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Mbadjini in Grande Comores. A man leads us to a mysterious hut, far from his village, where he made a pact 30 years ago.

Born in Saint-Denis, Réunion, Idrisse AHAMADA MADI is a filmmaker and artist. A graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art de La Réunion, his practice lies at the intersection of reality and fiction, exploring the gray areas where perceptions waver. His work, which has been exhibited at venues including the Cité des Arts in Réunion, the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris, and the Mulhouse Biennale, questions forms of belief, memory, and transmission through an aesthetic that blends mysticism and metamodernity. Between cinema and visual art, Idrisse AHAMADA MADI composes sensitive narratives and haunting images, where the visible is constantly doubled by an invisible presence. He currently lives and works in Paris.

Indian director Ashim Ahluwalia and designer Little Shilpa joined forces for a dark and mysterious film that turns sociocultural conventions of beauty, desire, and sophistication on their head. HUM ?? (We/Us) is a strange beast of a film that lives somewhere between avant-garde performance film, narcotic fashion parade, Bollywood wedding freakout and Toshio Matsumoto’s underground cinema. The film commences amidst a fever dream on a particularly stifling afternoon. A modern-day Cinderella toils endlessly, exposing the tedious labour that maintains the grandeur of the space within which she is trapped. Tragedy and despair follow as this Cinderella is brutally rejected from the hallowed inner halls by its gatekeepers - the latter present themselves as spiritually (and materially) superior. From the nightmare’s shadows, glorious phantoms emerge as if to exact revenge, disrupting the stale splendour at a typical heterosexual wedding party. In the aftermath, contradictory energies coalesce in a riotous, maximalist rave of third-world proportions. Nothing is the same ever again. Despite its gothic beginnings, the campy dystopian fairy tale is fundamentally about the joy, humour, and boundless imagination of the marginalised. The performance and theatricality of high avant-garde fashion are strategically subverted to challenge the notion that the wealthy have a total monopoly over beauty. Glamour here emerges from the gutter in the dead of night. Workers, drag performers and queer outsiders, acid attack and gender-based violence survivors, people who are deemed undesirable or remain invisible before beauty and fashion standards - an entire community shows up to exact vengeance from the stuffy and the conventional. Led by Cinderella, the wedding crashers unabashedly take their space, stirring the party-goers to let loose in an anarchic, hypnotic frenzy.

Ashim Ahluwalia is a director, writer, and producer. His debut, JOHN & JANE, premiered at the Berlin and Toronto Film Festivals. His subsequent film, MISS LOVELY, explored the underbelly of India's sex-horror film industry and was selected as an official entry at the Cannes Film Festival. Ahluwalia's first two films, recognized for their tone and themes, won multiple Indian and International Awards, reshaping the perception of contemporary Indian cinema. This was followed by DADDY, starring Arjun Rampal and Farhan Akhtar, an unconventional biopic on real life Mumbai crime lord Arun Gawli, narrated through varied, fractured viewpoints. His short film EVENTS IN A CLOUD CHAMBER, created in collaboration with modernist painter Akbar Padamsee and shot entirely on Super 8 film, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The film was screened at Experimenta (BFI London Film Festival), New Directors/ New Films and Punto De Vista, amongst others. Ahluwalia’s distinctive works, straddling the line between pulp and high art, and between disparate formats and scales, have been showcased at venues like the Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou. His latest series, CLA$$, delves into wealth disparity and social dynamics at an elite New Delhi school. Released in February 2023 on Netflix, it ranked as the No. 1 show in over 22 countries, including India, Brazil, and Mexico. Ahluwalia was named "one of the ten best emerging film directors working today" by Phaidon Press in "Take 100: The Future of Film”, and is the sole Indian filmmaker to have had films premiere in the official selections of Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, and SXSW festivals.

For the sake of freedom she leaves the door to her memory open. So Omer enters her room every day healing her broken heart through his word and spirit.

