Student Films
The boldest work by film-school students from around the world — first steps by directors who will shape the language of cinema tomorrow.
Short Films
Short films by emerging professional directors: concise, precise and surprising stories that fit a whole world into a few minutes.
Full-length Films
Debut feature films — the heart of the Molodist competition: new names in world cinema, discovered first in Kyiv.
Short Film Competition
The year's best Ukrainian short films — a fresh perspective from a new generation of Ukrainian filmmakers.
Documentary Competition
Documentary cinema that explores reality unvarnished: personal stories, urgent themes and new forms of storytelling.
Teen Screen
Films about and for teenagers — on growing up, friendship, first love and finding yourself.
Ukrainian Premieres
New Ukrainian films that audiences will see on the big screen for the first time at Molodist.
Festival of Festivals
The year's key films from the world's leading film festivals — on the big screen in Kyiv.
Midnight Special
Genre, strange and provocative cinema for those who aren't afraid of late-night screenings.
FORMA
Experimental cinema that tests the limits of form, sound and image.
Scandinavian Panorama
A selection of contemporary Nordic cinema — restrained, profound and visually refined stories.
Century
A retrospective marking the centenaries of great filmmakers — classics worth seeing on the big screen.
Special Events
Special screenings, filmmaker encounters and the festival's satellite projects — features and shorts.
Opening Film
The film that opens the 55th edition of Molodist.
Closing Film
The film that closes the festival after the awards ceremony.
Special Event

A Well for the Thirsty
Yurii Illienko
A cinematic parable about old Levko Serdiuk, who lives in a post-war village and tends to the communal well. Yet, his dedication goes unappreciated. However, an unexpected visit from his family prompts him to symbolically rise from his coffin. Against the backdrop of this intimate drama, the village itself is transforming as modernity ruthlessly intrudes upon the traditional way of life, bringing electric poles, an iron windmill, and airplanes in the sky.

Let us through, dear ancestors
Lav Diaz
1617, Las Islas Filipinas. The Spanish friar, Father Enciso, the encomendero of one of the islands, rules with unrelenting toughness and an insatiable libido to tame the savages.

MUSIC WITH IMAGES or FILMS WITHOUT WORDS
Natalia Ilchuk
01 Psychoville (2004) 2’
One day in the life of the Sykhiv district.
02 Sorry (2005) 3’
Music video on Vika Vradiy’s song.
03 There is hope (2005) 5’
At the concert of Mad Heads in the Park of Culture (Lviv) in June 2005.
04 At the Barvy club in Kyiv (2006) 4’
Unplanned concert of an unexisting band at the unfound club.
05 750 (2020) 8’
Celebrating 750th birthday of Lviv in 2006.
06 bodiless lovers (2008) 12’
Post-rock in stop-motion.
07 livemusic (2021) 6’
Drum’n’bass party in Kamianske in 2007.
08 signs (2020) 2’
A night ride on the Bohdanivska street in Lviv.
09 Autoportrait (2011) 5’
Portrait of an automobile accompanied by the song of Kyiv’s band 2sleepy “the fog”.
10 Transience (2007) 13’
Travelogue about passage of time.
11 Take me to the sea (2012) 3’
Music video for Lviv’s band Sparkle Dream.
12 Farewell (2011) 2’
Short film about two shirts in love.

Orange Flavored Wedding
Christophe Honore
It is March 1978 in the suburbs of Nantes. Jacques is marrying Martine. For the two of them, it's a marriage of love. But can love heal the wounds of childhood?

Rehearsals for a Revolution
Pegah Ahangarani
Pegah Ahangarani traces her life through five portraits of relatives and mentors. Using personal archives, home videos, protests, and newspapers, she chronicles over 40 years of Iranian history from 1979 to 2026.

Roya
Mahnaz Mohammadi
Roya, an Iranian teacher imprisoned for her political beliefs, is faced with a choice: make a forced televised confession, or remain confined to her 3-square-metre cell.

Seven Circles of Hell
Andrzej Klamt, Frank Amann
A Ukrainian female soldier and five male soldiers recount the horrors they witnessed and endured on the front line, and their difficult struggle to return to a normal life. The result is a poignant portrait of a generation forced to live with the psychological consequences of a war imposed upon them, and of a society that will continue to bear this burden for a long time to come.

The Death of the Gods
Andriy Donchyk
Based on the diaries of Oleksandr Dovzhenko. As an artist paints the "Last Supper" for a local church, the peasants feel a special sense of pride seeing themselves immortalized as saints. However, this artistic choice does not sit well with the newly established revolutionary authorities.

A faded sakura in my garden, you walk past me again
Oleh Chornyi
The film ridicules the overwhelming fascination with oriental martial arts, philosophy, paraphernalia. The forces of evil—a little man, his nephew, girl and ninja—steal the Holy Lily from the monastery. Matsuoka, together with his friend, overcomes fantastic difficulties in the fight against the forces of evil and releases Lily.
Кордон на замку
Serhii Lysenko
Set in late-1980s Ukraine, this black-and-white psychological drama follows a young man unable to find his place in Soviet society. This alienation leads many to dismiss him as insane. Driven to the edge, he decides to cross the border illegally, to escape the bleakness of his reality, throwing one last challenge at an oppressive regime.
Block 1

Bitter Kiss
Hasan Ege Çalışkan
A chance reunion with a childhood friend forces an introverted young man to confront the dark desires he has spent years trying to suppress.

