SCARCE
Rose, a professional dog walker, has recently occupied a vacant house which she now calls home – the realisation of a dream. As politically scathing as it is delightful, the film is a deep critique of housing and food insecurity as a direct legacy of colonial past. In turns playful and uncomfortable, ‘professional dog walker’ Rose becomes a vector through which inequity and injustice must be reconciled.
Brazil 2022 / 15:56 / Director: Gabriela Gaia Meirelles, Clara Anastácia
THE KING
In 1975 Finnish singer Rauli Badding Somerjoki sent a recording of his local hit “Lights” to Elvis Presley, hoping his idol might take a liking to it. Badding got no answer but soon after Elvis passed away, rumours started spreading in Finland that potatoes resembling Elvis were growing on a field in Badding’s home village of Somero. An experimental documentary about opportunities that never happened.
Finland 2024 / 7:30 / Director: Milja Viita, Veli Granö
MAGNIFICA: PASSIVE INTRUDER
Magnifica is a short documentary about the encounters between Finnish cottagers and a mysterious species called Pectinatella Magnifica. The film observes the people facing the new alien phenomena and their attempts to get rid of the uninvited visitor.
Finland, Sweden 2024 / 20:00 / Director: Ville Koskinen
REGULAR RABBIT
With story and visuals purposefully separated, a Regular Rabbit battles a comically absurd onslaught of disinformation. He is not the nightmare being told. He is, as shown, a regular ol’ stupid rabbit doing his usual rabbit stuff! The narrator is full of s#!t!! How is this so hard to believe?! Fake news!! Where’s the evidence?! Agh!!! He is nothing more than a Regular Rabbit!
Ireland 2022 / 7:43 / Director: Eoin Duffy
OBJECT 817
A poetic journey to the heart of the Ural, where the discovery of an alien creature uncovers a haunting secret.
Belgium 2023 / 21:40 / Director: Olga Lucovnicova
HOT AIR
Alternate facts, half-truths, or false appearances, lies spread throughout the world, mysteriously carried by the ignorance of some or the credulity of others. Do we even know if the truth will ever come to light one day?
Canada 2024 / 4:51 / Director: Roger Gariépy
I AM THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
A film about mothers, both absent and adoptive, that documents a visionary devotion to the Virgin Mary in rural Ireland and the horrors that exist beneath the surface of the country’s Catholic institutions. In 1985, the village of Ballinspittle in Ireland was the site of a mass visionary experience. Worshippers at the local grotto saw the statue of the Virgin Mary come to life. Soon, thousands made the pilgrimage and—for a summer—the phenomenon gripped the country. Almost forty years later, a handful of local devotees remain, including the statue’s dutiful caretaker Patrick Joseph Simms. Through Simms and a chorus of locals, the film documents the mystical landscape of rural Irish Catholicism and a terrible darkness that lies beneath.
United Kingdom 2023 / 17:28 / Director: Frank Eli Martin