Another February
Director: Tobias Ervolder
Country of Origin: Denmark
Premiere: United States
Synopsis: Another February is an intense one-take short film that follows a married couple in real time on a seemingly romantic hike up Himmelbjerget. What begins as a loving gesture gradually transforms into a psychological confrontation, as a secret affair and years of silence force their way to the surface. With no cuts and no escape routes, both the characters and the audience are compelled to stay in the moment as the relationship crumbles before our eyes. The film is an intimate and painful story about the repetitions of love and how difficult it is to break them.
As it all burns
Director: Anna Ostasenko Bogdanoff, Tessa De Baudinière
Country of Origin: France
Synopsis: Marseille, a scorching summer. A group of skaters in their twenties ride recklessly in border places. Driven by their passion for skating, they chase a dream of absolute freedom, pushing the limits of their own bodies.
Barbed wire
Director: Sepideh Eghbali
Country of Origin: Iran
Premiere: World
Synopsis: A lonely, rusty barbed wire in an uncleared minefield encounters a kite blown in by the wind. He tries to connect with the frightened kite — until the kite's owner arrives, and the wire must choose between holding on and letting go.
Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not
Director: Katina Bitsicas, Scott McMahon
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: In Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not, a new purpose is given to a found archive from the 1930’s of discarded studio portrait nitrate film negatives. The crumbling and decaying negatives were preserved through digital scans and reinterpreted by the artists by combining them with microscopic imagery of botanic material. This parallels the use of cellulose in nitrate film with the makeup of organic plant cell walls. Nitrate film was used by photographers and filmmakers from the 1880s to the 1950s, but was replaced by acetate safety film after it was found to be highly flammable and unstable. By preserving these found and unidentified portraits, we illuminate the obsolete material of nitrate film through the examination of cellulose at a molecular level.
The Chosen
Director: Brady Richards
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: Reed is troubled by a vision forcing him to do bad things, but nobody believes him. Maybe this new therapist will understand?
Dog of God
Director: Lauris and Raitis Ābele
Country of Origin: Latvia
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: In a 17th-century Livonian village plagued by rain and drunkenness, a stolen sacred relic triggers witchcraft accusations against a local barmaid. At her trial, an elderly man proclaims himself a werewolf - a self-described ""Dog of God"" - and arrives bearing a mysterious gift: the Devil's Balls. What follows is a hallucinatory spiral of religious hysteria, folk horror, and dark absurdism, rendered in rotoscope animation.
Dream Synth™
Director: Ryley O'Byrne
Country of Origin: Canada
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: What are we without our dreams? What do machines become with them? Dream Synth™ is a speculative meta documentary contemplating the transcendental nature of consciousness within our increasingly techno-mediated society — and a curious archive of our blooming relationship with Artificial Intelligence.
Fresh Values
Director: Drew Durepos, Isaac Brooks
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: In the near future, a struggling urban food co-op adopts AR technology to save their store. The strategy proves too successful.
The Garden Sees Fire
Director: Kiera Faber
Country of Origin: United States
Premiere: Tennessee
Synopsis: "A mystical tale of cloaked identities, systemic traumas, and insatiable consumption: The ecology burns, reclaiming its environs.This visionary, artist driven analogue stop-frame animation synchronously incorporates buried and hand painted 16mm film frame-by-frame with drawing and armatured puppet animations; creating a surreal disorienting world-within-a-world."