"Vaterland" Or A Bule Named Yanto
Berthold Wahjudi
When German-Indonesian Yanto visits his younger sister in Yogyakarta, he expects a simple reunion – until he realises she belongs more effortlessly than he ever has. As envy and dissonance between siblings surface, Yanto’s journey becomes a bittersweet exploration of mixed-race identity.

Restricted Area
Jan Górecki
Karol, a Warsaw-based driver of Ethiopian descent, is brutally assaulted on his way to Białowieża and illegally pushed across the border. Wandering through the border forest, he experiences the reality of migrants trapped between systems of violence.

The Flowers of Malva
Anna Lys, Rémy Berlemont, Alice Hamel, Chen-Yun Hu, Ludivine Lebourg, Estelle Martin, Agathe Ribout
In a small village in the Ukrainian countryside, Nina, a grandmother deeply attached to her land, welcomes her granddaughter Yana for what appears to be a simple holiday. In reality, she is trying to hide the war that is ravaging the country from her granddaughter by creating an imaginary world where everything is fine.

Shutterspeed
Jasper De Maeseneer
Fifteen-year-old Cas poses for his school’s trainee teacher and amateur photographer Jard. When he becomes painfully aware of the power imbalance between them, he seeks to reverse their dynamic.
Block 2

The Bright Hours
Yeh Chia-chen
Ten-year-old Great Demon is a whirlwind of mischief and imagination, leaving chaos and laughter in his wake. But beneath his wild antics lies a quiet loneliness. One ordinary day, a strange new friend named Ke appears out of nowhere, turning Great Demon’s world upside down.

Reminiscence
Iryna Melnychenko
Ira Melnichenko, a young Ukrainian refugee in Switzerland with her brother, creates a doll in her own image, through which she revisits the story of a family torn apart by the death of her father, a 2D animator in Kyiv, destroyed by alcohol and dereliction.

White-Knuckle Summer
Jason Hogan
Set in a divided British seaside town, ten-year-old Ruby forms an unlikely friendship with Hasset, an asylum seeker living in a local hotel, as one summer of freedom collides with the threat of rising anti-migrant protests.

The Bistro
Skaistė Bartkutė
One summer, a twelve-year-old girl works at her grandma’s bistro, full of strange adults.

Rabbit Heart
Stella Fachinger
An abandoned factory site. Twelve-year-old Hannes pushes his little brother Oli into increasingly dangerous tests of courage with a bow and arrow. When he puts them both in a life-threatening situation, his power begins to crumble.

Sundown
Jérémie Jayraj Itty, Inna Soroka, Julia Estrada Torres, Sammi Khuu
Joakim, a young, compassionate caregiver working in a dementia ward, navigates the emotional toll of his work as he learns to accept the limits of his ability to help.
Block 3

Kamathipura Express
Leon Korzynski
A young Polish man, Osa, lives in the slums of Mumbai, where he falls in love with Sapna, a teenage dancer from a poor family. When Sapna's father tries to sell her to a brothel, the couple is forced on a desperate run across India.

Un verre de souvenir
Louis Marguerite
At a reception held in honour of his late wife, André, an elderly man whose memory is failing, tries to reconnect with his past and those around him.

La Forma Cannibale
Ginevra Solaroli
After Giovanna's death, Ivan clings to her gestures, objects, and rituals. What begins as a tribute gradually turns into an obsession, until it blurs the boundaries between identity, love and memory.

Meat
Adolfo Margulis
Jak, a young Haitian migrant, must reach the U.S. border with his father, but his mother’s disappearance forces him to choose between continuing or confronting the past.

C'est La Vie
Zheng Zihan
Forced to track down his runaway, dialysis dependent grandfather, a struggling art student is pulled into an absurd road trip to catch a legendary fish journey that brings him face to face with the old man’s fading past, and his own stalled life.
Block 1

The Man Without Qualities
Sofia Romano
After yet another failed review interview at the Ministry of Labor and Productivity, the visual artist Ultimo, sinks into an existential crisis. When he is ultimately declared a “ marginal worker, ” he embarks on a radical metamorphosis.

The Cut
Julia Staniszewska
Piotr is 24 years old and has just met the woman of his life. As usual, he comes to tell his mother about it. At first, he does not notice that the roles are just turning and now she will need him.

Diego
Mélissa Silveira
Vanessa, 21, lives with her brother Diego, 20, who has a disability, and their father Antonio, a strong-willed Gypsy man. The happy, well-oiled routine of this trio is disrupted by Diego’s sexual awakening. While Antonio is proud to introduce his son to a virile form of masculinity, Vanessa realizes that her brother prefers men.

Thunder
Mauricio Carrasco Tolosa
La Foudre, a social media vigilante, becomes famous through his punitive raids livestreamed on the internet. But spectacle justice doesn't come without risks...

Auntie Lica The Hunchback
Paul-Razvan Macovei
Eva flies back from France expecting a simple funeral. What she gets is a hunchbacked grandma, a furious village priest, and a coffin that just won’t fit.
Block 2

Valentine's Day
Anton Iffland Stettner
Agathe, married with two children, receives a text message for Valentine's Day inviting her to a hotel room.

Silence
Pavlo Shpegun
After a failed performance, Luka, a young stand-up comedian, meets a mysterious girl in a bar. They quickly find common ground, and she spends the night at his place. They talk about their loneliness, pain, and personal losses, all while trying to maintain an emotional distance from one another. But when all the necessary words finally run out – silence falls.

The Buzz
Kate Del Castillo
During a live national television interview, Veronica, a celebrated and admired actress, struggles to uphold the image of a perfect life while her inner world fractures under the weight of private abuse. Trapped between silence, fear, and a sudden panic attack, she must decide whether to continue performing the illusion—or break the cycle in front of everyone.

