Encounters 23 · Bristol
248 films from 48 countries are recorded in the archive for this edition, with 10 award winners.
A landmark edition with 252 films from 64 countries, featuring the world premiere of Chris Overton's The Silent Child, which went on to win the Academy Award. Kei Chikaura's Signature won the Grand Prix, and Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson's Ten Meter Tower took the European Live Action Award. Dionne Edwards' We Love Moses won Best of British, while Nikita Diakur's Ugly claimed the Animated Grand Prix. The programme included the first Immersive Encounters strand with VR work from Theodore Ushev and Ng'endo Mukii, whose Nairobi Berries won the inaugural immersive prize.
An innocent young man from China is anxiously memorising ‘his hope’ in the middle of the noisy crowd in Shibuya.
A broken simulated short film about kindness, respect and coexistence.
Two women and a man wrangle. Each must hollow out the other’s core for fruits promised but only ever borne in dreams. A poetic symphony on Nairobi.
A Mexican mother, with her only child’s birthday looming, embarks upon an epic journey across land and through her politics, to find the right piñata for her son...
When Ella was twelve, she had her first fight. And when she was twelve, she discovered sex. Now eighteen, Ella reflects on how her obsession with her older brother Michael’s best friend Moses left her with a secret she still carries.
Films to Break Projectors’ glues, scrapes and splices 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film to create unprojectable celluloid sculptures. Reanimating the material reveals the colour music within and traces of ambiguous narratives that emerge from the complex loops.
Uka is a little girl who lives in a grey abandoned factory. While she’s painting on her canvas, she finds a way of changing how she sees the world.
A 10 metre diving tower. People who have never been up there before have to chose whether to jump or climb down. The situation in itself highlights a dilemma: to weigh the instinctive fear of taking the step out, against the humiliation of having to climb down.
After a flood, some fish get stuck in old trees. In danger of drying- out they scream. Woken by the noise, the inhabitants of a nearby cave don’t feel happy about the unintended gathering...
Set in rural England and inspired by real life events. The Silent Child centres around a profoundly deaf four year old girl named Libby who is born into a middle class family and lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her the gift of communication.
Uka is a little girl who lives in a grey abandoned factory. While she’s painting on her canvas, she finds a way of changing how she sees the world.
Pushed beyond her breaking point by an endless routine of duties and lessons, princess Maria is swept into the dark, dark woods full of monsters.
Nine year old Anna finds the kids in her new neighbourhood hostile, but everything changes when a mysterious boy called Búi encourages her to do a heroic deed.
A peculiar kid competes with his imaginary friend taking selfies to get the most likes in a social network.
A young girl happens to catch the most medium sized fish in the world and receives instant fame. But what happens when the fish gains weight?
A child wants to make a friend her own age, but it is not as easy as she thought.
In a small town in the north of Senegal, two young avid cinephiles Baba and Sembene are desperate to see a movie on the big screen of their local cinema before it closes its door forever.
A CG animated short about a young child, her makeshift rocket, and her fantastic flight to the moon.
A little man lives in an old suitcase. One day he finds a new friend - an old blind man. The little man jumps into the blind man’s pocket. With music, the pocket man helps the blind man to walk safely in the street. Both are very happy together.
Awesome Beetle’s Colors is a fun and educational plasticine animation.
A cartoony musical romp featuring a guitar picking troubadour and his mischievous dog.
A boy meets a fish in a mysterious forest.
An ambitious owl physicist is determined to follow in the footsteps of his renowned scientific ancestors by solving a tough equation. But the owl’s endeavor gets disrupted when a woodpecker moves into the neighborhood...
In the near future, a young animator is offered what should be her dream job. But when she discovers the truth of the modern ‘creative’ process, she must make a hard choice about her passion for film.
Finally home for Christmas a spirited young traveller returns to find his innocent gift has unleashed a deadly contagion on his family and the rest of the world, but is he responsible?
Two friends seek spiritual salvation in India away, from their hedonistic and disconnected lives, in advance of the impending collapse of the Cosmos.
A storm is coming. The eagle is captured by the spirit of doom. A bullet is fired at the eagle’s fatal battle.
After a nuclear disaster, the world has gone dystopian. Many people have undergone physical mutation, and are cut off from government supplies. A female mutant robs the provisions of a military officer with a strong sense of justice. His chase ends in a rundown, gaudy amusement park.