My Name is Abdalla Mohamed Gaffar Ahmed, a young and aspiring Sudanese film director who shot and directed my first short feature entitled ?Beyond Memory? ON 11-2012, And second short documentary film about " US Technology Sanctions on Sudan" ON 1-2014 . Born in the United Arab Emirates Since 1990, I moved back to Sudan in 2002, when my family resettled back to my native land. I am currently enrolled in a local undergraduate study program undertaking a media degree in ALMASHREQ Universty of Science and Technology. I consider my recent found interest and work in film making to be the crowning of my collective long running interests in photography and creative writing. Throughout my childhood and early youth, living in diverse spaces, has helped increase and develop my sensitivities towards international cultures all which seem to feature in the pattern of my arts. As a young artist I hope to retain my experimental and dependent artistic nature, being the sole mode of which I can express myself and the dynamic and vibrant context around me. Abdalla Ahmed 00249910112202 a.nirmen@hotmail.com

The Letters of Confinement is an essay film filmed entirely within the confinement of the filmmaker’s house during the quarantine. The first half of the film covers the story of creation according to the the ancient Egyptian genesis. The second half introduces the counter-narrative of creation based on a poem by Ibn Al-Farid, A Sufi master. The film goes on to cover stories like the deluge, the annual inundation, the nature of names, and perversions dictated by the confinement, like voyeurism and eavesdropping. During the documentation process, the surroundings work in accordance to the will of the filmmaker as if the exterior reflects his interior desires. The film follows a collage-like format. Collecting different stories and unrelated footage within the frame of the film. In doing so, an alternative narrative is created where fiction and reality overlap.

Noureldin Ahmed is an independent filmmaker, film curator, translator and visual artist; born, raised and based in Cairo, Egypt. He studied Media Design at the faculty of Applied Arts and Sciences at the German University in Cairo. In his work, Nour questions the notion of self identity within the urban context, namely in Cairo, opening up his self-centered pieces to public viewership and interpretation. Nour has participated in a number of group exhibitions in the past years. His first film, Summertime Dreams, was screened at Ismailia International Film Festival for Shorts and Documentaries in 2019. In 2020 he held his first solo exhibition, A Self-Portrait with a Halo and a Pomegranate. Nour is one of the recipients of a number of grants, including: The Self Organization Grant from Mophradat, 2021, and On the Road Again, Again from Pro Helvetia Cairo, 2022. He is a member of a cinematic collective, A Kiss in the Desert, and a research group, cifrcifrcifr. He worked as a programmer & programme co-ordinator for the short film competition at Cairo International Film Festival, a coordinator of the Arabic publications at Gouna Film Festival, in addition to working as an assistant director, assistant producer, editor and translator. Nour is currently undertaking his master's degree in Film and Screen Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK.

An audio-visual diary on the afterlives of encounters with South Asian Muslim migrants in Athens. Traces of exchanges in neighborhood cafés, makeshift mosques, Ramadan evenings, and half-sung songs ? held in fragments of sound, image, and text. Through stories, rituals, and everyday gestures, it listens to echoes of displacement and longing, tracing the ways in which memory, faith, and intimacy are held.

Shaheen Ahmed is a filmmaker from the Malabar Coast of Kerala, South India. His work explores memory and identity, often at the intersection of faith, intimacy, and collective spiritual imagination.

Curriculum is a tiny scale documentary set in Los Angelescentered around the larger theme of knowledge. It loosely follows a character, a tutor for the No Child Left Behind Act implemented by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Running through a few simple ideological questions rather than investigatingcharacters, facts, or events (as one would expect of a documentary), the film was made to open up the matter of education in Los Angeles in relation to socio-economic as well as subjective positions.

Stella Ahn is a Los Angeles native. With a B.A. in Film & Media Studies from the University of California, Irvine, she went on to California Institute of the Arts, where she received her MFA in Film/Video. She likes to make experimental narratives, essay films, and video loops. Her work focuses on unsteadily dismantling the intersections of image, fiction/reality, and politics.