Gallina
Fernando Reinaldos
In rural Spain, ten-year-old Pablo loves spending time at his granny’s countryside home, playing with his younger sister Alba and his best friend Martín. But everything changes when Martín pressures him to betray his family, leaving Pablo to question where he truly belongs.

Procedure
Rabia Özmen
Murat, who has just been imprisoned, asks for a request to his wife Sema, which is against the procedures. Sema cannot stand her husband’s pressure and tries to get Murat’s request into the prison by illegal means. But the prison has excessive precautions.

Sand
Shahaf Sinai, Eyal Roe
Elisha wakes to a crumbling reality. The wind never stops blowing, the sand keeps accumulating, burying everything. Medea arrives, his long-lost love, elegant and alive, trying to reach through.
Block 3

Another Day In The Metal Box
Gleb Feldman
When a Ukrainian factory worker finds a mysterious object hidden in an abandoned workshop, he must choose between the safety of the life he knows and the dream he has never dared to pursue.

Aasmani
Sayani Gupta
In Hindi, Aasmani means that shade of light blue which is the colour of the sky. To Smita, a spunky woman in her sixties, her steadfast companion of over five decades, a powder blue vintage FIAT called Aasmani is the very sky that shaped her life. But now she struggles with the choice of selling her beloved vintage car, Aasmani, when her 10 year old granddaughter, Tiya, steps up to save the day.

Breadsong
Katariina Aule
19th century rural family discover a catchy song that is broadcasted from the future through the family children after they are accidentally fed some mouldy bread. It is a story about greed, and how gold fever can make a man blind to true treasures in life, eventually breaking a family.

Mourners
Rebeca Arnal
A group of women wearing traditional mourning clothes arrives at a mansion to take part in a funeral ritual.

Welcome to Tool Shed
Andrew Klaus-Vineyard, Daniel Talbott
The film examines the generation who never expected to become senior citizens in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and decades of oppression, who now find themselves trailblazers again as the first openly LGBTQ seniors.

Conception Game
Natalie Arle-Toyne
When single Missy (39), fresh from heartbreak and desperate to conceive, discovers a world of free sperm, she dives right in. But semen with no strings attached is scuppered when newbie Patrick (40) unwittingly breaks the rules of the game.
Block 1

Homecoming
Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk
A few years after fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, a boy returns home via a robotic dog, his mechanical avatar, which he controls from his room in Poland. Through this remote presence, he relives memories and reconnects with his past — a connection that now depends on a fragile video stream that could be cut off at any moment.

Glass Castles
Herman Serzhanov
After Russia’s invasion, Yaroslav moves to Kyiv with his girlfriend to study, leaving his family in Donetsk. His brother Sashko stays with their parents as their grandmother falls gravely ill. Two years later, the family reunites, but illness and unspoken tensions keep them apart.

High Frequency
Andrii Kokura
A young man is torn between his passion for the saxophone and figure skating, as his coach puts increasing pressure on him to become like the skater’s idol — Salvador.

Fig
Novruz Hikmet
Swimming in the sea, silent meals, attempts to hold on to intimacy — this is how the couple spends the final days of their relationship at an old summer house on the Caspian shore. Years later, the man lives alone in the house he once built beside that same summer place. The fig tree and the sea remain the same. Simple tastes and moments remind that life goes on. And solitude can be a conscious choice.

Where is the Ukrainians’ house?
Daria Holosko
An attempt to make a film about a Ukrainian family in the Kartvelian village of Kormagali turns into a search for a house whose existence even the locals doubt.

In her arms
Roman Volosevych
Heorhiy and Yaryna return to their home, liberated after de-occupation, which had been occupied by Russian forces. Through the lens of a booby trap left behind, the film explores how the couple attempts to rebuild their lives, gradually distancing themselves from the surrounding war.
Block 2

Come Back
Anton Proza
Zyma, an exhausted Ukrainian soldier, leaves the war and his unit without authorization. He has decided to return home, but the road turns into a space of pressure, where every phone call forces him to justify his choice again and again.

Easter Day
Mykola Zasieiev
On Easter Sunday in Kyiv, two soldiers from the army recruitment office drive slowly through the streets, watching men who might be called to serve. Their search leads them to a young man who has stepped out only to buy food for his cat. He may try to avoid their gaze, but yet on this holy day, nothing is as simple as it first appears.

Don't be naughty
Artem Kuznetsov
After the owner leaves, a cat conflict begins to brew in the apartment, passions flare up, and it is unknown what this will lead to.

A Day in the Life of Tatarin
Artem Iurchenko
At the center of the story is Tatarin, the battalion’s senior sergeant and instructor. He appears as a harsh and uncompromising authority figure, shaping civilians into soldiers through relentless discipline and pressure. Yet behind the commands, the shouting, and the ritual of military training emerges a man carrying a different burden: the responsibility of preparing others for a reality in which mistakes can be fatal.

Swear to Me
Khrystyna Braslavska
When the soldier Ivan appears on the doorstep of his parents’ house, his brother is faced with a dilemma: to fulfill his last wish or to do as tradition dictates.

On a Stringer
Oleksandr Roshchyn
At noon, in the shade of riverside trees — as if in the middle of life — you lose something. Yet love is as strong as the river.
Block 3

Before Dawn
Julia Galeta
A spacious apartment on the third floor is the only one with the lights on. Clinking glasses, chatter, and laughter. It’s a classmate reunion. They are going to hang till dawn, just as they did on their prom night. And it all goes well until people start disappearing without leaving a trace.