Two hardy orphans survive upon the remains of a humanity that has left them behind.
If you were forced to flee your own war-ridden country, would you sacrifice what makes you human to survive?
Parents living at the end of a quiet Cul-De-Sac discover a listening device inside their son’s teddy bear.
In a deserted house, a couple of amphibians explore their surroundings and follow their primal instincts.
A grieving man gets more than he bargained for when he visits his former lover’s open coffin. HORROR: THRILLING & CHILLING HORROR: THRILLING & CHILLING WEDNESDAY 20 SEPTEMBER 22:00 WATERSHED CINEMA 1 120 MINS Films designed to make you uneasy or on edge are often difficult to view.
A Viet Cong soldier stationed in the claustrophobic tunnels of Cu Chi during the Vietnam War finds himself haunted by the ghost of a fallen comrade after the burial ceremony is compromised.
End of the line is a film based on real events that never happened, but that may happen, you never know...
A young corporate executive is kidnapped from his apartment. He wakes up in the middle of a forest only to be stalked by a mysterious hunter.
A short horror. A dad comes home after work and his daughter wants to play hide and seek. But is it really his daughter?
Don’t Think of a Pink Elephant enters the world of a teenage girl fighting daily against compulsive thoughts and urges. Layla is terrified by her potential to do harm, until challenged to face her darkest fears.
A dark and unsettling world in which children have taken over a forgotten terraced street, devoid of adults with no rules or boundaries.
Manchester, 1990. Alice is roped into babysitting for her hysterical neighbour and encounters two children who claim to be visited each night by a creature that must be fed when the lights go out.
A weird-acting girl draws a young man’s attention in the inn.
A badger lies motionless on a local road. A police patrol approaches the body in the dark. They soon realise the animal is not dead; the badger is dead drunk! When the police attempt to drag the creature off the road, he wakes up and things take a strange turn.
One cold dark night, a woman encounters something strange and terrifying on her walk home. When she is asked a question, her sheer terror causes her to lie... with disastrous consequences. www.encounters-festival.org.
A supercharged history of sculptor Constantin Brancusi's infamous 'Princess X'.
In the evening, as a little girl and her father take a ride on the subway train, she notices a huge poster of a beautiful pony. Amazed, she calls her father and quickly starts to insist when he replies evasively - drawing the other passengers’ attention.
A Mexican mother, with her only child’s birthday looming, embarks upon an epic journey across land and through her politics, to find the right piñata for her son...
A masochistic teenage girl is saved from a life of scrounging and skiving after she develops an obsessive crush on David Cameron.
A looping GIF has an existential crisis.
The world is under attack by low budget, super human, robot alien baddies, or some sht like that. Can Jeb harness his inner superhero and save mankind? Probably not.
Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy? After a tip-off he’s not really dead, a documentary crew embark on a journey to track down the whereabouts of Freddie Mercury. To their surprise, they find him. He’s alive ... and Welsh.
An object lesson of when life weighs you down.
An ABC of animal facts. Learn different facts about animals with every letter of the alphabet. A paper film for adults.
The feeding habits of the common chameleon as never seen before.
‘Fern’ is a black comedy, charting the complicated and intense love that grows between a woman and a plant. It’s situated entirely inside one woman’s apartment, in the weeks following her husband’s death.
When news breaks that the county pig fete’s being revived, the once- legendary Farmer decides to make one final roll of the dice - and invest his life savings in a thoroughbred piglet to breed new life back into his now dilapidated farm.
Frederick Butterfield has always been runner up to his twin brother Herman. When Herman, the older by a mere minute, becomes the world’s oldest man, Frederick finally sees an opportunity to be first place. ‘Second to None’ is a stop motion comedy about ambition, where second best is never enough.
First love is an intoxicating experience, but with it can come excruciating awkwardness, unrequited emotions, and confusing issues of identity.
In 1973 Stanley Kubrick came to Ireland and brought the British Army with him... A lighthearted romantic comedy set behind the scenes of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
Chickens’ directed by George Wu, has been chosen to be part of the ‘Random Acts’ series currently airing on Channel 4 at midnight on Thursdays. George worked with illustrator, Meng-Chia Lai to create a touching and charming story of how friendships develop and change.
Pee. Wait. Panic. Steph is in a happy, long-term relationship, but now she might be pregnant she has no idea what she wants.
A hot young plumber Toomas breaks into the harmonious life of Manivald and his retired mother.
