Jean-Laurent Csinidis

The Flats

In his tower-block apartment in New Lodge, Joe reenacts memories from his childhood amidst the “Troubles”. In this Catholic area of Belfast, the number of deaths was tragically significant. Joe is joined by neighbours Jolene, Sean, Angie, and others, all willingly participating in this process of revisiting the collective memories that shaped their lives and the district they live in.

Stranger Eyes

After the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter, a young couple receives strange videos and realizes someone has been filming their daily life — even in their most intimate moments. The police set up surveillance around their home to catch the voyeur but the family starts to crumble as secrets unravel under the scrutiny of eyes watching them from all sides.

Green Line

The film opens on a tale with animated figurines in miniature settings reconstructing Fida’s childhood during the war. It then shifts to a documentary style with a series of real confrontations between Fida and ex-militiamen manipulating the small figurines. The miniature material becomes a bridge between different subjective stories, infusing the collective history with individual details. The experience of this confrontational space turns out to be cathartic. The narrative moves around between realities and temporalities.

Le jour de gloire

20-year-old Kamel has a project for his low-income neighborhood in the South of France. Committed and idealist, he is invited to pitch it to the Minister of urban planning, in person. Together with his sidekicks Hichem and Youssoufa, Kamel finds himself in over his head, caught up in a political game.

Little Palestine: Diary of a Siege

During the Syrian civil war, the district of Yarmouk, home to thousands of Palestinians, became the scene of dramatic and ferocious fighting. Little Palestine (Diary of a Siege) is a film that follows the destiny of civilians during the brutal sieges, imposed by the Syrian regime, that took place in the wake of the battles. With his camera, Abdallah Al-Khatib composes a love song to a place that proudly resists the atrocities of war.

The Sound Is Innocent

As if directing a science-fiction film, Johana Ožvold dissects the story of electronic music. From the pioneer sound engineers working behind the Iron Curtain, through the French avant-garde composers, up to the post-modern creators of digital sonic artefacts, the first-time filmmaker summons an abstract landscape that is haunting and yet achingly beautiful. A voice appears from old television screens forgotten in the maze of some futuristic archive where past and future seem to coexist in a complex and multi-layered way.

Game Girls

Game Girls follows Teri and her girlfriend Tiahna as they navigate their relationship through the chaotic world of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, aka the “homeless capital of the U.S.”

Tigre

After a long period of absence, Rina returns to her island deep in the Tigre river Delta. There she spent a large part of her life and raised her son. Now she wants to recover her home and return there with Facundo, who also left the island. Both, mother and son, will learn that nothing is like it was. Machines on the river are about to destroy everything. A girl is lost in the forest. The water is rising.

Uncanny Valley

Inside a museum, nowadays. A diorama represents two young soldiers in the trenches. All of a sudden, we are thrown into the diorama: the immobile soldiers come to life, there is terror on their faces – the camera dances around them – explosions, chaos, fog: everything flies about in the air. With every gunshot, they shudder and curl up

Blue Banks

Lavinia, a single mother trying to make a better life on her own terms for herself and her 13-year-old son, live in a poor Romanian village. She is impulsive, prone to misreading situations, and not sure how to love. But her son, on the threshold between childhood and adolescence, needs his mother more than ever, and over the course of four seasons their relationship is put to the test.