Graduation 2026
Sofiia Fedoryshyna, Eva Emelianova
Two graduates studied side by side for four years, afraid to confess their feelings to each other, until graduation day arrived...

Giant
Vadim Mochalov
While waiting for the results of the Molodist Film Festival selection, queer film director and bachelor’s graduate Tim has not-so-pleasant encounters in Kyiv with his friends, relatives and colleagues, who became part of his 30-minute thesis film.

I Do Not See When Shooting
Anastasiia Stetsenko
Two friends travel together, each filming with a different camera and a different perspective. Along the way they are repeatedly forbidden to record what might be considered of military importance.

HOME TV
Sophia Gera
A host for HOME TV finds herself in the heart of life on Kyiv’s central streets. Asking locals, displaced people, and visitors of the capital “what is home?”, she comes across different views and circumstances. The collage of answers gradually blurs the question itself, leaving her face-to-face with her own search.
Block 4

On the shield
Oksana Artemenko
55-year-old Yuriy is a driver for the "On the shield" mission, which retrieves the bodies of fallen soldiers from the battlefield. This time, together with his colleague, he is heading to Pokrovsk to pick up the body of a 25-year-old man, someone just like his missing son, who is also a soldier.

The Foreboding
Oleksandra Pletenetska
On a final walk with her terminally ill mother, the filmmaker sees a blossoming tree and says she would like to become it. Her mother asks only: “When?”

Patronymic
Mariia Ponomarova
Mariia's patronymic, a middle name based on her father's name, has been lost from her international documents. For better or for worse.

Inside
Dariia Lukasheva
Sasha is overwhelmed by problems and melancholy. Inspired by memories of the past, she tries to escape everything, returning from Manchester to Kyiv to visit her mother and try to mend a long-lost relationship. However, things don’t unfold as she had hoped from the moment she steps through the door.

vortex
Henyk Zaiats, Volodymyr Prylutskyi
the film frames four symbols near the Bessarabsky Market in Kyiv.

your_tomorrow_will_never_come.mp4
Artemii Zharii
15-year-old Lisa finds an old video camera and begins filming an ordinary, sobering winter morning in the apartment of her friend Maxim, who is clearly in love with her.
SE
Debut Association

Patronymic
Mariia Ponomarova
Mariia's patronymic, a middle name based on her father's name, has been lost from her international documents. For better or for worse.

your_tomorrow_will_never_come.mp4
Artemii Zharii
15-year-old Lisa finds an old video camera and begins filming an ordinary, sobering winter morning in the apartment of her friend Maxim, who is clearly in love with her.

vortex
Henyk Zaiats, Volodymyr Prylutskyi
the film frames four symbols near the Bessarabsky Market in Kyiv.

The Foreboding
Oleksandra Pletenetska
On a final walk with her terminally ill mother, the filmmaker sees a blossoming tree and says she would like to become it. Her mother asks only: “When?”

On the shield
Oksana Artemenko
55-year-old Yuriy is a driver for the "On the shield" mission, which retrieves the bodies of fallen soldiers from the battlefield. This time, together with his colleague, he is heading to Pokrovsk to pick up the body of a 25-year-old man, someone just like his missing son, who is also a soldier.

Inside
Dariia Lukasheva
Sasha is overwhelmed by problems and melancholy. Inspired by memories of the past, she tries to escape everything, returning from Manchester to Kyiv to visit her mother and try to mend a long-lost relationship. However, things don’t unfold as she had hoped from the moment she steps through the door.

I Do Not See When Shooting
Anastasiia Stetsenko
Two friends travel together, each filming with a different camera and a different perspective. Along the way they are repeatedly forbidden to record what might be considered of military importance.

HOME TV
Sophia Gera
A host for HOME TV finds herself in the heart of life on Kyiv’s central streets. Asking locals, displaced people, and visitors of the capital “what is home?”, she comes across different views and circumstances. The collage of answers gradually blurs the question itself, leaving her face-to-face with her own search.

Graduation 2026
Sofiia Fedoryshyna, Eva Emelianova
Two graduates studied side by side for four years, afraid to confess their feelings to each other, until graduation day arrived...

Giant
Vadim Mochalov
While waiting for the results of the Molodist Film Festival selection, queer film director and bachelor’s graduate Tim has not-so-pleasant encounters in Kyiv with his friends, relatives and colleagues, who became part of his 30-minute thesis film.

Before Dawn
Julia Galeta
A spacious apartment on the third floor is the only one with the lights on. Clinking glasses, chatter, and laughter. It’s a classmate reunion. They are going to hang till dawn, just as they did on their prom night. And it all goes well until people start disappearing without leaving a trace.

Swear to Me
Khrystyna Braslavska
When the soldier Ivan appears on the doorstep of his parents’ house, his brother is faced with a dilemma: to fulfill his last wish or to do as tradition dictates.

On a Stringer
Oleksandr Roshchyn
At noon, in the shade of riverside trees — as if in the middle of life — you lose something. Yet love is as strong as the river.

Easter Day
Mykola Zasieiev
On Easter Sunday in Kyiv, two soldiers from the army recruitment office drive slowly through the streets, watching men who might be called to serve. Their search leads them to a young man who has stepped out only to buy food for his cat. He may try to avoid their gaze, but yet on this holy day, nothing is as simple as it first appears.

Don't be naughty
Artem Kuznetsov
After the owner leaves, a cat conflict begins to brew in the apartment, passions flare up, and it is unknown what this will lead to.

Come Back
Anton Proza
Zyma, an exhausted Ukrainian soldier, leaves the war and his unit without authorization. He has decided to return home, but the road turns into a space of pressure, where every phone call forces him to justify his choice again and again.