An ex-couple in a café, a girl sucking on her girlfriend’s hair, a running woman, a fleeing town, a little girl walking along the river. In this world, there are as many forms of love as there are people.
A young couple, suffering from the worst imaginable form of ‘fear of missing out’, decide to take on a tough challenge.
In the beginning of them She created us.
I Don't Feel Anything Anymore is an absurdist fable about two lovers who live isolated lives high above a world in chaos, yet strive to be useful to people living down below.
A girl goes out of her way to pursue her crush, but as the two part ways at the train station, will she be able to finally reveal her feelings? This observational film draws us into the anxieties and uncertainties of a young girl as she comes into her own.
He is a servant in the royal palace. She is the emperor’s daughter. Growing up together, they become friends and soul mates. Naturally their budding feelings for each other are forbidden in this feudalistic kingdom, but they strive for the freedom to love and to bloom.
Through a metaphorical narrative about love, Dahlia explores a relationship between two people which is burdened by mental illness.
This music video is about the longevity of love. Touching loosely on procreation in humans and nature. Spores and metaphorical sperm galore.
A tender look at dating in the golden years of your life - your eighties. Phil, a widower at the age of 86, decides to venture into the unfamiliar world of online dating in a search for companionship.
A widow’s attempts to find love are ruined when the ghost of her cheating dead husband gatecrashes her dates...
Trapped in a speeding van, a Kiwi rock band succumb to travel sickness while deconstructing the heist that robbed them of an entire weekend’s door take.
After Elfie and her nerdy son August successfully proved themselves on their home webcam in MeTube 1, the odd pair venture onto the street to present the biggest, boldest, and sexiest operatic flash mob the internet has ever witnessed!
While watching the highest grossing cat fail compilation - the outsourced gets back to us in this consumerist nightmare.
Painful events become memories over time. Still, we vomit and eat again. Life is Eco.
Three sisters are living in an old Japanese house. Crabs released by a man subvert the meaning of the house and the bodies. This is the latest work of the ‘Living Creatures Sci- Fi’ Series, which has been continuing since 2011.
Chloe thinks she’s just going in for a routine test. Things do not go as planned.
In a doctor’s cozy waiting room the cold and ugly sides of human behavior are revealed while some of the patients enjoy an ice cream.
In search of perfection a city obeys to selection. A constant struggle. Trying and trying again. Where is the difference between endurance and madness? www.encounters-festival.org.
Fundamental is about the injury of rigid religious upbringing to a teenager who discovers the strange and terrifying reality behind fundamentalism.
The story of two young guys who just want to screw without being disturbed. A surrealist comedy that depicts a society where police violence and invasion of privacy are daily routine, normal, tedious. The victims themselves are used to it. Even the police are used to it!
Raimo’s comfy middle class bubble is burst when a satan worshipping sex cult moves in next door.
Two women sit in a barren dystopian wasteland discussing the best way to die.
In the aftermath of a zombie outbreak, the zombies have been cured and exiled to secluded camps. A prejudice journalist decides to prove that they are not fit to be rehabilitated.
Making the seemingly mundane, mind blowing.
FUCKING, a 4-episode web series, gives viewers an all-too-familiar peek at some of the bizarre characters that find their way into one woman’s bed. FUCKING is short, intimate and hilarious.
An experimental film that explores childhood sexuality and how young people discover their own bodies.
Fifteen-year-old Alice has always been a good Catholic, but when an innocent AOL chat turns unexpectedly racy, she finds herself suddenly obsessed with masturbating. LATE LOUNGE: BLUE FRIDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 22:00 WATERSHED CINEMA 1 120 MINS And so to the indecent offering of Late Lounge.
Women are lucky, they get to have the only organ in the human body dedicated exclusively for pleasure: the clitoris! In this humorous and instructive animated documentary, discover its unrecognised anatomy and its unknown herstory.
A young girl spends the evening alone at home. She decides to have a sweet solo pleasure session, but not everything goes according to plan.
FUCKING, a 4-episode web series, gives viewers an all-too-familiar peek at some of the bizarre characters that find their way into one woman’s bed. FUCKING is short, intimate and hilarious.
A 25 year old daughter has moved back home to her aging parents. We get to follow the family members in their sexual dreams, their attempts at family solidarity and in vulnerable health. What do they do together? And what do they do privately?
