Author: Festregards

Original Film Title: Feed Back Time 

Director’s Name: Ramon Williams

Writer’s Name: Ramon Williams

Producer: Ramon Williams

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 2 minutes 23 seconds

Film Description:

A terminally ill elderly woman is fed and medicated via a tube that runs through the wall of her abdomen directly into her stomach, as she knits and talks about her hopes and life experiences.

Original Film Title: 《花的影子》

Director’s Name: Ariana

Writer’s Name: Ariana

Producer: Ariana

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 2 minutes 28 seconds

Film Description:

After being sexually assaulted, a young woman is further traumatized by the humiliation of slut-shaming and spirals into post-traumatic stress, reliving the nightmare through repeated flashbacks.

Original Film Title: 地穴

Director’s Name: Kelvin Zhu

Writer’s Name: Kelvin Zhu

Producer: Kelvin Zhu

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 19 minutes 44 seconds

Film Description:

《Whispers in the Subterranean》is an experimental film that combines AI-generated imagery of firelight on cave walls with real-life footage. It explores the state of our existence in the current age, where we are endlessly swept up by fragmented information, and slowly yet calmly accepting this “bed of information.”

Through a video composed of AI-generated image sequences, its infinite expansion represents a visual interpretation of the uncertain variables within its system, constantly stacking on one another. The control over random seeds and the relationship variables between preceding and succeeding sequences is like entering a new parallel universe with every choice. The process can be seen as constructing stable logical clues within ordered chaos.
Even so, through constantly iterating frames, the ending will eventually head towards a predetermined ‘future’ (a determined key frame). This state is akin to Plato’s allegory of the cave, where prisoners in the cave regard the ‘shadow’ as the world, and the ever-changing firelight behind them casts different forms and possibilities onto the wall’s shadows.

Ultimately, the shadow projected onto the wall is still controlled by the projector behind the wall. In today’s age of rapid technological iteration, we have adapted to ‘information cocoons’ and patterned ‘thinking paths’. The firelight reflected on the wall has long become a ‘scenic illusion’ that comforts us in our paradise, and the occasional sounds from outside the ‘cave’ are regarded by us as the ‘delusional whispers’ of our minds.”

Original Film Title: Brave Steps

Director’s Name: Wilma Casal

Writer’s Name: Wilma Casal

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 14 minutes 36 seconds

Film Description:

The park is desolate, the lake filthy. No sound of joy is to be heard. Optimistic and determined to put an end to the gloom, Duckfoot leaves his pond and sets off.
But the gloom soon infects him. He meets friendly gestures with skepticism and the lines “it’s in your hand” tempt him to take a hopeless step.
Courage has left him.
But from a distance he realizes: every deed can have a great effect. He sees his chance to change the world, to gradually transform it into a sunny place.

Original Film Title: Salt In Our Blood, In Our Sweat, In Our Tears

Director’s Name: Nastja Säde Rönkkö

Writer’s Name: Nastja Säde Rönkkö

Producer: Nastja Säde Rönkkö

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 13 minutes 59 seconds

Film Description:

From the personification of a tear drop, a drop of Golden blood and a droplet of sweat, emerges a tragic tale of lost love and its chaotic emotional fallout. The HD-video (13:59) is driven by Nastja Säde Rönkkö’s poetic text: intimate verse with an ambiguity that delivers a metanarrative for lost and found identity, a scarred planet and our ever-changing world.

Original Film Title: Findings

Director’s Name: Kristina Schippling

Writer’s Name: Kristina Schippling, Marie-Louise Müller

Producer: Kristina Schippling, Marie-Louise Müller

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: No Dialogue

Runtime: 7 minutes 20 seconds

Film Description:

Findings is a film about a young woman’s process of finding herself. She no longer fits into her own home, she literally grows out of it. But she cannot find a new home and loses herself in the search for it …

Original Film Title: Beyond

Director’s Name: Shubhangi Acharya, Sugandh Lamba

Writer’s Name: Shubhangi Acharya, Sugandh Lamba

Producer: Shubhangi Acharya, Sugandh Lamba

Country of Origin: India

Country of Filming: India

Language: No Dialogue

Runtime: 7 minutes 22 seconds

Film Description:

In ‘Beyond’, the filmmakers lend the expression of dance and movement to a common urban phenomenon. The film showcases how one person’s trash can be another’s treasure through a waste paper’s journey as it is tossed around by the winds and carried through the city, with an uncertain destination.