Films from over 25 countries in the International Short Film Competition of BIEFF.15

Between September 22–28, 31 thought-provoking films from 26 countries, each offering fresh perspectives on the contemporary world, will be screened in Bucharest at Cinemateca Eforie and Cinema Elvire Popesco, as part of the International Short Film Competition of Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival. The longest-running competitive section of BIEFF, now in its 15th edition, the International Short Film Competition serves as a platform meant to explore new trends and forms of cinematic expression and to promote new voices in cinema.

Curated by Oana Ghera, the festival’s artistic director, together with curators Flavia Dima, Dora Leu, and Călin Boto, this year’s selection is organised into six thematic programs that interrogate and deconstruct the gaze and cinema’s conventional models of representation. At the same time, this year’s films invite audiences to engage in dialogue and critical reflection on current socio-political issues: from the social and ecological collapse caused by colonial and extractivist practices to analyses of various modes of relating (between people, but also with technology and artificial intelligence) and the processing of abuses and traumas – individual, historical, and war-related.

The full festival schedule, as well as the tickets for individual screenings, will be available on Eventbook.ro starting Friday, September 12. The BIEFF.15 general passes are now available at four pricing tiers, following the implementation of a “pay what you can” policy designed to make the festival experience more accessible to diverse audiences, regardless of economic status.

The first program, Common Ground, offers a multi-faceted reflection on the relationship between nature and culture, starting with a critical look at past and present colonialist and extractivist practices in order to explore possible future forms of reconciliation between the two. The program opens with The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing by Palestinian-born filmmaker Theo Panagopoulos, which recontextualizes some of the earliest color images of Palestine, taken during the British occupation, using seemingly bucolic footage of local flora to craft a powerful essay on how the image itself is an essential component of colonialism. While L’Mina by Randa Maroufi builds a living model of a Moroccan mining town to bring on screen the exploitative dynamics imposed on both the community and the natural territory, Common Pear by Slovenian filmmaker Gregor Božič throws us into a future devastated by the climate crisis, where several scientists attempt to understand the relationship farmers once had with the soil. Playful on the surface thanks to animated interventions on analogue images depicting the valleys of the Dolomites and the Guadalete River in Cádiz, Spain, Elena Duque’s Portals and Eva Giolo’s Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths propose two exercises in re-semanticizing the natural landscape, working with similarly enchanting formal tools.

In the second program, Memory Palaces, director Evi Stamou initiates a correspondence with an artificial intelligence program to fill in the gaps in her father’s biography in Who Was Here, while Koki, Ciao by Quenton Miller is co-written and narrated by the 67-year-old talking parrot of former Yugoslav leader Tito and features appearances by names such as Sophia Loren and Nicolae Ceaușescu. In Slet 1988, director Marta Popidova captures the transition from socialist collectivism to nationalism through the eyes of dancer Sonja Vukićević, born in Yugoslavia, while in J-N-N, filmmaker Ginan Seidl weaves together rumours, legends, memories, and factual data about the history of Iraq and its territories in a poetic essay on the role of culture in a society devastated by wars. Also addressing the topic of conflict, The Orchards by Antoine Chapon carefully and lucidly documents the erasure of the Basateen al-Razi neighbourhood in Damascus and its orchards as punishment for the population’s revolt against the regime, while giving voice to the memories and hopes of a diasporic Syrian community.

The films in the This Is the Next Century program build bridges between past and future, constructing and deconstructing real and simulated worlds in order to respond to a question that haunts us obsessively: if the future is now, does it still exist afterward? In Every Epoch Dreams the Next, director Johannes Gierlinger confronts the legacy of a film from communist-era Albania, while What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move interrogates the relationship between the citizens of Athens and their city, juxtaposing the classical, the post-modern, and the revolutionary. Elsewhere, the digital world of sports video games provides in World at Stake a biting commentary on entertainment and the lack of individuality and agency in a universe on the brink of collapse, while Their Eyes shifts attention from interface to user, examining the invisible and meticulous labor of online workers who break down and index images for autonomous machines in countries that exploit them directly. Green Grey Black Brown continues this thread of labor, looking at oil as a portal into the bloody logic of capitalism.

Identity is a central theme of the films included in the Invention of the Self program. While The Birds Choose the Cards by Egyptian filmmaker Basim Magdy reflects on the cyclical nature of history and creates a space to contemplate the intertwining of our collective destinies, Firat Yucel observes the reactions of our bodies to what happens in the world in happiness. Returning to BIEFF after last year’s feature Eat the Night, duo Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel present How Are You?, in which various animals attempt to heal the harm inflicted by the contemporary world. Meanwhile, in Being John Smith, Britain’s greatest living experimental filmmaker meditates on burning dilemmas and the current state of the world.

The I Feel Like I Know Her short film program, borrowing its name from the iconic series Twin Peaks, investigates and reclaims the so-called “feminine mystery.” From the futuristic experiments of Erogenesis (dir. Xandra Popescu) to encounters with instinct and animality in Crocodile Nest (dir. Jazmin Rojas) and Arcturus (dir. Tuisku Lehto), from the punk spirit of Some of You Fucked Eva (dir. Lilith Grasmug) and the rebellion of Daria’s Night Flowers (dir. Maryam Tafakory), to the dynastic games of La Durmiente by Maria Inês Gonçalves, the six films in the program, all of them directed by women and non-binary filmmakers, propose a mysterious femininity that resists simple explanation.

From moral and legislative systems to systems of surveillance and operation, the six films in the Paranoid Power program examine the mechanisms of power and the malleability of the notion of justice. Citizen-Inmate by Hesam Eslami speculates on the Big Brother-like atmosphere of a state-run digital tracking service for former prisoners in Iran, while A Metamorphosis by Lin Htet Aung examines the suffering and resistance of the Burmese people. In Loynes (dir. Dorian Jespers) and Empty Rider (dir. Lawrence Lek), we witness two absurd trials – one of a lifeless, nameless body, the other of an autonomous car burdened by remorse. An experiment in image, sound, and subtitling, Another Other by Bex Oluwatoyin Thompson addresses denialism and systemic racism in America, while in The Motherfucker’s Birthday, Saif Alsaegh captures the vulgarity of celebrations dedicated to Saddam Hussein.

The titles selected in the BIEFF.15 International Short Film Competition compete for three awards (the BIEFF Award for Best International Short, the Best Director Award, and the Best Visual Concept Award), each worth 1,000 euros. The winners will be chosen by a jury consisting of Alina Manolache, filmmaker, artist, and lecturer known for her work at the intersection of documentary and experimental cinema, Lyse Ishimwe Nsengiyumva, film curator and photographer, member of the Rotterdam International Film Festival selection committee and founder of the community film-screening program Recognition, centered on works made by and for the Black community, and Paola Buontempo, Argentine filmmaker, professor, and curator, member of the Documenta Madrid selection committee and formerly part of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival team.