JURY DECLARATION

#A true creation is to dissolve and re-formulate it into a new form and style, yet unknown to our recognition, both in prophecy to the world’s end and what cinema in a distant future might look like, following the avant-gardist experimental tradition. Oleksandr Stupak’s masterful craftsmanship places us at the turning point of extreme dualities, still in chaotic conditions and abstract images. Examples include children joyfully playing under rainfall or at a public spring, juxtaposed with flowing lava and ferocious battlefield graphics.#

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

This film is about horrors and hopes, anxieties and expectations, delusions and dreams. The film features a poem about nature (about an autumn forest), which is particularly relevant to our current state of affairs. The author of the poem is Vasyl Stus, one of the most prominent Ukrainian poets of the 20th century. Declares the poetry the author himself (a miraculously preserved lifetime recording, almost all others were destroyed). Vasyl Stus was imprisoned by Soviet authorities in the Kolyma camps for his views and his defence of Ukrainian art and freedom. He was and remains the voice and conscience of the Ukrainian people.
Some sources claim that he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1985, and that year he died under mysterious circumstances in his cell - the prize is not awarded to the dead.
We wanted to make a film with the hope that this war would end soon and that people would see the light, as if after a big rain. And the voice of our people (poet) will be heard again and others will hear it.

JURY DECLARATION

“Life imitates art,” or “art imitates life” isn’t a big deal for Julien Lahmi, who leaves audiences in a zone of free interpretation. Yet, there are subtle connections from various sources that link each segment to the others, sustaining images of Romy Schneider (as the title, written backward, suggests). Condensing her brief and fleeting life story appropriately matches the long and expansive history of world cinema.

JURY DECLARATION

Disguised as a short experimental film about wildlife, the film actually serves as an encyclopedia of the region's flora. Reflecting the filmmaker's determination and conviction to coexist with flora on this earth, the short film also suggests a potential for future filmmaking where overlooked plants can play major acting roles;

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

My video “Eviction” was the result of several years of planning and experimentation. The initial idea came from the recognition that most of us overlook the complex microenvironments that are everywhere around us. In the face of accelerating climate change, some of these microenvironments could act as refuges, so-called “microrefugia”, for small organisms.
When I began making the video, I was planning to build on my long-standing macrophotography practice to focus on small invertebrates that live in the soil and under rocks or decaying logs. But many plants also depend on tightly circumscribed microenvironments and so my focus shifted to them. I wanted the video to tell a story from the point of view of the organisms, and so I wondered how the plants might respond to being forced out of their environments by human activity,

JURY DECLARATION
Made entirely from communist educational films found in an archive in Lodz, the film attempts to deconstruct the official narrative of women's roles in society and nation, as well as the gender norms of children. In this process, the film becomes personal and victorious, asserting queer storytelling over institutional control of the individual body.