When a virginal girl follows her lover into a mysterious forest, a twist of fate wrenches them apart forever. The girl struggles to be ever closer to him in this fairytale about sex, death, and pie.
A scrumptious adventure into the weird and wonderful secret world of an ice lolly disco.
A collaborative project exploring the everyday experiences of Tilly Lawless, a sex worker in Sydney’s decriminalised sex industry, understood within the context of society’s taboos and an ever increasing call for international decriminalisation of the profession.
A turntable springs out a woman named Avocado. Avocado’s instinct creates a man called Soul. A sudden passion swings them in a trumpet mood.
When it is cold outside, it gets hot at the ski center.
A whaling run takes a turn for the worse when a fearless captain and her small crew of whale-hunters encounter a far more ancient and horrible evil.
A short film to promote Breast- Cancer-Awareness month.
A short film about a long penis.
A man walks his dog to the park and back. Nothing more. www.encounters-festival.org.
The memory of aerial attacks that I experienced in my early childhood always gives a strong stimulus and an inexplicable disquiet to my creations.
FUCKING, a 4-episode web series, gives viewers an all-too-familiar peek at some of the bizarre characters that find their way into one woman’s bed. FUCKING is short, intimate and hilarious.
Characters wander through an erotic maze of love and desire.
FUCKING, a 4-episode web series, gives viewers an all-too-familiar peek at some of the bizarre characters that find their way into one woman’s bed. FUCKING is short, intimate and hilarious.
To escape her problems, young mum Janey takes her fragile son Brodie to a woodland hut community in Scotland and door steps a random boy she has met. When hope of acceptance in the community quickly fades, she loses control, whilst Brodie finds solace in a mysterious wolf.
Forty five years of marriage is an impressive anniversary. Barbara and Zdzislaw could be proud of themselves if not for the fact that the husband left the wife for his lover eight years ago.
Arthur is a single dad, struggling with the care for his seven-year-old son Max and the combination of his secret life as a drag queen.
May and Christian are having a baby shower party, whether they want to or not.
Because of ID issues, Pardica, a 50-year old Roma man, risks the authorities separating him from his underage daughter, who has just had a baby.
An innocent young man from China is anxiously memorising ‘his hope’ in the middle of the noisy crowd in Shibuya.
Based on the short story SUMMER OF BONES by Rob Maigret and adapted into a script by Jennifer Reeder, this is a glimpse into a day shared by an extremely sad father and his dare devil son.
Fatma and her mother are Kurdish refugees in Italy. On their visit to the doctor, Fatma has to translate what the doctor tells her mother but she stays silent.
The most beautiful paintings are those which you dream about when you lie in bed smoking a pipe, but which you never paint.
A hybrid documentary about psychosis and surveillance, drawing upon real-life accounts of a schizophrenic disorder: the belief that thoughts are being transmitted and heard by others.
A lonely teenager inadvertently makes a human connection when he shuts down his YouTube channel after haters attack him.
A man wakes up from a coma speaking a fully formed but unrecognisable language, baffling linguistics experts from around the globe.
Wild Horses is a story about a girl with ME negotiating her suffocating relationship with her distracted yet interfering mother. Joan will have to rebel to break their codependency, if only she can work up the energy.
A 10 metre diving tower. People who have never been up there before have to chose whether to jump or climb down. The situation in itself highlights a dilemma: to weigh the instinctive fear of taking the step out, against the humiliation of having to climb down.
A teenager’s perspective of the world around her begins to shift as she is confronted with its capacity for injustice.
A man suddenly finds his ceiling coming down on him.
Paul Limp drives up and down the county in a cheap tuxedo entertaining at parties.Tonight, it’s Charlotte’s Bat Mitzvah - and it’s set to be the best night of her life. Until Paul starts drinking.
Carvalho, a bus driver in the outskirts of Sao Paulo, just bought his grandson a very special gift for their first Christmas together. In order to join the family’s celebration, he now must hope for his night shift replacement to turn up on time.
Tarik helps his father Elias to transport illegal immigrants into the Netherlands. When an accident occurs, Tarik gains the acknowledgment from his father he has yearned for, but at a high price - the loss of his own innocence.
A disenchanted Peruvian family man who works as a taxi driver feels tired of his everyday routine. One long ride during his night shift, three mysterious passengers will put him in an extreme situation and transform his perspective on life.
Marlon, 14 years old, is visiting her mother in jail for the first time since her imprisonment. The young girl, protected by her family and relatives, stubbornly believes that her mother is still her childhood heroine...
