Special Event

The third walking film, commissioned by the Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition, transforms both the human figure and kitchen appliances into an art installation. The sound of rice cooking, which accompanies the footsteps of a monk in a red hood, is a ghostly reminiscence of the breath of the director's dying mother, bringing together the physicality of the living and the dead.

 A teenager named Imam lives in Sarajevo and attends ninth grade. In an effort to gain attention and recognition from her classmates, she one day claims that she had sex with an older boy named Damir. In reality, he rejected her. The lie quickly spreads and takes on a life of its own. The heroine gains new friends, but loses control of her own identity. Bosnian director Una Gunjak’s directorial debut focuses in parallel on parents and teachers whose approach to freedom and security was shaped by the Bosnian war. The film, which faithfully depicts the emotional vulnerability of both children and adults, received a special jury mention at the Locarno Film Festival.  “As a woman in her mid-thirties untangling the knots of her sexual upbringing, as a Bosnian woman observing the youth of today, and lastly, as a feminist – I felt an urge and an obligation to make this film.” — Una Gunjak (Source)

After second world war the people from Ruthenia's Carpathian villages were promised a better life in Bohemia. Once settled down they felt like strangers at the new places, so memories and tales became very important reminding them of their old homes. One of these tales is about Jakub, a man who knew the bible by heart. This film follows his trace portraying the almost forgotten loss of those people who nowadays still feel without a home.

In 2011, the Taiwanese artist presented his play Only You, in which the character of the medieval Buddhist monk Xuanzang slowly walks across the stage for half an hour. This scene inspired him to shoot short films that contrast the slowness of walking with the speed of the surrounding events. The first of these, No Form, was shot on the streets of Taipei and revels in the duality of time and space, humorously punctuated by Nina Simone's song Feeling Good.

The seventh walking film was commissioned by the Hong Kong International Film Festival. It follows a chance encounter between a monk in red robes, played by Lee Kang-sheng, and the well-known Japanese actor Masanobu Ando in a public bathhouse and capsule hotel. This intimate double portrait explores the inner coexistence and transience of night-time Tokyo and the restless human mind.

The documentary follows an ethnographic portrait of a Czech minority that settled in Romania near Timisoara in 1822. The film captures the life of this isolated community throughout the four seasons. It shows how this enclave preserved its language, identity, and cultural heritage under the difficult conditions of Nicolae Ceaușescu rule. A powerful ethnographic documentary essay that carries moral depth and offers a unique perspective on the preservation of minority identity in difficult conditions.

Walker Jihlava (working title) is the latest installment in Tsai Ming-liang’s acclaimed Walker series, created in collaboration with Studio FAMU. This film will be shot and completed in just 10 days in Jihlava, immediately before and during this year's edition of the film festival. The Walker series centers around a walking monk and the contrast of extremely slow movement and hectic paces of cities and towns.

The fifth walking film was created as part of the film anthology Letters from the South, compiled by Malaysian filmmaker Tan Chui Mui. In it, Tsai Ming-liang returns to his native Kuching by way of a monk in a red hood. The walls of the house where he grew up are saturated with a familiar past and the foreign lives of its present inhabitants.