Synopsis

Facing deportation after her asylum bid is denied, 25-year-old Sara and fellow women at a refugee residence in Germany unite to overturn their expulsion, striving for a freer future for their families.

Sara, a Syrian refugee mother, and her autistic son, fleeing the war in Syria, land in a German refugee camp during the COVID-19 crisis. There, she develops deep friendships with other mothers, united in their quest for a better future for their children. As they navigate the asylum process, Sara witnesses her friends being deported, often under tragic circumstances. Devastated by the rejection of her own asylum application, she decides to challenge the system in an act of defiance. Will she succeed?

Director's note

Born and raised in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, my status has sculpted my existence. From my youth in a UN school to my sociology studies, I've deeply explored refugee life. My activism has often made me a target of various groups. Now in Germany, my family is adjusting to camp life. My cinematic journey began with Little Palestine, portraying Yarmouk's siege, followed by my first fictional work, Sokrania 59, a short film about my family's and a Ukrainian family's life in a German refugee home. My upcoming feature, Das Heim, will focus on the stories of refugee women, aiming to share their narratives. To me, cinema is a vehicle for change, highlighting the human experience beyond statistics and political rhetoric.

Synopsis

A centuries-old vampire child and two daring sisters face each other in a fight for survival amid the ruins of Peru's future desert.

Piura Desert, Perú, 2060. Martín (15), heir to a family of landowners, rises from his grave as a vampire, in an unrecognizable world ravaged by sandstorms, scarcity and darkness. Two centuries before, under the influence of a mysterious stranger, he succumbed to bloodlust and died, poisoned after his first bite. He seeks solace in the abandoned family mansion, struggling with his condition until the unexpected visit of bold desert-dwelling sisters María (17) and Flora (14). A meeting that will turn their fates, as they embark on a harrowing journey from which only one can survive.    

Director's note

I seek to challenge the conventions of western and vampire genres by setting these against the backdrop of Peruvian reality and colonial heritage, aiming to find an intimate approach through the coming-of-age encounter between Martin, a pre-teenage vampire from the past, and sisters Maria and Flora, survivors of societal and ecological disaster. Working within a hypothetical future provides me with a framework to explore and convey the essence of the time in which we live, as a spectre reflected back from a time yet to come. I strive to confront questions that have haunted me since childhood: What lays ahead for us if certain behaviours prevail? How do the ghosts of the past manifest themselves and what do they reveal about our present? What is the weight of inheritance? Is there hope?

Synopsis

A story of a teenage girl, her unrequited love, and the loss and eventual reinvention of her identity as she moves to an unfamiliar town and finds a new yet bizarre love.

Late Cold War period, mid 1980s. In a rural northern Isan town, KAEW, a rebellious sixteen-year-old girl, feels estranged from her family and school life but not from her lover, DANG, a high-school dropout and drug dealer. While they plot their escape to start a new life together, Kaew’s life falls into a downward spiral of violence, distrust, and fear. Her mind transforms in ways she could never have imagined.

Director's note

I make films to understand and heal from an unresolved past. Growing up in the aftermath of a violent chapter in Thai history, I have always felt at odds with the environment of feigned normality designed by the ruling class. Yet, this ambiguous space where personal memories and public histories meet is where I can imagine characters that exist in a parallel plane, telling a History of The Defeated. 

Tremble Like A Flower examines historical open wounds: they are carried across time, but, to our knowledge, all that remains is the memory of forgetting. It explores the human survival instinct to adapt and live with wounds that run deep beyond our consciousness. Just as ‘Kaew’ has a neurological condition that triggers a mechanism that erases certain memories while forming new ones in their place, renewing her identity in the process.

Synopsis

Three lives intertwine like kindred beings from the same soil. Lucia, a curious tour guide who unknowingly meets her father for the first time, lives vicariously through two people - a pet shop owner who tries to keep a dying mermaid alive and a fish vendor whose long missing husband reappears from nowhere.

Lucia, a curious museum tour guide, lives through two people to find comfort in her own. First is Raquel, a fish vendor who lost her husband to the sea. Five years later, after a sighting of him in their village, she decides to look for him. The other is Delia, a pet shop owner who stumbles upon a dying mermaid at the market. She takes it home to keep it alive, and slowly we realize that they are of the same kind.

For work, Lucia travels to Spain to pick up colonial maps, and it is there where she meets Danilo, a cartographer assigned to assist her. The mysteries of life coincide once again when it turns out he is the father she has never met.

Director's note

The word “unknown” is written in the space for my father's name on my birth certificate. At 31, I choose to live not knowing who he is, but a part of me constantly imagines the missing pieces. 

The colonized Filipinos have many daughters with missing fathers to this day. Regardless of where we come from, we all become reflections of our past as seen in our names and faces.

Daughters of the Sea is a diary of thoughts about the complexities of living with the unknown aspects of our lives, finding comfort in the uncertainties of existing. A curious tour guide Lucia from Manila lives through two people that are in other islands and time periods yet converse with each other across seas. It’s a film that shows how we’re all islands on a map, finding connections to each other.

Synopsis

Bourgeois, who was an online scammer in Ivory Coast, arrived illegally in Europe after a life-risking journey ten years ago. He got married and received his papers, but now, in his own country and in France, he has become a foreigner.

Bourgeois, who was an online scammer in Ivory Coast and dreamed of getting rich, arrived illegally in Europe after a life-risking journey ten years ago. He lives in France undocumented. He is nearly thirty. Like his friend Kader, who lives in Italy, he dreams of returning to his homeland. Bourgeois gets married and receives his papers. He will now have the choice between two countries and two identities, but will realise that his life is now in France. In Ivory Coast, he will be an "immigrant". In his own country, just like in France, he has become a foreigner, a "Lonan Tché", as they say in Bambara.

Director's note

Lonan Tché tells the story of Bourgeois' integration into French society, the land he has migrated to, and concludes with how he comes to understand that he has emigrated and that his destiny no longer necessarily lies in Ivory Coast. It is a dual process admirably described (in relation to Kabyle immigration to France) by the sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad in his book La double absence. Through the lives of Bourgeois and his companions, I want to tell the story of young Ivorians in the midst of an identity crisis: young people who can't find their place in their own country and turn to the mirage of the European dream.