Karrabing's ultimately empowering words of resistance. "Day in the Life" is the seventh major Karrabing Film Collective work. Across five chapters - Breakfast, Playtime, Lunch Break, Cocktail Hour, and Dinner and an audioscape directed by its younger members, DIL is a visual and sonic landscape that dramatizes and satirizes the settler forms of governance and extractive capitalism that Karrabing members encounter over the course of a day.

Throughout the history of the festival, we have inextricably coexisted with Ukrainian cinema. We have always been interested in new names and innovations in Ukrainian cinema. We want to remind ourselves of those movies that have remained in our memory over the years.

Blood

AFTERTASTE

Yura Katynskyi

Ukraine | 2017, 19 min

The guy comes back to the small city, where he meets his old friends. In the end of the day they get into a car with a stranger, whose motives are unknown.

E.W.A.

Gigi Ben Artzi

Ukraine | 2016, 8 min

Ewa is a teenage girl who is suffering from a condition of a constant nose bleed while exploring different aspects of her life and the people around her.

THE POINT

Artem Berkalov

Ukraine | 2014, 26 min

Never forget what’s over your mind.

THE GUM

Olga Makarchuk

Ukraine | 2013, 8 min

A day in life of a chewing gum from its own point of view...

THE END

Mykyta Lyskov

Ukraine | 2018, 11 min

Short stories about the end of the world.

CIRCULATION

Oleksiy Radynski

Ukraine | 2020, 11 min

Three-years-long observation of Kyiv's moving landscape, condensed into 10 minutes of screen time.

Despite the pandemic, for which the world was not ready at all, the film life did not standstill. Adapting to the new conditions, film festivals have successfully digitalized, held online events, received thousands of virtual visitors and awarded the best films.

And thanks to this, we can now present to you the winners of the world's leading film festivals — in our Festival Hits program.

DARLING

Saim Sadiq

Pakistan, USA / 2019, 16 min

An erotic dance theater in Lahore prepares for a new show just as a sacrificial goat disappears, an attractive trans girl aspires to grab the limelight and a naive young man falls in love.

CEUTA'S GATE

Randa Maroufi

France, Morocco / 2018, 17 min

Ceuta's Gate is a series of reconstructions of diverse situations observed in Sebta/Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in the north of Morocco. The border of Bab Sebta is the scene of a traffic of manufactured goods, sold at discounted prices. Thousands of people cross this border every day, carrying enormous packages of goods. In the film, we watch this "ballet" of individuals around the border, and witness the dynamics of movement, the plastic and visual appearance of the passage, the characteristic situations of waiting and the redundancy of gestures.

FILIPIÑANA

Rafael Manuel

Philippines, UK, England / 2020, 24 min

The self-contained cosmos of the golf course reflects societal structures. Although new 'tee girl' Isabel still has to learn the rules, she's already looking for loopholes to subvert the system.

SISTERS

Katarina Rešek

Slovenia / 2020, 24 min

Three best friends, sworn virgins, get into a fight with local boys. When things get rough, they are saved by girl in the becoming.

THE MOON

Tomek Popakul

Poland | 2020, 12 min

On the one hand, it’s the apocalypse, and on the other, it feels like any other day. Something bizarre is throbbing on an invisible layer.

THE NIPPLE WHISPERER

Jan van Dyck

Belgium | 2021, 15 min

Maurice Sanders has a gift. He’s a nipple whisperer. Once he was known as “Magic Sandy”. But that was years ago, before Doris, a famous model and Sander’s muse, fell ill. Now, after more than a decade, Doris wants to meet Maurice again.

THE CRIMINALS

Serhat Karaaslan

France, Romania, Turkey | 2021, 24 min

Late at night in a small Turkish town, a young couple tries to find a hotel room to spend the night together.

WILD MINDS

Hannah Elbke

Denmark | 2021, 30 min

15-year-old Daniel does not feel at ease among his peers, even though he tries to fit in, he dreams of a new beginning with his father in the city. Daniel's mother, Bella, works at his school, and is the exact opposite of Daniel, she takes up space, has a loud laugh, and is more intense than most, for better or worse. When Daniel tells his mother that he wants to move, it takes a toll on her and he has to take care of her once more. An incident in which Bella's atypical nature is tested and puts things in perspective. Perhaps vulnerability is also a strength.

What will happen if we give ourselves the will and disregard the role imposed by society? If the weight of your imaginary duties before the imaginary "them" lifts off your shoulders for a bit? Why not try it? We promise you will enjoy it. KISFF continues to experiment and offers you to immerse in the magic world of queer animation.

Tortures

GENIUS LOCI

Adrien Mérigeau

France | 2019, 16 min

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees the urban chaos as a mystical oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide.

POLYAMORY | AMOURS LIBRES

Emily Worms

Belgium | 2020, 5 min

Two friends talk about their relationships.
Polyamory and politics, they only let their love decide.

IN NATURE | DANS LA NATURE

Marcel Barelli

Switzerland | 2021, 5 min

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees the urban chaos as a mystical oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide.

SASA AND PETRE | SAȘA ȘI PETRE

Luca Istodor

Romania, USA | 2019, 10 min

1957, communist Romania. Sașa talks about his 45 year long relationship with Petre, in a time when homosexuality was criminalized.

LUSHFULNESS | CIAŁOŚĆ

Weronika Szyma

Poland | 2020, 6 min

When a girl meets her mirror reflection, unexpectedly her fears and insecurities about her body turn into a passionate and free self-exploration. Her fantasies come to life. But there’s also a darker side to this game. Is it possible to become united with your own self?

