Block 1. A Different Narrative

“PAPA” is a story of a birth told in pictures and short clips. A dramatic situation and a motion between life and death. The baby is healthy and a source of joy and life, but the mother suddenly falls seriously ill and are put in a coma. The film follows a hospital stay, which fortunately does not happen to most people, where the father who is the narrator of the film, stands with a new life and a big happiness in one hand and a big accident and possible death on the other.

The classic Slavic witch figure, Baba Jaga, is reimagined as a “prehistoric goddess from the times of the matriarchy” using found footage from the Polish Educational Film Studio archive. This transformation incites layered reflections on kinship and identity, guided by a child grappling with binary gender roles. The often sexist and anthropocentric images, created as didactic materials in communist era, are repurposed into an emotive portrait of a multispecies matriarchal family seeking freedom and empowerment.

We know whales communicate with each other by “singing”, but what do they sound like exactly? Mar is a young woman who dreams of hearing their songs for herself and recording them. She decides to join a scientific team in the Mediterranean that's conducting research into these mysterious sea mammals. Catalonian director Neus Ballús makes films that straddle the line between fiction and documentary. She garnered great praise with her short film “Immersio“, which takes place entirely beneath the surface of a swimming pool. In “Blow!” the camera mostly stays above the water, as does the microphone recording the noisy sounds of life on the deck. ​When we do finally dive into the sea with Mar, the experience is overwhelming and totally immersive.a

Employing a poetic and experimental cinematic language, ”Phobos” attempts to transcend the fear of war and destruction. Director Mina Keshavarz grew up in the city of Bushehr, on the Persian Gulf. In the 1980s it was a target in the Iran-Iraq war. Embarking on a journey of getting lost in a place known to her, Keshavarz’s surrealistic search for her home, family and friends reflects her recurring nightmare of an abandoned coastal city.

Andrzej has completed a two-year course at the center for former prisoners in Silesia, the mining region in Poland, which was intended to bring him back into the society after detention. However, it turns out that the society does not forget about the past. The landscape outside Andrzej's room window and repeating sound of the voicemail intensify his loneliness.