A single channel video piece, looped. The piece is about 13 minutes long, with 1 minute of black over silence at the end. It features two characters, no dialogue, and depending on how one looks at it, either no narrative or a countless number of narratives. The soundscape is equally as important as the visuals. It is immersive, taken from everyday life, containing the bellows of trains to automobile traffic to background music at a shopping mall. Newhall is the district in Southern California in which the piece was conceived and shot.

Stella Ahn is a Los Angeles native. With a B.A. in Film & Media Studies from the University of California, Irvine, she went on to California Institute of the Arts, where she received her MFA in Film/Video. She likes to make experimental narratives, essay films, and video loops. Her work focuses on unsteadily dismantling the intersections of image, fiction/reality, and politics.

The film uses the methods of presentation as a path to the company of other living beings. It expands upon the issues of ecological moving image narrative, the focus being on presentation, imaging and imagination in the context of the moving image.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila is a renowned Finnish filmmaker and contemporary visual artist, born in Finland in 1959. She studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, at the London College of Printing and at the University of Helsinki. She has long been considered a master of the cinematic installation form. In 2011, the artist was appointed to the main jury of the Venice Film Festival and in 2013 she was the Chairwoman of the Jury in FIDMarseille. She is currently doing her PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Ahtila’s work is conceptually organized around the construction of image, language, narrative and space. Her earlier works dealt with unsettling human dramas of teenage sexuality, family relations, mental disintegration, and death. Her recent work tackles more profound and artistic questions where she investigates the processes of perception and attribution of meaning—at times through a cultural and existential thematic, like colonialism, faith, and post-humanism. Ahtila’s work has received many awards including the ARTE Award for Best European Film at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; the Great Prize Fiction at Vila do Conde International Short Film Festival, and the Best Nordic Short Film at Nordisk Panorama. Her crafted work was showed in some of the most prominent contemporary art museums and festivals including the Guggenheim, Bilbao; Monderna Museet, Stokholm; DHC/Art Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal; Jeu de Paume Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo d/Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bolzano, Italy, and Tate Modern, London. Her short films have also been shown at major festivals throughout the world, including Berlin International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and Venice International Film Festival.

WHERE IS WHERE? is based on an incident which took place during the Algerian independence war in 1950?s. Reacting to the acts of violence committed by the French, two young Algerian boys murder their friend, a French boy. The story, told in multiple simultaneous images, starts in the present day as Death enters the house of the Poet. She starts to investigate these past events, which gradually become interwoven with the present moment. A mist clears from the back garden of the Poet`s house to reveal a small row-boat which has appeared in the swimming pool. In it sit Adel and Ismael.

EIJA-LIISA AHTILA Born in 1959 in Hämeenlinna, Finland, Eija-Liisa Ahtila is visual artist and filmmaker. Her films and multi-screen installations explore and experiment with narrative storytelling, creating extraordinary tales out of ordinary human experiences. Her works deal with separation, loss, sexuality, relationships among family members, mental disintegration, and death. They investigate the processes of perception and the attribution of meaning, with breaking down the story on several screens around the viewer in the space. Making installations and films has become for her a process of identifying the links between images, sounds, rhythms, light, characters and words, and using them to approach and construct the story. Eija-Liisa Ahtila was the recipient of the Artes Mundi of Cardiff, Wales in 2006, the Vincent Van Gogh Biannual Award for Contemporary Art in Europe, Maastricht, The Netherlands, as well as the Coutts Contemporary Art Foundation Award, Switzerland, both in 2000, and the Edstrand Art Prize, Sweden in 1998. Ahtila attended Helsinki University, Faculty of Law (1980-85); Independent Art School, 198184; and London College of Printing, School of Media and Management, Film and Video (1990-91). She received a Certificate from U.C.L.A. in Film, TV, Theater and Multimedia Studies, Los Angeles (1994-95) and attended special courses at the America Film Institute, Advanced Technology Program, Los Angeles (1994-95). Ahtila has exhibited extensively at numerous museums and film festivals around the world and her films have received distinctive film awards and prizes over the years. Her work has also been widely seen on television in Europe. British Film Institute has published a home DVD box of her films titled The Cinematic Works of Eija-Liisa Ahti/a. Eija-Liisa Ahtila currently lives and works in Helsinki.

