NARRATIVE SELECTION   |  APRIL 2022

Misophonia (2021)

Director: Angel Alvarez

Country: United States

Duration: 07:06

Synopsis: A dedicated office worker crippled with an extremely sensitive auditory condition is desperate to survive a troubling workday!

Peaks (2022)  

Director: Navzad Dabu

Country: Australia

Duration: 30:00

Synopsis: Two friends spend a day of boredom in a bizarre and barren landscape. After one friend plays a macabre prank on the other, pent up insecurities are released in peculiar and damaging ways.

Au79 (2022)

Director: Rafael Hovhannisyan

Country: Armenia

Duration: 06:14

Synopsis: Valery is a retiree working as a night watchman in a newly built building. He inherited gold from his grandfather of blessed memory, which neither his daughter nor his son nor even his wife saw except him. After Armine’s death, Valery had to take her gold from home, keep it in a deserted place away from Emma’s and Ashot’s eyes. On that horrible day, he had no idea what could happen to him, that  the history what had happened to his grandfather : the elder Valery could repeat.     

Mergen (2021)

Director: Raiymbek Alzhanov

Country: Kazakhstan

Duration: 26:22

Synopsis: On the strife-torn Central Asian steppe, the boy Mergen must defend his family in the place of his absent father. He will do so with courage, cunning, and above all, a mystical gift from his grandmother. An exciting historical thriller enriched with ancient magic.

Anyuta (2021)

Director: Martina Troanska

Country: Bulgaria

Duration: 11:06

Synopsis: While Stepan is absorbed in medical studies, his roommate Anyuta struggles with her loneliness and seeks a decent place in his life and in the world in general.

The Owl (2021)

Director: Sam Wong (Wong Man Tat)

Country: Hong Kong

Duration: 24:00

Synopsis: Understanding life, but resist the fate.  A solitary fortune teller in the jade market, cross path with an ordinary girl who wants to escape from the fetters of life.  Storyline:  Cheung Chi Sun is a fortune teller at the Jade Market. Sun lives a day to day life and on his own as he believes that is his fates. He hides nothing from his customers since everything is fixed by fate. From another side of the town, an ordinary girl crossed path with Sun’s lonely life. Gigi works along with her mother at the fruits market and although life kept beating her down, she never gives up. Gigi is fascinated by fortune telling and asked Sun to teach her, trying to get out from her fate, Sun agreed but only offered Gigi some lessons. After the 3 days, Sun pushed Gigi away from his life. The story follows Gigi’s journey to unravel Sun’s secret…

Flowering Season (2021)  

Director: Zhang Hai

Country: China

Duration: 20:00

Synopsis: Lei Jun is a vocational school student from a single-parent family in Shanghai. At school he is always ridiculed. Only in the drama world he wrote can he find his dignity in life. Once desperate and eager for freedom, he sat outside the window of the high-rise building of the school and performed a drama belonging to one person.   Lin Haoran likes dancing and secretly loves his classmate Li Wenting. Once the couple danced together by the river at night, through the dance they expressed their love. It was a sweet, yearning and memorable night.  The boys and girls play with mobile phones, eat snacks, sing KTV, but Wang Yue has no extra money for this. She can only choose to work on her own, earn money and can go out with classmates to play. When she came to the beautiful ktv, she found that she didn’t like it. She felt as if she and her classmates were people of two worlds.        

Panhandle (2022)

Director: Ikram Haizammuri

Country: Malaysia

Duration: 10:25

Synopsis: An accidental encounter between the two strangers at the car park turn to something more absurd, as one refused to give some amount of cash to the stranger that he just met.

KISS (2021)

Director: Varun Grover

Country: India

Duration: 15:00

Synopsis: At a preview theatre, a filmmaker waits in the hope of getting his sci-fi film certified with ‘no cuts’ by the conervative all-male jury of the Indian Censor Board.  The jury finds a particular kissing scene in the film beyond the duration stipulated by official rules. As the men argue over the length of the kiss, the laws of physics start falling apart around them.

The recessive gene (2022)

Director: Dmitry Izmestiev

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 17:05

Synopsis: The new editor-in-chief of the newspaper Maria Ivanovna is a beautiful and personable woman, but from the provinces. She asks Natasha’s former editor-in-chief for advice on how to organize the life of the team in a fashionable and metropolitan way. In addition to organizational issues, Marya Ivanovna has a terrible secret, and she is forced to entrust it to Natasha….

Sequent Meet (2022)

Director: Ajay Subramanian

Country: India

Duration: 24:52

Synopsis: An podcast interview with a physicist takes unexpected turn when an uninvited guest comes with a past.

