humor

This observational, documentary-comedy study presents a surreal encounter between leading global climatologists, climate scientists, and scientific authorities who are subjected to a facilitated meeting in a godforsaken hotel in New Jersey. This inverted team-building exercise aims to present academics as feeling human beings who, like millions of other people, experience climate grief and fear for planet Earth. The initially awkward emotional encounters lead to enriching conversations that focus not on disasters and numbers, but on experiences and emotional responses. The trajectory of helplessness, denial, hope, and acceptance is accompanied by humorous moments of human interaction. “This film shows that even those who are supposed to be doing something about climate change are allowed to share their feelings and uncertainty about the future.” — Sean Patrick Kelly

Death as non-existence, non-being, or the absence of life has been a subject of human interest for millennia. Poets, philosophers, prophets, and hermits have now been replaced by filmmakers, influencers, cryonicists, and evolutionary biologists in the search for the quintessence of life and death. Zoltan Istvan runs a cryonics laboratory and is running for president of the United States with the demand that immortality be included among fundamental human rights. In Russia, a mass festival dedicated to the cult of death is traditionally held. Dāvis Sīmanis' film essay reveals the twists and turns of man's age-old desire for eternal life. It uncovers the metaphorical and fetishistic representations of death and the mechanisms by which we come to terms with our own mortality. „Immortality, anti-aging, fear of death. When I started the film, I just thought I’d learn how to live a little bit longer. But then things got weird. Scientists reviving pigs at Yale. People sticking neurochips in their heads. Bio-hackers giving out life-extending tips. The whole civilization is living in the age of transhumanism. And I am the only one who is left behind.“ — Dāvis Sīmanis

After World War I, the northern Croatian port city of Fiume experienced one of the most bizarre military campaigns in history. It lasted sixteen months and was led by Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, who occupied present-day Rijeka with three hundred soldiers in September 1919. He founded his own state there and ruled it until the army of his native Italy rose up against him. The poet-dictator, who inspired Benito Mussolini, immortalized his reign in ten thousand period photographs. Rijeka native Igor Brezinović subversively revives them and, in a tangle of historical facts and exaggeration, in the gap between history and the present, discovers the roots of fascism. “D’Annunzio treated his occupation of Fiume with the same romanticism as his writing, even going so far as to obsessively have him and his men filmed and photographed to project a propagandistic ideal.” — Igor Brezinović

Director Victoria Hely-Hutchinson offers us a glimpse into a hermetically sealed, highly privileged, yet deeply toxic microcosm in her family portrait Vacances. This time-lapse film, shot over a period of ten years, follows members of several generations of a wealthy aristocratic family with Austro-Hungarian roots. The entire film is set in a Provençal villa, whose social heart is the swimming pool, around which the women gather to exchange various observations and, surreptitiously, gossip. The centre of the family is the aging matriarch, who likes to talk about her extravagant, promiscuous life, but at the same time commands all the attention and authority of those around her. However, her influence gradually weakens with each passing generation. The director herself is a member of the family being filmed and captures the dynamics of their relationships with a directness that some of her relatives describe on camera as cruel. “You would like to get all the sort of the crunchy wickedness out of people. And then you’re like a little elf going, ‘Hahahaa! Look what I have. I’ve got the money to splurge.’ And I think to myself, ‘Yeah, but you’re pretty wicked.’”

At first glance, what could be more inanimate – and therefore anti-cinematic – than the mineral kingdom? Nora Štrbová challenges this declaration, turning it on its head and making stones into a highly kinetic subject. In this humorous essay film shot in 35 mm, stones are finally given a voice as they observe us, judge us and, above all… put up with us.