Short Films Evening 2

Director: Stefan Sidovski
Macedonia, 13 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1508/-face

Vetka is a forty-year old single mother without a permanent job. Her husband has died, and together with her 14-year-old son Simcho, she lives in poor conditions. They clean car windows, collect old things, and barely have enough to feed themselves. But, one night, Simcho chooses the delinquents path to social justice…

FACE is an ode to the moral truthfulness and human endurance of one seemingly fragile woman. Filmed in black and white and in a neorealist manner, the film depicts the lives of marginalized, socially disadvantaged people with a documentary persuasiveness, showing us to our shame, these people living right next to us with no real chance to integrate into society. With FACE, Prof. Stefan Sidovski, acknowledged as “Master of Amateur Filmmaking” and the first person to explore academically the area of Film and Philosophy in Macedonia, filmed his first professional film in 2011, produced by Arka Media and with the support of the Film Fund of the Republic of Macedonia.

Director: Melina Pafundi
Germany / Argentina, 9 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1509/-when-the-androgynous-child

From the depths of an existential crisis, there is the voice of the androgynous child rising. When the child speaks from his or her androgyny – which is neither truth nor appearance, neither male nor female, but all at once – they will return to the places where they have belonged. Visually impressive anthropological poem that searches for human nature deep in the mythological, to the primordial dismembering of the androgyne and the creation of binary models of an "either-or" behavior.

Director: Shady Srour
Israel / Germany / Palestinian Territories, 15 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1510/-oslo

Ziad, a Palestinian day laborer, is denied entry into Israel for work that day. But how could he possibly return home empty handed after promising his daughter some meat for dinner? The journey back is long, and what he encounters in the dry mountains challenges his dignity. A poetic and tragic reflection on the everyday struggle of Palestinian breadwinners to preserve their own dignitiy in conditions of permanent degradation.

The film was nominated as OFF Short Film Candidate for the European Film Awards 2019 and was part of the Official Selection of Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2020.

Director: Deja Gordon
USA, 13 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1511/-seeping-blue

Young Chloe is a suicide prevention hotline worker. But, who is there to help her face her own fears and her own depression? One day she unexpectedly ends up receiving help from the other end of the line. A short cinematic alarm to the silent part of our society about the problems of mental health, the rising depression and the problem of suicide.

Director: Andreas Cordes, Robert Köhler
Germany, 10 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1512/-boje

„How do I know I love somebody? Where was I before I was born? How do I know I’m not dreaming?”

Boje and his father live in a remote cottage by the sea. With no one but each other. A boy longing for answers. A father struggling for words. Not wanting to leave Boye alone with his questions, Holke turns to the sea for help. Answers magically find their way to Boje – as father and son find a way to talk. A warm family story showing that there is not one right way to communicate love.

Director: Nikita Tanadzhy
Poland, 15 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1513/_ticket

Yura, a young Ukrainian actor, lives in his rental car and has to work as an uber driver in Warsaw to make ends meet. Following the sudden news of the family tragedy, he has one night to raise the money needed to buy a plane ticket home. But what if there is no money, and there is also no courage to admit the defeat and overcome the pride? An existential drama that touches upon the topics of integration, discrimination and identity.

Director: Ana Torres
Spain, 5 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1514/-look-at-me

Тhe debut film LOOK AT ME by Ana Torres, solely filmed on a mobile phone, is an experimental project which arises from a spontaneous, improvised creative process through which the author expresses a double dialogue, that of the artist (creator) with her audience, and that of a woman with a man. A brief cinematic self-reflection coming from the individual experience, rooted in the author's gendered perspective.

Director: Jimmy Olsson
Sweden, 13 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1515/2_2nd_class

One night, the young and caring Charlotte, a second grade teacher, is brutally faced with the horrors of human prejudice. Right after the return from the hospital to her school, she is confronted with the devastating realization that one of her students is the son of the man who injured her. But Charlotte is there to teach, and not to accuse or to point fingers. A film about fear, hatred, racism and the rise of the far right.

Director: Agnieszka Chmura
Poland, 15 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1516/-border-crossing

Humming, sluggish summer of 1989, the last year before the fall of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. A car with a caravan reaches the Czechoslovakian-Polish border and joins the long queue. Bees are buzzing in the grass. Enclosed in a small space, a family bickers as the atmosphere thickens. On the back seat, a little girl is absorbed by the instinctive world of nature. With her, and through her wonderful acting performance, we wade into the incomprehensible world of the adults, glimpsing a fear that grows as they approach the border.

Director: Camilo Palacios
Colombia, 13 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1517/-permanence

Leonardo goes on a trip with his family. He doesn't want to die yet and discovers that cryogenisation is a real option. Ana María experiments with her cell phone to make a video for her brother. Their mother Sandra runs over a dog on the road. The privacy of their farmhouse welcomes them with images of the past and the future.

PERMANENCE is a warm cinematic story which in a subtle way nuances the burdensome family atmosphere in which each of the characters tries to confront their own confusion, anger and grief in the face of the terrible loss which, too early, but certainly is coming.

Director: Irena Gatej
Slovenia, 13 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1518/_drive_a_poem_for_my_father

A young man drives his car into the night and thinks about his father's death. This hypnotic, somnambulist journey through the realms of unbearable pain, evoked by the quiet, silent presence of the loved ones along the way, speaks about the sadness of losing a parent and the meaning of the presence or absence of someone in our lives.

The film won the Cinedays 2018 Student Best Film Award.

Director: Bady Minck
Luxembourg / Austria, 10 min.
https://cinesquare.net/#/movie/1519/-being-and-nothingness

In a small antique shop, Beat Furrer, composer and conductor, finds a musical score by Robert Schumann that he would try to reinterpret. His inventive chamber choreography is an experimental journey that expands the sense of intense visual rhythm by creating an alchemical synesthesia of image and sound. The musicians of the ensemble "Klangform Vien" in the film directed by Bady Mink appear and disappear in the rhythm of notes and sounds, obeying the will of the almighty conductor and illustrating, both, the transience of music and the instability of being.

The film premiered at the Biennale di Venezia 2007 and then went on to be screened on numerous festivals, including the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2007.