A Day in the Life of Tatarin
Artem Iurchenko
At the center of the story is Tatarin, the battalion’s senior sergeant and instructor. He appears as a harsh and uncompromising authority figure, shaping civilians into soldiers through relentless discipline and pressure. Yet behind the commands, the shouting, and the ritual of military training emerges a man carrying a different burden: the responsibility of preparing others for a reality in which mistakes can be fatal.

Where is the Ukrainians’ house?
Daria Holosko
An attempt to make a film about a Ukrainian family in the Kartvelian village of Kormagali turns into a search for a house whose existence even the locals doubt.

In her arms
Roman Volosevych
Heorhiy and Yaryna return to their home, liberated after de-occupation, which had been occupied by Russian forces. Through the lens of a booby trap left behind, the film explores how the couple attempts to rebuild their lives, gradually distancing themselves from the surrounding war.

Homecoming
Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk
A few years after fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, a boy returns home via a robotic dog, his mechanical avatar, which he controls from his room in Poland. Through this remote presence, he relives memories and reconnects with his past — a connection that now depends on a fragile video stream that could be cut off at any moment.

High Frequency
Andrii Kokura
A young man is torn between his passion for the saxophone and figure skating, as his coach puts increasing pressure on him to become like the skater’s idol — Salvador.

Glass Castles
Herman Serzhanov
After Russia’s invasion, Yaroslav moves to Kyiv with his girlfriend to study, leaving his family in Donetsk. His brother Sashko stays with their parents as their grandmother falls gravely ill. Two years later, the family reunites, but illness and unspoken tensions keep them apart.

Fig
Novruz Hikmet
Swimming in the sea, silent meals, attempts to hold on to intimacy — this is how the couple spends the final days of their relationship at an old summer house on the Caspian shore. Years later, the man lives alone in the house he once built beside that same summer place. The fig tree and the sea remain the same. Simple tastes and moments remind that life goes on. And solitude can be a conscious choice.
Кордон на замку
Serhii Lysenko
Set in late-1980s Ukraine, this black-and-white psychological drama follows a young man unable to find his place in Soviet society. This alienation leads many to dismiss him as insane. Driven to the edge, he decides to cross the border illegally, to escape the bleakness of his reality, throwing one last challenge at an oppressive regime.

A faded sakura in my garden, you walk past me again
Oleh Chornyi
The film ridicules the overwhelming fascination with oriental martial arts, philosophy, paraphernalia. The forces of evil—a little man, his nephew, girl and ninja—steal the Holy Lily from the monastery. Matsuoka, together with his friend, overcomes fantastic difficulties in the fight against the forces of evil and releases Lily.

The Death of the Gods
Andriy Donchyk
Based on the diaries of Oleksandr Dovzhenko. As an artist paints the "Last Supper" for a local church, the peasants feel a special sense of pride seeing themselves immortalized as saints. However, this artistic choice does not sit well with the newly established revolutionary authorities.

Seven Circles of Hell
Andrzej Klamt, Frank Amann
A Ukrainian female soldier and five male soldiers recount the horrors they witnessed and endured on the front line, and their difficult struggle to return to a normal life. The result is a poignant portrait of a generation forced to live with the psychological consequences of a war imposed upon them, and of a society that will continue to bear this burden for a long time to come.

Roya
Mahnaz Mohammadi
Roya, an Iranian teacher imprisoned for her political beliefs, is faced with a choice: make a forced televised confession, or remain confined to her 3-square-metre cell.

Rehearsals for a Revolution
Pegah Ahangarani
Pegah Ahangarani traces her life through five portraits of relatives and mentors. Using personal archives, home videos, protests, and newspapers, she chronicles over 40 years of Iranian history from 1979 to 2026.

Orange Flavored Wedding
Christophe Honore
It is March 1978 in the suburbs of Nantes. Jacques is marrying Martine. For the two of them, it's a marriage of love. But can love heal the wounds of childhood?

MUSIC WITH IMAGES or FILMS WITHOUT WORDS
Natalia Ilchuk
01 Psychoville (2004) 2’
One day in the life of the Sykhiv district.
02 Sorry (2005) 3’
Music video on Vika Vradiy’s song.
03 There is hope (2005) 5’
At the concert of Mad Heads in the Park of Culture (Lviv) in June 2005.
04 At the Barvy club in Kyiv (2006) 4’
Unplanned concert of an unexisting band at the unfound club.
05 750 (2020) 8’
Celebrating 750th birthday of Lviv in 2006.
06 bodiless lovers (2008) 12’
Post-rock in stop-motion.
07 livemusic (2021) 6’
Drum’n’bass party in Kamianske in 2007.
08 signs (2020) 2’
A night ride on the Bohdanivska street in Lviv.
09 Autoportrait (2011) 5’
Portrait of an automobile accompanied by the song of Kyiv’s band 2sleepy “the fog”.
10 Transience (2007) 13’
Travelogue about passage of time.
11 Take me to the sea (2012) 3’
Music video for Lviv’s band Sparkle Dream.
12 Farewell (2011) 2’
Short film about two shirts in love.

Let us through, dear ancestors
Lav Diaz
1617, Las Islas Filipinas. The Spanish friar, Father Enciso, the encomendero of one of the islands, rules with unrelenting toughness and an insatiable libido to tame the savages.

A Well for the Thirsty
Yurii Illienko
A cinematic parable about old Levko Serdiuk, who lives in a post-war village and tends to the communal well. Yet, his dedication goes unappreciated. However, an unexpected visit from his family prompts him to symbolically rise from his coffin. Against the backdrop of this intimate drama, the village itself is transforming as modernity ruthlessly intrudes upon the traditional way of life, bringing electric poles, an iron windmill, and airplanes in the sky.