EMBRACES | ÉTREINTES

Alain Escalle

France | 2020, 13 min

From the space left empty of embraces, only the frantic circle of memories remains. A dance, Bodies stretch, tear and entwine ... Persecutions, War perhaps, as the breath of absence sounds and the weight of loneliness sounds. A man wakes up naked in the ruins of a past conflict. Then comes the embrace of the memory of the loved one.

FLORA BOREALIS

Casey Friedman

USA | 2020, 10 min

Flora Borealis is an animated short about two gay men struggling with depression in a ruined environment, and a botanical glassblower mourning his wife. Composed of 17,000 hand-drawn frames, the film also uses 3d scans of the Harvard Glass Flowers that inspired the story.

LÈVRES BLEUES (BLUE LIPS)

Philippe Hamelin

Canada | 2020, 7 min

Despite the pandemic, for which the world was not ready at all, the film life did not standstill. Adapting to the new conditions, film festivals have successfully digitalized, held online events, received thousands of virtual visitors and awarded the best films.

And thanks to this, we can now present to you the winners of the world's leading film festivals — in our Festival Hits program.

The films contain several sequences with imagery and sustained flashing lights that may affect those who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or have other photosensitivities.

WATERMELON JUICE

Irene Moray

Spain / 2019, 22 min

On holiday in Catalonia, Pol and Bàrbara share a house with friends. The pair does what pairs do amidst the heat of summer and alongside the body of another. But something is wrong, and is instantly noticeable.

DAUGHTER

Daria Kashcheeva

Czech Republic / 2019, 15 min

A girl who was hurt as a child keeps the memory of it alive. Having lacked love and empathy from her father in the past, she is not able to share her feelings with him. She can’t get rid of the painful memories taking her back to the day when she brought home a dead little bird and her father…

I AM AFRAID TO FORGET YOUR FACE

Sameh Alaa

Egypt, France / 2020, 15 min

After being separated for 82 days, Adam travels down a rough road to be reunited with the one he loves, whatever it takes.

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US AND THE SKY

Vasilis Kekatos

Greece / 2019, 9 min

One night, two strangers meet for the first time at an old gas station. One has stopped to gas up his bike, while the other is just stranded. Lacking the 22.50€ he needs to get home, he will try to sell him the distance that separates them from the sky.

DUSTIN

Naïla Guiguet

France / 2020, 20 min

In an abandoned warehouse, a crowd is dancing as one on 145 BPM techno music. Among them is Dustin, a young transgender and crew: Felix, Raya and Juan. As the night draws on, collective hysteria morphs into sweet melancholy, and euphoria into yearning for tenderness.

The new generation of independent animators from South Korea is not afraid of challenges — they take risks and experiment with style in an attempt to find their voice and uniqueness.

Curated by Sasha Prokopenko

Death, Miscarriages/Abortion, Abuse, Blood, Needles

INCOMPLETE WOMAN | 조금 부족한 여자

Huh Su-young

South Korea | 2020, 10 min

One day, the dismembered body of a woman was found.
Except for her lower body and the left hand, other body parts were disappeared without a trace and no evidence of any intrusion.
So her lower body and the left hand take the road in search of others that had left for the reason they hated each other so much.

MATE

Im Chaerin

South Korea, USA | 2019, 5 min

A close-up of the powers that influence mating rituals: powers of attraction and repulsion. An experimental film combining animation, printmaking, and photography.

40

Lee Moon-Joo

South Korea | 2020, 8 min

“Dad has aged.”
I thought that “Being old” is slowly coming.
However, it’s passing through Dad very urgently and surely.

SALVIA AT NINE | 아홉 살의 사루비아

Jang Na-ri

South Korea | 2020, 7 min

A nine-year-old girl lives in the same neighborhood as a father who watches erotic videos next to his child and an old man who habitually molests his neighborhood’s elementary school kids.
The girl goes to a corner shop and tries to steal some snacks but the shop owner catches her on the spot. The girl puts a coin on the counter which she was holding to pay for her candy and quickly leaves the shop.

A BAD DAY | 나쁜 날

Park Jung-Seo

South Korea | 2020, 11 min

A pregnant woman gets stabbed in the stomach by a child who was playing with a fish cake skewer while shopping at a supermarket...

TIGER AND OX | 호랑이 와 소

Kim Seughee

South Korea | 2019, 8 min

What does divorce mean to women in Korean patriarchal society? Is a fatherless family failure? In order to find the answer for the questions, a single mother and her daughter start the conversation.

GHOSTS | 유령들

Park Jee-Youn

South Korea | 2020, 10 min

In the boredom of life, they became ghosts. The crows are after them.

SURA | 수라

Jeong Haeji

South Korea | 2020, 6 min

High school student. My best friend is pregnant.

KKUM | 꿈

Kim Kang-Min

South Korea | 2020, 9 min

My mother's dreams have always been strong premonitions for important moments in my life. I rely on her dreams more than any religion.

MEMORY THEATRE

Hahm Heeyoon

South Korea | 2020, 5 min

The theatrical stage takes place in a foreign space and reveals a feast of different forms of memories.

SAN | 산

Jin Woo

South Korea | 2019, 7 min

Appa, Daughter, and the kid live in the mountain. Appa wants to feed his daughter, but she wants to run away from the table.

EYES AND HORNS | 아이즈앤혼즈

Im Chaerin

South Korea, Germany | 2021, 6 min

The exploration of masculinity begins with the Minotaur, a mythical creature the artist Picasso used to portray himself in his etching print series. The Minotaur goes through a violent struggle between being male and female. Finally, the lines blur, and the boundaries of sexes disappear.