What’s it like to feel no emotion?
Sally’s secretive evening job forces her to face up to feelings she thought she had under control.
Identity and conformity collide as two sisters drift apart.
A teen living in rural Indonesia struggles between the traditions of his upbringing and his romantic idealisation of the freedom of the west.
Juli has undergone a gender reassignment surgery, man to woman. A film about a transperson’s loneliness and desire for closeness and love .
Bakary Diarra comes from Mali and has two eyes. One is brown, the other blue. This is a story about his eyes.
Death in a Day tells the story of Evan, a young Chinese boy, who, after visiting his comatose father in the hospital, witnesses his mother’s struggle and must come to grips with the impending death falling upon their family.
Habi takes us on a tour around the 5 Towers of her neighborhood. She teaches us that an empty square only exists in the head of the person who looks at it that way but if you take a closer look you might think differently.
A boy sees his parents suffering in the wake of a loss and decides to take action.
A relationship between two sisters is put to the test when a new role model appears for the younger sister, Cleo. How do you know that you are in love and are there any shortcuts to the answer?
In September the child Frederico learns from his teacher that if the heart stops, people die.
Denial and Dinosaurs.
When Ella was twelve, she had her first fight. And when she was twelve, she discovered sex. Now eighteen, Ella reflects on how her obsession with her older brother Michael’s best friend Moses left her with a secret she still carries.
After getting pregnant, Rocio is released from the identification and expulsion center in Rome, what will she decide to do on the fourth month of her pregnancy?
Maryam’s husband has an accident at home and, rather than saving him, she stops helping and watches him die. SHORT FILM 7: NO TURNING BACK FRIDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 10:00 WATERSHED CINEMA 1 90 MINS Accidents happen.
On a routine morning, a woman on a crowded New York City subway is sexually assaulted in plain sight.
UNSEEN is the film debut of acclaimed British theatre director Katie Mitchell, written by Duncan Macmillan and starring Maxine Peake.
Late summer. Southern Crete. A woman takes her father for their usual Sunday swim. A break in their routine plunges them both into uncharted waters. www.encounters-festival.org.
Pink. A faded shade of goodwill.
Frustrated with her eternal role taking departed souls to their final resting place, Death heads for the land of the living and falls in love with horrifying consequences.
In Jay’s dream, the sun in Athens is weak, you can look straight at it without getting blind.
Escape. Escape. Escape.
A girl daydreams away to a fantasy mire landscape during the celebration of her birthday on New Year’s Eve. There, someone is waiting for her.
A bear escapes and a whole city goes mad. Meanwhile Kore has a completely different problem: The shadows of her past are haunting her.
Desperate to escape Lebanon and settle in Europe, Lillo buys himself a Syrian passport and is ready to appropriate the Syrian identity to obtain asylum. However, what he might not be ready for yet, is everything that comes along with being a Syrian refuge.
A 10-year-old refugee living in the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp of Calais seizes the opportunity to escape to a better life - whatever the cost...
Alone and far from home, The Kid makes his way through a strange city looking for the means to get through his day. Surrounded by predators he is forced to make compromises merely to survive, his life of exile grows one day longer.
Greetings from Aleppo introduces us to the lives and stories of everyday people, so that they don't remain unknown to us and their stories will not be lost.
Fishing used to relax Kostas Pinteris, one of the fishermen at the picturesque village of Skala Sykamias. He’s been fishing since he was a kid and knows the sea well. But, for the last two years his life has changed.
While waiting for her train in a café in Berlin a young woman suddenly gets into a situation where the barista and two customers start to stir up hatred against refugees. What should she do? Leave like another customer, or take action?
On the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, a Syrian Father makes a decision that puts his daughter's life at risk.
On the 23rd of June 2016 Britain voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. ‘Who Are We?’ is a re-working of material from a BBC television debate transmitted a few weeks earlier. Section 3 www.encounters-festival.org.
Films to Break Projectors’ glues, scrapes and splices 35mm, 16mm and 8mm film to create unprojectable celluloid sculptures. Reanimating the material reveals the colour music within and traces of ambiguous narratives that emerge from the complex loops.
A 3D short film; a surreal journey inspired from the paintings of the acclaimed artist, Theodore Pantaleon. AENIGMA is a A 3D requiem to Form, Feminine- Goddess, eternal Eve, Art.