Knock-knock-knock (2022)

Director: Andrei Gordin

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 11:00

Synopsis: A meeting of two strangers – a woman and a young man – brought together by a single tragic event. They are desperately trying to reach a common understanding and figure out how to move on with their lives. No one knows how this conversation is going

STUDENT SELECTION   |   APRIL 2022

The Man in a Case (2021)

Director: Amina Kvarchiya

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 13:36

ON THE THIRD STEP (2022)

Director: Anastasia Norenko

Country: United Kingdom

Duration: 19:18

Synopsis: On the Third Step is a criminal drama. After a crucial hit job takes an unexpected turn three desperate gang members have very limited time to figure out who among them is the rat and who deserves to live…    

Programmer (2021)

Director: Asatur Avagian

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 14:18

Synopsis: A mechanical voice informs the IT office staff every day about the amount of work done. Computational algorithms are progressing, the employees themselves are becoming performers of mechanical actions. Realizing his uselessness, one of them crosses the line of morality and tries to prove his worth to the system.

INSOMNIA (2021)

Director: Leonid Nikiforov

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 16:49

Synopsis: Anya cannot let go of her abusive relationship with Igor, which causes her to suffer from insomnia. In addition, Igor continues to impose his presence on her. Under stress, the girl begins to experience hallucinations and panic attacks, and with each intensity of the emotional instability of the heroine, Igor becomes closer.

Pull It Off (2022)

Director: Frédéric Jaeger

Country: Germany

Duration: 17:27

Synopsis: Levi arrives too early, Sarah is still working. He wants to take her out, she’d rather go straight to his. The flatmates lie on the couch and laugh. Levi would so like to throw himself into the relationship, but he doesn’t dare. Sarah enjoys basking in his admiration, if only there wasn’t this niggling feeling that they’re too different. Maybe he should call the shots for once.

YAM YAM (2022)

Director: YUHA JANG

Country: Korea, Republic of

Duration: 07:08

Synopsis: Miji’s only unknown pleasure is watching Sora’s video. Miji, a big fan of Sora, always eats what Sora eats. Miji, who saw a video of the concept of eating a companion animal raised by Sora, eats the goldfish she raised. Meanwhile, on Halloween, Sora posts a video of eating a horror-concept soup with eyeballs. Miji searches for the price of an eyeball to eat the soup eaten by a Sora, but is frustrated by the ridiculously high price. A few days later, Miji eventually makes soup with eyeballs. When Miji scooped a soup, her eyes appear. Miji wrapped a bloody bandage over her eyes. Miji smiles with a satisfied look. 

Embers of War (2020)

Director: TING TU

Country: China

Duration: 13:07

Synopsis: In 1940, a soldier sacrificed in the Chongqing Bombing of China. His wife could not accept his death and imagined the scene before he left home. This is a story talking about the impact of war on a family from one side.  In 2019, the survivors of the Chongqing Bombing are now elderly, some of whom still have bomb shrapnel in heads, scars on bodies and ,most importantly, psychological trauma in minds. They hold annual memorial meetings to commemorate their dead compatriots, go to Japan to sue and so on. After all is said and done, they still remember the war. Despite of the pain in the heart, they live with hope and try to pass on to future generations the idea of cherishing peace.  By creating a dialogue across time and space and using the combination of a short film and a documentary, this work wants to trauma of war left for those people at that time and hopes the world will remember history and cherish peace.

Turn Over (2022)

Director: TING TU

Country: United Kingdom

Duration: 11:00

Synopsis: A poor homeless man knows there is a lot of food in an art gallery. He sneaks into the art gallery because he is hungry. He eats a lot of cake and then falls asleep in this warm gallery by accident. He lies flat on the floor. He is considered as a performance art by rich people.  When the homeless man wakes up, people clap and shake his hand. He knows what has happened through those people’s actions. He knows it would be a life-changing moment. At this moment, he decides to pretend to be an artist.  It presents a comedic allegory about modern art and a trenchant satire of the disparity between the rich and the poor. It is a comic allegory of modern art and a sharp satire of capitalist class differences.

DOCUMENTARY SELECTION   |   APRIL 2022

Where our home: Natalia Ryzhova (2022)

Director: Dmitry Andreevich Kvashnin

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 10:29

Synopsis: Story of adaptive crossfit athlete Natalia Ryzhova, know for her incredible power skills. She is first Russian adaptive athlete representative in World championship. She also happy mother and singer, and coaches people with disabilities around the world.

My own colors (2021)

Director: Brenda Elizabeth Garcia Lopez

Country: Mexico

Duration: 14:27

Synopsis: Lalo a 14 year old boy, is forced to leave his house home in which he lived for more than twelve years due to Covid 19 pandemic; He will need to face his new reality. He is more than welcome at his aunt Mayela ́s house, but he will live with twelve more people; in a reality in which their parents are gone, they must leave school and begin to work.

