Short Joy

If you want to see the war live, all you have to do is pay five shekels to look across the Israeli border at the devastated Gaza Strip. In Sderot, Jewish and Israeli society come together around a tourist telescope trained on the front line. An observational sociological study on the monetisation of war and the loss of compassion asks who these people are and how they feel.“Compassion, even when it feels almost impossible, may be the only place from which healing can begin.” This film was created independently through the voluntary collaboration of all creators. This is a fully independent film. No member of the creative or production team, and no member of the crew, received any payment for their work on the film. 

Ahmed moved back to Egypt from Saudi Arabia in 2017. That was the last time he saw his classmate and best friend. This evocative account of loss uses videos and an inner monologue to look back in time and, through six symbolic gifts, explores why some friendships fall apart and where the line between care and dependence lies.“I don't claim to have told the complete truth… but I hope that everything I’ve said here is true.”

This time-lapse documentary condenses the entire 21-day development of a chicken – from fertilised egg to the hatching of the chick – into a nine-minute film. In microscopic detail and in full colour, we observe the early stages of life within the fragile shell, which so often cracks prematurely at the hands of humans seeking to satisfy their base appetites. “What is particularly interesting I think, is that the basics of embryonic development are the same for all animals, including us. I think the way we develop is a true miracle.” — Jan van IJken Source: Colossal

Through an intimate, unfiltered video diary, Mariana Macháňová captures her family’s grief as her mother approaches death. For the filmmaker, the camera becomes both a therapeutic tool and a means of creating distance. She records meanderings down sterile hospital corridors, taking what is likely their last selfie together in her mother’s hospital bed, and the scattering of her ashes. Coming to terms with loss also prompts reflections on the ethics of this kind of filming. The filmmaker asks whether it is acceptable to bring a camera into moments of extreme vulnerability, when the act of filming helps one turn fleeting fragments into something lasting and thus process grief. “So I thought I’d heal myself by making a film.”

Nieves wants nothing more than to have a rabbit. But it wasn’t always like that. After having her fallopian tubes tied, she woke up longing for a long-eared friend. Nieves is, in fact, mentally disabled. Since her mother’s death, she has been living with her sister in a workers’ cottage on the outskirts of Madrid, working at a laundry mangle (calandra), where rabbits scamper past her windows. calandra (Spanish) – an industrial ironing machine used in professional laundries (hotels, hospitals, laundry facilities) for ironing and drying flat linen. Source of the quote.

This apocalyptic cinéma vérité depicts the socio-economic situation in a remote Iranian village, which is lashed by violent sandstorms for 120 days a year. This is not a scene from the apocalypse, but the harsh reality for the inhabitants of Taj Mir in South Khorasan Province. Their sole source of income is hand-sewn “dotuk” dolls, a traditional ritual object that has become a commodity. “Villagers revive ancestral dolls as a means of survival, confronting the fragile line between cultural heritage and harsh contemporary realities.” 

Every year in August, thousands of people flock to the area around the Bulgarian village of Zheravna, where a folk-costume festival takes place. For a few days, the combination of picturesque countryside, the sound of drums and traditional bagpipes, and costumes from days gone by brings back the feeling of a world governed by the cycles of human life and the seasons – even if there is a “need” to take the odd selfie now and then.“With this type of work, it’s about the relationship as much as it’s about filming.” — Sophia Bartholomew, Public Parking

More than 100,000 Ukrainians have already lost a limb as a result of the unjust war unleashed by Russia. Their scarred bodies are tended to by nurses behind the front lines. This is a film about touch – comforting and essential – that seeks to rekindle life from the flesh of the body where the soul is suffering.“This only happens with time — in their case, two and a half years of production — but above all with the trust, the bond and the respect that forms with the people, the stories and the realities you set out to tell.” — Giacomo Locci, FerraraToday.

For a woman, having an abortion can outwardly bring humiliation, social condemnation and an admission of inevitability. What goes on inside often remains hidden. This analytical piece on attitudes towards motherhood is built precisely upon the contrast between the visible surface (archival footage of mothers and flowers) and the unknown inner world (women’s anonymous accounts).“This topic is personal to me. If for no other reason, then simply because as a woman, I am disturbed by the curtailing and limiting of my own freedom to decide about my fate and health.” — Dorota Vlnová Source: European Short Pitch

The brothers Raul, Raimundo and Juldemar Batista de Souza recall human trafficking, violence and killings reminiscent of slavery in the American South. However, their employer was the German car manufacturer Volkswagen, which bought part of the rainforests in Brazil and, between 1973 and 1987, hired labourers for logging and cattle farming. “My films blur the boundaries of non-fiction and explore bodies, landscapes and orality as archives where past and present fold into each other.” — Benjamin Hindrichs Source: Benjamin Hindrichs's website.