The Annunciation is a film in which one of the central motifs of Christian iconography is constructed and re-enacted through moving image.

Eija-Liisa Ahtila Born in 1959 in Hämeenlinna, Finland, Eija-Liisa Ahtila is visual artist and filmmaker. Her films and multi-screen installations explore and experiment with narrative storytelling, creating extraordinary tales out of ordinary human experiences.

OR119 is a theoretical musical based on the ideas of radical psychologist Wilhelm Reich who, as Freud’s favorite student, centered his study on the intersections of psychoanalysis and Marxism. Reich’s best work advocates for a re-imagining of family structure and gender roles, sexual liberation for younger people and the working poor and a deep understanding of the effect of fascisms on the body. OR119 is based on quotations by Reich set to song and also in imaginary conversations between Reich and a number of contemporary feminist thinkers. With a group of women friends in improvisation, we playfully examine the unsettled legacy of Reich and his surprisingly relevant dynamic with feminist thought. Reich proposed Orgone, a universal life energy (akin to Chi) based on sex and positive expression that Reich claims to have discovered, and here we grant him the honor of the next number on the periodic chart (OR119) for his discovery. The musical resonance and vibrations of the voices in song make manifest the invisible positive energy that Reich believed was universal. This is by no means a bio-pic! but it is a celebration of life's potential for immersion in nature, the cosmos and interactive energy.

PEGGY AHWESH has worked since the 70's in wide range of technologies and styles in an inquiry into feminism, cultural identity and genre.  Featured in the Whitney Biennial (1991, 1995, 2002). Solo exhibitions include: Spike Island (2021); Kunsthall Stavanger (2022); Cleave (2019) Microscope Gallery, New York. Film retrospectives: Anthology Film Archives/NYC, Guggenheim Bilbao/Spain, New Media Fest Seoul/Korea, BFI/London and others. Ahwesh is Emeritus Professor from Bard College and al-Quds Bard College, West Bank, Palestine, where she taught media production and history. Collaborator JACQUELINE GOSS makes movies and web-based works that explore how political, cultural, and scientific systems change our sense of self through animation and live action in documentary and essay forms. Her work has shown at Eyebeam Atelier, The Wexner Center for the Arts and festivals in New York, London, Rotterdam. Goss has received awards from the Tribeca Film Institute, Creative Capital Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Herb Alpert Foundation, the United States Artist Award and the Berliner Kunstlerprogramm. Her videos are distributed by Video Data Bank in Chicago. She teaches Media at Bard College

The video shows two policemen wearing Spanish anti-riot uniforms, dancing a tango version of the famous Eurhythmics 80´s song in the luxurious and extremely decorated ballroom space of the XIX century palace Museum Cerralbo in Madrid. The fantastic lyric of the song “ Sweet dreams are made of this ” is the central motor of the piece. The tango version cove song has been arranged by the bandoneon player Fernando Girdini and recorded exclusively for the video. In its origins, tango was mainly a dance between two men. Tango was the result of the cultural mix of locals with African, Italian and Hispanic immigrants. It was originally forbidden by the church and rejected by high society, which resulted in its development in poor suburbs and working-class slums. The video reflects about the last years crisis, 15M movement, the violent riots, Cataluña independency, brutality of Spanish police and military forces and the recent antidemocratic Spanish law ” Ley Mordaza ” (the Gag Rule), becoming illegal and punished to take photos or videos of police forces or use of the police uniforms without the Government’s permission. Desire, power, decadence and frustration: they shoot horses, don´t they?