I know (2022)

Director: Anna Guseva, Leonid Kim

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 03:40

Synopsis: “It would be cool to know” — these words were said by Estella, the main character of our video, who fought cancer and passed away on December 3, 2021.  This video is a look at ourselves. We crave success, fame, love, recognition. And it seems to us that we live forever and can do anything. But, in fact, it’s a mistake. We are not eternal, our body is not eternal, and you just should not forget about your own health, about your own body.  What are we trying to talk about? Take care of your health, man! You can be a tough guy or a tough girl, a rock star or an intergalactic pilot or whatever. The main thing to know is that cancer doesn’t care, it can touch everyone. Your health is the most important thing you have.  Indeed, from 30 to 50% of cases of oncological diseases can be avoided by diagnosing at an early stage.  Least of all, Estella and our entire team would like to put pressure on pity, this video is not about a disease, but about a life that may not go according to plan, but it is in our power to treat ourselves more carefully and not to think that CANCER AFFECTS anyone, but not us.

The basic Instinct (2022)

Director: Maxim Petrov

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 20:16

ANIMATION SELECTION   |   APRIL 2022

SKAZ: Sirin’s Song (2022)

Director: Matt Lashko

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 14:29

Synopsis: A hermit finds a village girl lost in the woods. On their way home through sacred places they encounter a mysterious force, threatening the existence of all life in the Forest.

Stop. Look. Go. (2022)

Director: Sneha Dasng

Country: India

Duration: 05:34

Synopsis: A man contemplates his entire life to understand how everything shaped him up to be where he is now.        

Work Sucks (2022)

Director: Will Goss

Country: United States

Duration: 15:25

Synopsis: 200 years ago, on a distant planet, two visionaries have competing views of the future.  One likes to work, the other likes to chill.  Which path will society choose?     

EXPERIMENTAL SELECTION   |   APRIL 2022

Dirty Art  Hairdressing (2021)

Director: Kirill Sarychev

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 25:48

Synopsis: An art group of hairdressers from St. Petersburg explains how the hair can express emotional state of the human soul. Experimenting with shapes, ideas and materials, crazy craftsmen create shocking things that are completely uncommon for the beauty industry. Is the hair a wealth or an atavism, your personal home or means communication, an art or some kind of game. Is it place on the head or in a trash bin? Crazy hairdressers argue about it.        

The tale of “Herring Villas” (2022)

Director: Maxett Pribylov

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 06:21

Synopsis: Our project is a statement against the propaganda of homophobia. It is a mirror reflecting the absurdity of this phenomenon. The main “heroine” with her “secret  salad” is a metaphor describing an ignorant entity in an aristocratic shell. In addition to latent homosexuality, the film raises the topic of internal homophobia, which, in our opinion, deserves special attention.  What is Homophobia? Is it ignorance or a desire to justify your own complexes? The feeling of hopeless nonsense, often hidden in a beautiful shell, doesn’t leave me. A lot of homophobic posts over the past year from “aristocratic, intelligent people” inspired me to create a ridiculous collective image of an “all-knowing lady.” This “heroine”, contrary to real scientific evidence about the normality of same-sex love, builds her science based on the “method of peering into neighbors.” She is like a metaphor of ignorance, which has difficulties with gender identification. The creation of the image was also influenced by the study of the personal profiles of people leaving homophobic comments on social networks. They look like normal people posting photos with children and grandchildren. But at the same time, they are not at all shy about writing rude comments with obscene language. 

Sprezzatura, or Artlessness of the Soul (2022)

Director: Alla Dvortsova

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 18:12

Synopsis: The dream of creating a perfect dress has become an obsession with the sophisticated fashion designer. But how can he create a masterpiece to order? The exhausted couturier sinks into sleep and is suddenly surrounded by fantasies which come to life and split the world into light and shadow.  Exciting images now move in an exquisite manner, now go still in mysterious images. Digital-art works fill the space with emotion. The poetic form of the narrative helps emphasise the depth and diversity of the hero’s world.

MUSIC VIDEO SELECTION  |   APRIL 2022

Apollo’s Song (2021)

Director: Pedro Bakker,

Country: Netherlands

Duration: 05:08

Synopsis: The atmosphere at Galleria Borghese is erotically charged, but Apollo’s wife looks away. Then Apollo sings his love for Daphne, after which Daphne turns to Bayes. Apollo’s wife takes care of the laurel tree. The spirit of Daphne will live for ever in her honorable house of the laurel tree.

REKA WW – WIND OH WIND (2022)

Director: Egor Gavrilin

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 04:24

Synopsis: What you’re encountering is a mantra-song, a spell, an enchantment that turns back the pain and destruction brought by fire.

REKA WW – SALT (2022)

Director: Egor Gavrilin

Country: Russian Federation

Duration: 05:23

Synopsis: In this story, the protagonist makes a journey into the very heart of a dense dark forest to undergo the rite of purification.