The Crown Prince And The Return Of The Tyrant
Tord Danielsson
Snow falls from bright skies as a town prepares for Queen Lovisa's wedding to Amir the fool. The celebration is interrupted when the former tyrant's mother Amalia arrives with her soldiers.

The Newcomers
Rodrigo Plá
Tiana and her family seek refuge in Mateo and Tomas’ village, but the polluton they are fleeing from will catch them up here, too. Along with their dog Nube, the three children embark on a perilous adventure to discover what is poisoning the rivers.

Out there
Simon Ryninks
A 16 year-old girl in a small seaside town in Wales in 1999 becomes convinced her father was abducted by aliens. Alongside her sceptical best friend she enlists a local UFO expert to solve the mystery

Mouse
Kelly O'Sullivan, Alex Thompson
Callie and Minnie’s relationship is suddenly upended at the start of the summer before their senior year of high school. Left rudderless without her charismatic best friend, Minnie starts to form a complicated friendship with Callie’s mother.

Feito Pipa
Allan Deberton
With a football at his feet and a heart that doesn’t fit the lines drawn for him, a boy watches the place, where he feels whole, beginning to slip away.

Everyone's Sorry Nowadays
Frederike Migom
On a hot summer day, a girl ignored by her parents meets her favorite actress Billie King, leading her to self-discovery. A gentle story of finding your place and following your dreams.

Moonglow
Isabel Sandoval
Late 1970s Manila, under dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Aggrieved by the inescapable corruption around her, a police detective, Dahlia, secretly commits a heist.

Gothic Is Serenity
Natalia Ilchuk
Music documentary featuring 7 Ukrainian gothic bands filmed during the legendary festivals "Children of the Night" and "Nekropolis". Based on my own archival footage from 2005 that I rediscovered and edited in 2026, GOTHIC IS SERENITY aims to showcase a rarely seen alternative aspect of Ukrainian music expressed through dark and melancholic esthetics.

Shame and Money
Visar Morina
Hatixhe and Shaban, a couple in their 40s, live in a village in Kosovo with three daughters and share the household with Shaban’s two brothers and their mother. They make a living with their 12 cows. They get by reasonably well until one day the cows get stolen by their own brother and they are forced to move to Pristina, looking for work and a place to stay. A journey into a hypercapitalist society begins.

Nobody’s Violence
Denis Côté
Mira is a solitary woman of few words. She travels the roads meeting desperate people with whom she seems to have forged strange death pacts. With no apparent destination, she meets Madeleine and Ludo, two free-spirited hedonists living deep in the forest. Taking a break from her missions and unsettled by a sudden encounter with an excessive and intriguing young man, she uses this stopover to question her wandering life and reassess her dark agreements.

NAZA
Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
The film shows nighttime interviews with 24 Israeli soldiers and intelligence officers, shot on the rooftops of Tel Aviv, revealing in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Despite not having had a theatrical release in Israel, the film caused political controversy there due to its accounts of the country's actions in Gaza.

CLOSURE
Michał Marczak
After his teenage son Krzysztof goes missing in May 2023, Daniel Dyminski searches Poland’s Vistula River, torn between fear that his son is dead and hope that he is alive. CCTV shows Krzysztof standing on a bridge, but not whether he jumped, and Daniel keeps investigating long after the police stop searching.

Coward
Lukas Dhont
As the First World War drags on, Pierre, a soldier newly arrived at the front, is eager to prove himself. Behind the lines, he meets Francis, who decides to lift the spirits of his comrades by putting together a theatre show. While the violence continues, both men try to find ways to escape the brutality of war, even if only for a moment.

This is Not a French Film
Tom Adjibi
A young, racialized director struggles to make his debut film turn into a docu-satire with a political punch that takes you by surprise.

Leleka
Harald Hutter
Sasha, a Ukrainian refugee living in Paris, travels home to commemorate the death of her grandmother.

Erratics
Thomas Woodroffe
Freed from a glacier after one hundred years, the ghost of filmmaker Lucien Castelnau drifts across a futuristic Patagonia, where technological progress collides with forgotten histories. Unable to find peace while his unfinished cinematic legacy remains unseen, he wanders through a world that has erased him, searching for a place in history—and for the audience that might finally bring his lost work back to life.

Chronovisor
Jack Auen, Kevin Walker
An armchair mystery in which the life of a reclusive academic collides with the story of a clandestine technology that can photograph the past.

Brother Verses Brother
Ari Gold
Codependent twin musicians have one night to find three things: love, a song, and their father — a 99-year-old Beat Generation poet, the last of his kind.

Yastay
Paula Gaetano Adi
Two centuries after the historic crossing of the Andes that led to South America’s liberation from Spanish colonization, a group of engineers and Andean muleteers embark on an expedition across the mountains to liberate a robot.

Watch You Rise
Isabella Grace Cohn
As a young filmmaker comes of age behind a camera, she turns it on her own community and unearths stories of sexual assault experienced by her mother, her peers, and eventually herself. Along the way, she meets survivors, perpetrators, and experts. Together, they explore the gray areas of sex, power, and consent, seeking to break cycles of harm and uncover radical possibilities for healing.

War Has No Children
Dmytro Todoriuk
WAR HAS NO CHILDREN is a documentary composed of four stories exploring what it means to be a child during war. In this environment war becomes part of everyday life, and childhood becomes fragile and vulnerable.