This intimate documentary follows a bride-to-be who, according to Manding tradition, must spend the three days before her wedding in seclusion. Silence gives rise to questions: Was her mother afraid too? How can she be gentle, strong and true to herself? Between rituals and prayers, she enters a state of deep introspection and senses there is very much she has not been told. “It is a very special cinematic genre, because these are unique and unforgettable moments that we live through.” — Zeinab Soumahoro, Abidjan.netSource 

A short documentary set in a chicken slaughterhouse, where, amidst the filth, stench, decaying remains of animal carcasses and swarms of insects, a cat and her kittens manage to survive. In a place so deeply marked by human indifference to the death of other creatures, they paradoxically provide at least a hint of the unyielding desire to play, explore, or simply to live. “I strive for a naturalistic style in which viewers become immediate, situational observers.” — Eric M. WeglehnerSource: The Gap

Murmurs in the Distance begins with an encounter with a gap: the absence of a substantial historical and visual record of the women’s protests of March 8, 1979 in Iran. Through photographs, recordings, testimonies, and archival fragments, three artists from another generation, living in different countries, search for what has been preserved, what has disappeared, and find their own reflections along the journey. The archive becomes both a source and a place for questioning. The short documentary Iranian Women’s Liberation Movement: Year Zero (1979) offers one of the few surviving visual traces of the protests, while testimonies bring other forms of memory into the present. Rather than reconstructing a complete history, the film stays with these fragments and silences, asking how an archive shapes what can be remembered, seen, and understood as history. “Murmurs in the Distance is not only an act of preservation but also an invitation to reimagine futures shaped by collective courage.”Source 

Naomi is a 23-year-old Frenchwoman of Senegalese descent. Her parents converted to Islam, and she is now converting to Judaism. This combination of personal testimony and art installation places the young woman in positions from which she explores various aspects of her identity and seeks to understand the meaning of community and the essence of religious faith. “The resulting forms are not simply documentation, but the transposition, even the sublimation, of a shared experience.” — Le Fresnoy Studio national des arts contemporains Source: https://www.lefresnoy.net/en/ecole/etudiant/627/

Edison is a sorbet-selling street vendor who has to sell out his entire stock in order to celebrate Christmas – an occasion the whole of Manila lives for – otherwise he won’t get time off. But customers aren’t exactly queuing up. This observational portrait offers an intimate glimpse into the reality faced not only by Filipino workers in retail and the service sector, but also raises the issue of working conditions and the right to rest. “Vitali uses cinema as a space for reflection and confrontation, bridging personal experiences with the broader systemic realities of Filipino society.” 

Serhiy, an elderly Ukrainian man, has not been paid by his employer. He has no contract. And, unlike the local people, he appears to have no one to stand up for him. This documentary-style film follows a group of foreigners seeking nothing more than fair treatment in a country that has long prided itself on being a democratic and open society.“The point was to shed light on the parallel reality that has emerged in Sweden — one of unpaid wages, exploitation and fraudulent companies.” — Arberaten

Olive trees need sunshine and, above all, water to grow if they are to bear ripe fruit. Traditional farming methods in arid Tunisia are a far cry from the romanticised image of agriculture practised in harmony with nature. They are perhaps more reminiscent of a declining sector sustained solely by the indomitable hard work of the farm labourers. “It observes the hardship endured by farmers who remain committed to traditional methods of cold-water olive pressing.”Source: Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage

A group of African film students decide to make a film about sexual harassment in the workplace. They want it to be a comedy, as they believe humour is a more effective way of getting a serious message across. They discuss their plans with the sister of one of the crew members, and this young feminist starts to help them create a completely different story…“The Cinergie editors who gathered to select their prize among the Young Belgian Talents highlighted the originality of the subject, its relevance in a world where women still have to fight for respect, and the inventiveness of its treatment, awarding the prize to Sensitive Topic by Nina Hamzeh & Mathis Albet.” — The Millenium Festival

Josué is about to embark on a new chapter in his life. Together with his pregnant partner, he is preparing a room for their son and hanging photographs from the past on the walls – snippets of life from the family chronicle, to which they will soon add new chapters. Set against the backdrop of contemporary Cuba, a quiet social and relational drama centred on a young family on the threshold of an uncertain future unfolds in this delicate observation.“The Leap explores the fragility of memory and how we need it to navigate the uncertainties of the future.”

The lace made by women in Lepoglava, Croatia, is some of the most beautiful in the world and regarded as a piece of cultural heritage in its own right. Yet it carries an even greater significance. In this small village, the lace weaves together – both figuratively and literally – thousands of metres of thread, binding together generations, families and a community of women devoted to quiet, meticulous work. “Driven by a desire to explore real stories and authentic experiences, she seeks through this film to connect the personal with the universal, creating space for narratives that emerge from everyday life.”

A participatory document from the Andean-Amazonian foothills challenges the colonial narrative of the jungle as an uninhabited wilderness and the victim of natural resource exploitation. Indigenous peoples are taking an active role, combining the knowledge of their ancestors with modern technologies. They see the rainforest as a place where the human and the non-human, the rational and the mystical, meet. “Audiovisual images become not only a means of documenting ecological practices, but also a way of thinking through the relationships between scientific knowledge, traditional ecological knowledge, and lived experience of the territory.”

The suffering of the people in the Khmer Rouge’s prisons was undoubtedly immeasurable. Even decades after the fall of one of the cruellest regimes in history, messages and drawings remain etched on the walls of the former cells in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It is as though the whispers of those lost forever remain, full of poetic defiance in the face of destruction.“My work explores the intersection of memory, spatial history, and visual poetics.” — Xiang Ding Source: FilmFreeway