Does 12 years in prison serving time for a crime you didn’t commit make you bitter?
She was abused by her father during childhood. Since he left, the pain and anger had begun to fade. One day, unexpectedly, she was struck by a revelation about her father’s life that cast her feelings about him into confusion.
A mysterious traveller journeys across space and time in search of the origin of the universe, life, and God. Eventually finding himself alone in the dying light of an aging cosmos, he arrives at a devastating realisation. Yet the world continues to spin.
A bleak, numb city is infiltrated by colorful organisms that take us on an amazing, mind opening journey towards a luminous pulsating core.
A movement within a painting, which begins with the savagery of a battle and comes to a halt in a rendition of a masterpiece of the 15th Century; The Battle of San Romano by Paolo Uccello.
Leonardo’s Formula is a music video animation for the song of the same name by English electronica duo ISAN. The animation mimics mechanical movements to match the fast and stable rhythm of the music. A desaturated colour scheme was chosen to further emphasises an overall machine-like aesthetic.
‘For Ray’ is a celebration of Human kindness, and pays homage to how small acts of kindness can make a profound difference in a persons life.
A short stop-motion comedy about NOT sharing.
Based on the poem by Edward Smyth Jones, "Behind the Bars" tells the story of Jones' life of oppression, moving from his early childhood, when he began writing, through the prejudice he faced as an African-American intellectual.
An adaptation of a war poem by Siegfried Sassoon.
After a flood, some fish get stuck in old trees. In danger of drying- out they scream. Woken by the noise, the inhabitants of a nearby cave don’t feel happy about the unintended gathering...
A film about environmental damage, featuring the voice of Ewan McGregor.
In China millions of children live apart from their parents. Their parents have moved to huge Mega-Cities to work in factories. BBC’s Newsround told the story of one of them, Tang Yuwen and his long distance relationship with his parents.
In an isolated and unknown place during a war a child is forced to flee. On his way, horse corpses are everywhere. Only dead horses. Why? Why have horses decided to kill themselves?
An animated self-portrait exploring the line of human evolution and a projection of a possible future. As our evolution turns from biological to technological, combined with our created digital identities, are we now the bridge between the born and the made?
An abstract music visual for UK producer, ORCA: A glitchy and virtual journey through a violaceous universe of chemical colour.
An innovative music video for the Legalization anthem ‘Legal Eyes’ by Hadag Nahash & Infected Mushroom - combined from live action footage and crazy animation techniques.
A cautionary tale of nationalism (and the relative merits of pasties).
As part of Selfridges’ ‘Material World’ campaign, Director Anna Ginsburg was asked to create a 2D animated documentary, which explored eight brands and their use of eco-friendly materials.
The last habitants of a village refuse to let themselves sink into oblivion.
An experimental animation in which thousands of photographs of an old building from the archives of Otto Alder are brought to life in an animated document of impermanence and recommencement.
Whilst a human figure walks a linear path, the rest of existence continues turning on an endless loop. Diagrams and sounds from NASA’s Golden Record communicate information about life on Earth; seeing everything that exists from an outside perspective.
‘A film for my Father, who gambled with love.
The concept of this piece was inspired from the works of Matt Abbiss and Walter Ruttmann, with the aim to create an animation that times smoothly with the music in an organic motion.
Dan recounts a mysterious visitation that had an unusual effect on him and his fellow travellers while touring the United States with his band. An animated extract from podcast Love and Radio.
Elegy is a form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. Sorrow and love became the principal themes of the elegy. Elegy presents everything as lost and gone or absent and future.
In a continuous scenery, his physical movement stays in the same position. The speed of the continuity and his movement have accelerated and gradually cause a distortion.
An optician grows tired of seeing the world too clearly.
A visualisation of Charles Bukowski’s ‘The Strongest of the Strange’, exploring abstract notions of elusiveness, creative expression and fleeting artistry, from the position of a spectator seeing something that they should not.
Pencilless Case is a history of feeling different and the consequences of standing up to this feeling.
A camel, on a quest to find his missing wife in the desert, faces the dilemma of chasing his treasure or continuing his journey. The story of how someone recognises the most important thing in life amid the chaos caused by dementia.
A young boy prepares for an important change, leading to a confrontation that pits old against new, and the stubbornness of youth against the acceptance of getting older. Based on a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier published in 1892.
A poignant short stop motion film about a middle aged man coming to terms with the loss of his mother.