Carlos Aires was born in Ronda, Spain in 1974. He obtained a bachelor in Fine Arts at the University of Granada in Spain. Upon graduating in 1997, he moved to the Netherlands and completed his postgraduate studies at Fontys Academy (Tilburg, Netherlands), HISK (Antwerp, Belgium) and Ohio State University (Ohio, USA). He was honored with prestigious grants and awards, including: OMI Residency (USA), Edith Fergus Gilmore Award (USA), Generation2008 Caja Madrid (Spain), Young Belgian Art Prize (Belgium), 1st Award Young Andalusian Artists (Spain), Fulbright (USA) and De Pont Atelier (the Netherlands). He has participated in numerous exhibitions in national and international institutions, such as: CAC (Malaga, Spain), MACBA (Barcelona, Spain), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Imperial Belvedere Palace (Vienna, Austria), MUSAC (Leon, Spain), BB6 Bucharest International Biennale (Bucharest, Romania), B.P.S. 22 (Charleroi, Belgium), 5th Thessaloniki Biennale (Thessaloniki , Greece), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil (Mexico City, Mexico), Canada Contemporary Art Museum (Montreal, Canada). His work can be found within significant public collections: ARTIUM (Spain), MACBA (Spain), Fondation Francès (France), ARTER (Turkey), CAC (Spain), Maison Particulière (Belgium), Ministry of Culture of Spain, Progress Art (Saudi Arabia), National Belgium Bank (Belgium), 21c Museum (USA), MAK (Austria) among others.

A pilgrimage taken by a group of readers to the ancestral house of a writer (a house that haunts all of his stories ) nested in the heart of a city , turns into an exploration of the city , into an exercise in mapmaking…into a hallucinatory encounter with the real. Told through the eyes of a stranger, a newcomer, walking through a modern bustling city, blanketed by a dream made of ancient lore's ,stories and signs, the film tries to explore the alchemical process behind the art of storytelling, that transmutes the 'real' that inspired it . And the impossible mirages a body of work can create in an obsessive readers mind which compels him to chase it ...

Born and brought up in Quilon India , Shahi A.J is An Alumni of Film and Television Institute of India , where he specialized in script writing and direction. His students work has been shown at various film festivals including Clapstick Kolkata, Signs Kerala, Hong Kong Film Festival etc. He teaches filmmaking St Joseph College . He is a recipient of the Practice Grant form Indian Foundation of Arts(IFA). His work has been shown in Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022 and the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSSFK). His debut feature premiered at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam 2023 .

It is April 7th 2020, 8 months has passed since Emine Bulut was murdered by her former husband. There is a letter which is written to her, and to all femicide victims around the world; a letter which questions femininity, how it feels to be a woman in Turkey…

Özge Akarsu was born and raised in Turkey. She currently lives in Belgium where she also studies animation film at Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), in Ghent. Before starting studying animation, she achieved a master's degree in Human Rights Law, specialized in Political Philosophy, in Istanbul. After three years of doing a PhD research on Spinoza and modernity at University of Antwerp, she got interested in animation and filmmaking which helps her to express thoughts, feelings, ideas, instincts that cannot be explained solely in words.

Impressions of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. These countries, going through a change, which have lived a similar story since the war are still very scarred by this event deep in the roots of the ground going now different ways. A trip at the end of summer into the debts of winter, from the German border to Moscow.

Born on June 6, 1950, Chantal Akerman comes from a Jewish family of emigrants from Eastern Europe. Her mother was deported, and her film making is a constant link with this family trauma. She is accepted at the Institut Supérieur des Arts but her stay is short. She leaves for the United States and it is there, from the American avant-garde, that she draws most of its inspiration. Since then her career has taken her to France, the United States and Belgium, but also Germany and Russia, her country of origin. Specialist in experimental documentaries she embraces a more academic cinema with two films, the Appointments D `Anna and a Couch in New York, with Juliette Binoche and William Hurt. In 2004, the Pompidou center of Paris devotes an exhibition to her works. Akerman is also an actress on certain occasions, in films made by other film makers and he has also composed several pieces of music and films scripts.