The End Date
Noé Reutenauer
Eat cauliflower with mayonnaise. Sort through papers. Take care of the chickens. Feed the metastases. Learn poems. Drink beer. Prepare his family. Although doctors gave him three years to live, Yann Patou lived with cancer for 18 years. As death approaches, Yann tries to keep smiling and constantly reminds me that we must “hurry up and live”.

Paikar
Dawood Hilmandi
A son returns to face the silence of his father—once a mujahideen fighter, later a spiritual leader and poet—and through their fragile journey of reconnection, discovers that even the hardest hearts can hide the deepest longing for love.

Even If We Are Islands
Cristina Rodríguez Paz
A filmmaker in crisis sets out to find the last lighthouse keepers. What begins as a journey across the land becomes a journey within, where the act of filming merges with their fading stories – an ode to a disappearing way of life.

Days of Wonder
Karin Pennanen
Without anyone knowing, Markku has been creating art for the last 34 years in his house. In the director's childhood, they lived wall to wall and were close, but then Markku moved away, disappearing from her life.

As Light as Air
Umair Bilal
Every day, pilgrims, wanderers and seekers arrive in a Sufi town carrying grief, hope and longing. Drawn together by music and devotion, they surrender themselves to a shared state of trance.

A Song Without Home
Rati Tsiteladze
Follows Adelina, a young trans woman who flees to Vienna after 11 years of confinement in a Georgian village. As she builds a new life, a past that refuses to release her continues to shape her sense of belonging.

Meat
Adolfo Margulis
Jak, a young Haitian migrant, must reach the U.S. border with his father, but his mother’s disappearance forces him to choose between continuing or confronting the past.

Un verre de souvenir
Louis Marguerite
At a reception held in honour of his late wife, André, an elderly man whose memory is failing, tries to reconnect with his past and those around him.

La Forma Cannibale
Ginevra Solaroli
After Giovanna's death, Ivan clings to her gestures, objects, and rituals. What begins as a tribute gradually turns into an obsession, until it blurs the boundaries between identity, love and memory.

Kamathipura Express
Leon Korzynski
A young Polish man, Osa, lives in the slums of Mumbai, where he falls in love with Sapna, a teenage dancer from a poor family. When Sapna's father tries to sell her to a brothel, the couple is forced on a desperate run across India.

C'est La Vie
Zheng Zihan
Forced to track down his runaway, dialysis dependent grandfather, a struggling art student is pulled into an absurd road trip to catch a legendary fish journey that brings him face to face with the old man’s fading past, and his own stalled life.

White-Knuckle Summer
Jason Hogan
Set in a divided British seaside town, ten-year-old Ruby forms an unlikely friendship with Hasset, an asylum seeker living in a local hotel, as one summer of freedom collides with the threat of rising anti-migrant protests.

The Bright Hours
Yeh Chia-chen
Ten-year-old Great Demon is a whirlwind of mischief and imagination, leaving chaos and laughter in his wake. But beneath his wild antics lies a quiet loneliness. One ordinary day, a strange new friend named Ke appears out of nowhere, turning Great Demon’s world upside down.

The Bistro
Skaistė Bartkutė
One summer, a twelve-year-old girl works at her grandma’s bistro, full of strange adults.

Sundown
Jérémie Jayraj Itty, Inna Soroka, Julia Estrada Torres, Sammi Khuu
Joakim, a young, compassionate caregiver working in a dementia ward, navigates the emotional toll of his work as he learns to accept the limits of his ability to help.

Reminiscence
Iryna Melnychenko
Ira Melnichenko, a young Ukrainian refugee in Switzerland with her brother, creates a doll in her own image, through which she revisits the story of a family torn apart by the death of her father, a 2D animator in Kyiv, destroyed by alcohol and dereliction.

Rabbit Heart
Stella Fachinger
An abandoned factory site. Twelve-year-old Hannes pushes his little brother Oli into increasingly dangerous tests of courage with a bow and arrow. When he puts them both in a life-threatening situation, his power begins to crumble.

"Vaterland" Or A Bule Named Yanto
Berthold Wahjudi
When German-Indonesian Yanto visits his younger sister in Yogyakarta, he expects a simple reunion – until he realises she belongs more effortlessly than he ever has. As envy and dissonance between siblings surface, Yanto’s journey becomes a bittersweet exploration of mixed-race identity.

The Flowers of Malva
Anna Lys, Rémy Berlemont, Alice Hamel, Chen-Yun Hu, Ludivine Lebourg, Estelle Martin, Agathe Ribout
In a small village in the Ukrainian countryside, Nina, a grandmother deeply attached to her land, welcomes her granddaughter Yana for what appears to be a simple holiday. In reality, she is trying to hide the war that is ravaging the country from her granddaughter by creating an imaginary world where everything is fine.

Shutterspeed
Jasper De Maeseneer
Fifteen-year-old Cas poses for his school’s trainee teacher and amateur photographer Jard. When he becomes painfully aware of the power imbalance between them, he seeks to reverse their dynamic.

Restricted Area
Jan Górecki
Karol, a Warsaw-based driver of Ethiopian descent, is brutally assaulted on his way to Białowieża and illegally pushed across the border. Wandering through the border forest, he experiences the reality of migrants trapped between systems of violence.

Bitter Kiss
Hasan Ege Çalışkan
A chance reunion with a childhood friend forces an introverted young man to confront the dark desires he has spent years trying to suppress.

Welcome to Tool Shed
Andrew Klaus-Vineyard, Daniel Talbott
The film examines the generation who never expected to become senior citizens in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and decades of oppression, who now find themselves trailblazers again as the first openly LGBTQ seniors.