In an isolated whaling community, a man has developed an ungodly way of preparing himself to kill the creatures upon which his livelihood depends. Now he must initiate his son into their harsh and bloody trade.
Toby is selling his childhood home. Walking through empty rooms, he is assailed by memories of happiness unravelling, break- down, and the helplessness and rage of being a child. Why do close ties break and loved ones leave? Can we ever know the full story?
Jacqueline has lost her mind a bit, but whatever. For her trip to the seaside, she has decided to take the train by herself like a big girl!
What will it take to get the distracted Durnhams appreciating life? This is a film about cups of tea, pessimism, little things with wings that fly and consumerism. Oh, and naked dancing.
Will we continue to let events pass us by uncontested, or will we decide to break the cycle?
My dad taught me how to pack.
The unfortunate death of a wild rabbit turns into a remarkable experience for children who find his body and bury it in a sand box. Dozens of magical creatures start leaving him and merge with nature.
Little by little two buildings rise in the sky; two billionaires, helped by the most renowned architects in the world, build their own skyscrapers, always more luxurious and higher. But how high will they go?
From a seed to war, from meat to love, from indifference to apocalypse. An attempt to capture the world in a nutshell.
Seven protagonists, stuck inside the box, are trapped in their clichés and their recurring daily routine. Their individuality is only an apparent one, because far too easily their autonomy can be taken away - even if they gamble with life. But the show must go on and money is rolling in. Applause!
‘Until one day... when the first shot was fired, everyone had to leave their homes.
An ode to a lost age of Internet love.
A troubling moment in the balminess of a summer in the countryside. While gardening, a young man sees his mother as a woman for the first time.
Lemon tree is a film about a fictional character whose body is assembled from memories embedded in an abandoned space.
The film as a metaphor of life, the last surrealistic journey into consciousness. Stream of images, thoughts and memories. The sequence of protagonist’s personal experiences and collective memory.
Two characters are linked by their hair. They influence each other by every move they make and wherever they go.
Francis raises his son, Kip, in isolation. But when the boy outgrows his father’s protective confines, Francis learns that what is right for himself may not be best for his son.
An ambiguous love letter introduces Joe Connoly to a life full of possibilities, and complications.
A traumatised Granny anxiously looks for her little girl at the train station.
A young girl wakes to find herself surrounded by floating screens, visualising the outcome of every thought she has as she gets lost in a surreal world of missed opportunities.
A 2D animated short following a day in the life of a lonely old man living in and maintaining an American ghost town by himself, searching for relics and glimpses of his old life he had spent with his late wife Marie.
A Scenes of Crime Officer is plagued by memories of her day job. Two environments mesh together as she struggles to separate work and home life.
A suburban woman can’t stop growing new fingers.
A man on a bridge, separated from the love of his life. Wanting to be with her one last time, he decides to go and seek her in the hereafter.
A surreal animation exploring the British far right’s relationship with cakes. Poetry inspired by Daniil Kharms and John Cooper Clarke.
There are 3 heads in the dark. Why are they arguing and til' when?
On a train trip through spatial and temporal dimensions the traveller suddenly comes across himself.
This animation is a slice of a woman’s life and routine with breast cancer in the technological world.
Empowering young women around the world and persuading them that they deserve the opportunities given to them, and that with the help of their community, they can change the world.
If there is rebirth after death, wish to become a tree, stand for eternity, no postures for grief and joy. Half reposing in the dust, half soaring in the wind; half spattering the shade, half basking in the sun. Greatly prideful, greatly taciturn, never to cling, never to seek...
When a suspicious customer enters your funeral home, then it’s time to investigate.
A figure has to go through a checkpoint in Palestine. She has to overcome a series of obstacles that will drastically affect her mobility. The consciousness of the past and the longing for a future coexist simultaneously in to her day-to- day life.
Putzi, a mentally challenged kid, wants to fly up to the sky with his best friend, a turkey hen named Pepi. The neighborhood boys convince him to fly from the top of a building. This is a story of society’s cruelty towards the abnormal.
A boy and his mother’s journey through a frozen forest made of sugar.
Birdlime is the name for a sticky substance which is spread on branches to trap wild birds intended for export or trade. The film observes one bird who barely manages to escape this industry, yet remains trapped in a cage and surrounded by unfamiliar sounds and un-birdlike creatures.
A broken simulated short film about kindness, respect and coexistence.
