Mati Diop
November 2021. 26 royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artefacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But what attitude to adopt to these ancestors’ homecoming in a country that had to forge ahead in their absence? While the soul of the artifacts is freed, the debate rages among students at the University of Abomey-Calavi.
Dea Kulumbegashvili
France - Italy - Georgia
134 min.
After a newborn dies during delivery, the morals and professionalism of an OB-GYN, Nina, come under scrutiny amid rumors that she performs illegal abortions for those in need.
Viv Li
France
15 min.
Short film
Sandstorm blows, water becomes scarce. In a remote mining town without any radio signals, a quirky teenage girl gets curious about a passing truck driver.
Izibene Oñederra
A small community brought to its knees by an environmental crisis adapts as it can to the new reality. The more privileged inhabitants enjoy a hedonistic life based on the notion of carpe diem, while the others have no choice but to get by as they can. What does the future hold? If there’s nothing else, can anything save us?
Michael Fetter Nathansky
What if the person you love the most suddenly becomes a stranger in your eyes? Nadine, a dedicated factory worker, tries to revive her relationship by reconnecting with her deepest emotions. But who did she once see in him that she can no longer find? A romantic social drama about the painful process of falling out of love and the initial magic of falling in love.
WIP Europa 2022
Hiroshi Okuyama
On a small Japanese island, life revolves around the changing seasons. Winter is time for ice hockey at school, but Takuya isn’t too thrilled about it. His real interest lies in Sakura, a figure skating rising star from Tokyo, for whom he starts to develop a genuine fascination. Coach and former champion Arakawa, spots potential in Takuya, and decides to mentor him to form a duo with Sakura for an upcoming competition.
Leos Carax
France
40 min.
Medium-length film
A self-portrait traversing a filmography spanning more than 40 years from the director who, while questioning the decisive moments of his life, captures the political fears of the time.
Federico Luis
Argentina - Germany
22 min.
Short film
Pehuén Pedre trains two actors for an examination at the civil registry, where both will have the opportunity to obtain their own disability certificate.
Ataka51 -
Germany - Russia
13 min.
Short film
In an old Soviet recording studio, a group of musicians attempt to record a composition based on Pushkin's play A Feast in Time of Plague. A weird and frightening phenomena disturbs the musicians - whether it is the spirits of the past or an echo of a war. Nobody notices what is happening around them until the very end.
Jane Schoenbrun
Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show - a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen's view of reality begins to crack.
Elena López Riera
Spain - Switzerland
40 min.
Medium-length film
Mature women discuss marriage, their first time, their intimate relationship with sexuality. By repeating these ancient rites, the director questions her own lack of wedlock, children and, with it, a chain of disappearing mother-daughter relations.
Tanmay Chowdhary
In a coastal town in India, two young women encounter the news of a missing acquaintance Leela. Rumors about her death have spread, with uncertainty surrounding whether she took her own life or managed to escape to the city. As they go on about their day debating her disappearance, the nature of their relationship in this dead end town reveals itself.
Jessica Sarah Rinland
Intimate and fragmented moments unfold in a community of zoos and animal rescue centers across Argentina. As histories of these institutions are uncovered, dedicated workers commit both day and night to caring for the remaining enclosed animals, fostering a mutual bond that transcends imagined boundaries between human and animal.
Ikusmira Berriak 2020
YoYo Liu
In a remote rural area, a mother tragically dies during childbirth, leaving behind a daughter who witnesses the event. With no breast milk for the newborn, the family's cow becomes their lifeline, providing sustenance and hope. The daughter's bond with the cow deepens over time, until another ruthless tragedy strikes, shattering their fragile world once more.
Nelson Carlo De los Santos Arias
Dominican Republic - France - Germany - Namibia
122 min.
A voice that does not grasp the structural perception of time. From a trance, it traverses the languages of a historical event. Claiming to be the hippopotamus killed in Colombian lands. This is its story, which, like these neighbouring towns, was shaped by beings who died never truly knowing where they really were.
Nino Benashvili
Georgia - USA - Canada
13 min.
Short film
A widowed mother and daughter's ascetic life in an isolated village in the Caucasus mountains is interrupted by the arrival of a foreign traveller in need of shelter. His presence awakens erotic longing in both women, who are left to simmer in their guilty consciences after the traveller departs.
Maximiliano Schonfeld
A few years ago a man appeared, claiming to speak an ostensibly lost language: Chaná. In only a short time dictionaries were published and the language was completely recovered. This man also situated the Chaná people in the same place where the descendants of the Volga Germans, in the Entre Ríos province, are today inexorably losing their dialect.
WIP Latam 2023
Johan Grimonprez
Belgium - France
150 min.
Jazz and decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that rewrites the Cold War episode that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. It is 1961, six months after the admission of 16 newly independent African countries to the UN, a political earthquake that shifts the majority vote from the colonial powers to the Global South.
Arnaud Desplechin
"What does it mean, to go to the movies? Why have people been going for over one hundred years? I set out to celebrate movie theaters and their manifold magic. So I walked in the footsteps of young Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction and discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures". (Arnaud Desplechin)
Kohei Igarashi
Accompanied by his best friend Miyata, Sanu returns to Izu, a Japanese seaside resort where he fell in love five years earlier with his wife Nagi. Overcome by grief and nostalgia for the place, Sano starts looking for a red cap that Nagi had once misplaced.
Mahdi Fleifel
UK - Palestine - France - Greece - Netherlands - Germany - Qatar - United Arab Emirates
105 min.
Chatila and Reda are saving to pay for fake passports to get out of Athens. But when Reda loses their hard-earned cash to his dangerous drug addiction, Chatila hatches an extreme plan, which involves them posing as smugglers and taking hostages in an effort to get him and his best friend out of their hopeless environment before it is too late.
Hikaru Uwagawa
A son and his immigrant mother in Madrid wait for his father to return. A Basque woman and a Japanese man meet in San Sebastian and he shares his stories about home. A drifting Japanese man returns to his family for Obon to welcome the spirits of the deceased. These fragmental stories of each daily life in different places of the world imply their reminiscence of home.
Ikusmira Berriak 2023