Mourners
Rebeca Arnal
A group of women wearing traditional mourning clothes arrives at a mansion to take part in a funeral ritual.

Conception Game
Natalie Arle-Toyne
When single Missy (39), fresh from heartbreak and desperate to conceive, discovers a world of free sperm, she dives right in. But semen with no strings attached is scuppered when newbie Patrick (40) unwittingly breaks the rules of the game.

Breadsong
Katariina Aule
19th century rural family discover a catchy song that is broadcasted from the future through the family children after they are accidentally fed some mouldy bread. It is a story about greed, and how gold fever can make a man blind to true treasures in life, eventually breaking a family.

Another Day In The Metal Box
Gleb Feldman
When a Ukrainian factory worker finds a mysterious object hidden in an abandoned workshop, he must choose between the safety of the life he knows and the dream he has never dared to pursue.

Aasmani
Sayani Gupta
In Hindi, Aasmani means that shade of light blue which is the colour of the sky. To Smita, a spunky woman in her sixties, her steadfast companion of over five decades, a powder blue vintage FIAT called Aasmani is the very sky that shaped her life. But now she struggles with the choice of selling her beloved vintage car, Aasmani, when her 10 year old granddaughter, Tiya, steps up to save the day.

Valentine's Day
Anton Iffland Stettner
Agathe, married with two children, receives a text message for Valentine's Day inviting her to a hotel room.

The Buzz
Kate Del Castillo
During a live national television interview, Veronica, a celebrated and admired actress, struggles to uphold the image of a perfect life while her inner world fractures under the weight of private abuse. Trapped between silence, fear, and a sudden panic attack, she must decide whether to continue performing the illusion—or break the cycle in front of everyone.

Silence
Pavlo Shpegun
After a failed performance, Luka, a young stand-up comedian, meets a mysterious girl in a bar. They quickly find common ground, and she spends the night at his place. They talk about their loneliness, pain, and personal losses, all while trying to maintain an emotional distance from one another. But when all the necessary words finally run out – silence falls.

Sand
Shahaf Sinai, Eyal Roe
Elisha wakes to a crumbling reality. The wind never stops blowing, the sand keeps accumulating, burying everything. Medea arrives, his long-lost love, elegant and alive, trying to reach through.

Procedure
Rabia Özmen
Murat, who has just been imprisoned, asks for a request to his wife Sema, which is against the procedures. Sema cannot stand her husband’s pressure and tries to get Murat’s request into the prison by illegal means. But the prison has excessive precautions.

Gallina
Fernando Reinaldos
In rural Spain, ten-year-old Pablo loves spending time at his granny’s countryside home, playing with his younger sister Alba and his best friend Martín. But everything changes when Martín pressures him to betray his family, leaving Pablo to question where he truly belongs.

Thunder
Mauricio Carrasco Tolosa
La Foudre, a social media vigilante, becomes famous through his punitive raids livestreamed on the internet. But spectacle justice doesn't come without risks...

The Man Without Qualities
Sofia Romano
After yet another failed review interview at the Ministry of Labor and Productivity, the visual artist Ultimo, sinks into an existential crisis. When he is ultimately declared a “ marginal worker, ” he embarks on a radical metamorphosis.

The Cut
Julia Staniszewska
Piotr is 24 years old and has just met the woman of his life. As usual, he comes to tell his mother about it. At first, he does not notice that the roles are just turning and now she will need him.

Diego
Mélissa Silveira
Vanessa, 21, lives with her brother Diego, 20, who has a disability, and their father Antonio, a strong-willed Gypsy man. The happy, well-oiled routine of this trio is disrupted by Diego’s sexual awakening. While Antonio is proud to introduce his son to a virile form of masculinity, Vanessa realizes that her brother prefers men.

Auntie Lica The Hunchback
Paul-Razvan Macovei
Eva flies back from France expecting a simple funeral. What she gets is a hunchbacked grandma, a furious village priest, and a coffin that just won’t fit.

Where To
Assaf Machnes
A Palestinian Uber driver and a lost young Israeli cross paths during multiple taxi rides through Berlin, leading to unexpected moments that blend humor and heartache as their journeys unfold.

Trial of Hein
Kai Stänicke
After 14 years, Hein returns to his island village, but the community doesn't recognize him and demands a trial to prove his identity.

Our Father
Goran Stankovic
Dejan, a drug addict, is undergoing rehabilitation at a monastery. Gradually, he becomes the right-hand man of the priest who runs the commune. When the priest takes his methods too far, Dejan has to choose between protecting the system and the truth.

Lemonade
Kim Bartley
Teenage Danny makes a life-altering mistake, then reunites with Josh, a social worker whose past errors once separated them. Josh mentors Danny through first love and loss, teaching him that true family are those who believe in you.

Flesh & Fuel
Pierre le Gall
A lonely French trucker's routine life on the road takes an unexpected turn when he encounters a Polish driver. As feelings develop, he struggles to balance his demanding job with a chance at love, determined to make their connection work.

Filipiñana
Rafael Manuel
While working at an elite country club outside Manila, a 17-year-old Ilocana worker uncovers the violent truths of her workplace, her country, and her own past after attempting to return a lost golf club to the club’s president.

Camouflage
Mykyta Gibalenko
22-year-old Vitalik dreams of starting a new life in Germany, leaving his mother Tetiana and sister Zhenya behind in Ukraine. When Russia launches its full-scale invasion, everything changes: Vitalik’s family is forced to flee and join him in Germany. Along with them come old conflicts and unresolved emotions—things no distance from the war can ever erase.