Assholio’ is a collaboration between a musician/drawer of hybrid animals and an animator based between Brazil and Ireland. This original song by Erin Kleh, takes us on a familiar journey of a difficult day, as seen from the unfamiliar perspective of a monkey.
In December 2011, a security guard was killed by a pack of stray dogs prowling in a poor neighbourhood, on the Bogota suburbs.
Fabricated, a stop-motion animated film ten years in the making, is a journey through an alien world which was once our own.
Dr. Frank Buckett invents the Expando-Ray, what could possibly go wrong?
Kukuschka is a bird, who follows the sun.
Catawampus is based on the Slavic folktale of Baba Yaga. The story follows a little girl who gets lost in the woods. A storm brews and she finds shelter in a small log cabin but when that cabin suddenly comes to life, the girl must hide from its frightening owner.
A young woman comes back home. She gets undressed, puts on her swimsuit, and sinks into the underwater depths of her apartment. Overcome by a baroque aquatic flora, her home has become the ecosystem of her spouse: an octopus.
At night the forest creatures gather to gamble, putting their innermost at stake.
A meditative exploration in virtual reality of the medicine songs, stories and cosmovision of indigenous Shipibo healers working with ayahuasca in the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest.
The Last Moments is a virtual reality film experience that puts the viewer directly in the shoes of a person having an assisted suicide at Dignitas, a dignity in dying organisation in Switzerland.
Made to celebrate the 500th centenary of one the worlds greatest artists - Hieronymus Bosch - a virtual reality trip through The Garden of Earthly Delights.
The future of music is a one-of- a-kind 360 film that follows Carré Bleu, a fictitiously famous music producer, who can modulate time, space and gravity to create the music of the future.
Mind Enterprises’ new single, Chapita, is brought to life by Eran Amir and nexus VR studio in this innovative and colourful VR experience, combining an ambitious 360 storytelling experience with cinemagraphs and clonemotion technology, and employing a pioneering custom built single camera rig.
Ten years after 'An Inconvenient Truth,' Al Gore takes viewers on an immersive, 3D journey to the frontlines of climate change.
Two women and a man wrangle. Each must hollow out the other’s core for fruits promised but only ever borne in dreams. A poetic symphony on Nairobi.
The archetypal hero takes a journey through seven stages: birth, childhood, mission, labyrinth, monster, battle and death/rebirth.
A group of Africans have left the Earth to create a colony on a distant planet. They respond with disquiet to the arrival of an uninvited guest.
Vaysha is not like other young girls; she was born with one green eye and one brown eye, but her odd eyes aren’t the only thing that’s special about her gaze. Her left eye sees only the past. Her right, only the future.
A century ago, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves - ripples in spacetime - but believed they were so small that humans would never observe them.
Agua Dulce, in the California High Desert, a ten year old girl challenges her grandfather, a cranky retired firefighter, to follow a crazy plan and bring the water back to the dry river.
up in a ute, to offer him a ride. Equal parts suspense and coming- of-age, HITCH explores loss and acceptance in a silent world, where nothing is as it appears to be.
Millions of years ago earth was once a peaceful place full of dragons. One day earth was wiped out by a comet, and hidden deep in a cave stood a dragons egg - frozen in time. Lily a deaf girl, had just lost her mother and moved to live with her father. They don't get on well as her father can't sign, and they find it difficult to communicate. After an argument lily runs off. She is suddenly caught in bad weather, and falls into a cave finding herself stumbling into her mother's mystical past.
Set in rural England and inspired by real life events. The Silent Child centres around a profoundly deaf four year old girl named Libby who is born into a middle class family and lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her the gift of communication.
A young Deaf man is challenged to a game of Connect 4, only to find that this is no ordinary game. Are the odds stacked against him?
NAHEMI OBSESSIVELY OPTIMISTIC — Dir: Grace Romero / 2017
experience this achingly familiar but perhaps buried part of our human longing for love through a unique story-telling technique, the passionate voice of sign SIGNS OF AN AFFAIR — Dir: Louis Neethling / 2017
Signs of an Affair tells the story of Flora, who has been married to Fred for many years, when suddenly, he doesn't want sugar in his tea! Something's not right! Flora is suspicious and determined to find out the truth, but ends up in some unexpected places. Starring Jean St Clair and Ilan Dwek; produced for BSLBT by Mutt and Jeff Pictures.