Captain Gervasio`s Family is a 16mm black and white silent portrait of a Spiritist community in Palmelo, a small town in the interior of Brazil. It?s a town of 2000 inhabitants, half of whom are psychic mediums. The film refers to a map drawn by a Spiritist woman in Palmelo, charting twenty astral cities hovering above the whole of the Brazilian territory. Cities ?like those on earth, but infinitely more perfect?. The Spiritists in Palmelo practice what is known as `the magnetic chain?, a legacy from the German physician Franz Mesmer, the founder of Spiritism Allan Kardec, and the French botanist François Deleuze. The film is a collaboration between the artists Tamar Guimaraes (BR) and Kasper Akhøj (DK).

Kasper Akhøj was born in Copenhagen, Denmark where he lives and works. He studied at the Czech National Film School (FAMU), Städelschule - Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Frankfurt, and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. He is also a former participant of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. He is represented by Ellen de Bruijne Projects in Amsterdam and has exhibited widely at major museums and biennials, both solo and in collaboration with Brazilian artist Tamar Guimaraes, most recently at last years 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace. Tamar Guimarães was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. She holds a BFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and MFA from Malmö Art Academy, Sweden. She is also a former participant of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. She is represented by Galeria Fortes Vilaça in Sao Paolo, and has exhibited widely at major museums and biennials, both solo and in collaboration with Danish artist Kasper Akhøj, most recently at last years 55th Venice Biennale, The Encyclopedic Palace.

A young British filmmaker arrives in New York to find finance for an impossible feature.

Ayo Akingbade is an artist, writer and filmmaker. She works predominantly with film and installation addressing themes of power, urbanism and stance. Akingbade engages with the fluid boundaries between the self and the other by gathering local and cultural experiences in intimate and playful interpretations. Her work has often documented experiences of rapid social change in London, where she was born and raised.

In the video, the artists combine pseudoscience with repetition to investigate the connection between technology and truth. An E-meter device was exploited as a crude polygraph machine. Its pseudoscientific function is to "detect lies" in order to monitor a statement`s progression from lie to truth. Statements were read to and repeated by the participants. Through continuous repetition, the subjects built a relationship with the spoken words, which over time, matured into experiences and finally beliefs. All of the combined elements resulted in mettre en abîme the transformation of a political affirmation into a belief.

Edward Akrout is a Franco-British artist that works between London, New York and Paris. His practice, which largely includes painting, drawing and sculpting, is best described as abstract expressionism. Personal website: EdwardAkrout.com Representation: Lahd Gallery Jakob Boeskov is a Danish-Icelandic artist and filmmaker that works between New York and Copenhagen. Having graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, his pieces have been shown in museums such as New Museum, Science Politiques, Moscow State Academy Art Institute and the Stedelijk Museum. Personal website: JakobBoeskov.com Representation: The Scandinavian Institute

They go to a day trip to an island next to Istanbul. They find themselves captivated by the never ending cityscape and sink into a contemplation on urban decay. Living in a concrete jungle is their future.

Born in Istanbul in 1987, Eren Aksu is a Berlin based filmmaker. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film& Television and currently studies Arts& Media at Berlin University of the Arts. His short films include Aydınlık (2013), Cosmorama (2015), İki Yer (2017).

Joining a recent wave of immigration from Turkey to Germany, Asli 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.

Eren Aksu is a director and editor based in Berlin. He was born in ?stanbul and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film&TV from Istanbul Bilgi University, Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts Degrees in Arts&Media from Universität der Künste Berlin. He took part in Talents Sarajevo as s director and his films were screened at many international film festivals such as Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, Dresden Short Film Festival, Akbank Short Film Festival. His latest film “Other Than That, I’m Fine” won 3sat promotional award in 66. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.