Arthur Kleinjan
Netherlands
2019 | 00:29:00

"Above Us Only Sky" is a layered visual and narrative allegory of individual and collective memory, as well as a contemporary form of personal mythology. A narrator leads the viewer into a magical-realist history that is bereft of fabrication. His story begins with an investigation into a plane crash in communist Czechoslovakia, which one woman survived after an unlikely fall from the air. This event becomes the point of entry to a dense web of seemingly unrelated events that appear to be deeply entangled. 'Above us only sky' questions the surreal logic of chance, repetition of events, and synchronicity. The film blurs the boundaries that separate us from the past through a present that shifts and fluctuates between reality, imagination and speculation. The expansion and breadth of human experience is intuitively constructed from temporal coincidence and chance occurrences connecting ancient, modern, and contemporary histories. Viewers become unsuspected witnesses to political defiance and reprisals where the past has informed the present and where natural, political and technological disasters, are followed by remarkable tales of survival.

Mike Hoolboom
Canada
2019 | 00:07:30

Eva Marie Rodbro’s embedded ethnographic maestro short, originally made in Brownsville, Texas in 2010, is given a fan remake. Night vision animal life and teen hangouts conjure a temporary and fragile collective, while conversation fragments, alternately performed and raw, shouted and whispered, collide.

Agustina San Martin
Argentina
2019 | 0:10:00

God is now a Power Plant. On a misty night cows escape, a child is chosen, and a girl tries to find freedom.

Tsang Hing Weng Eric
Hong Kong
2018 | 00:22:00

It rained non-stop when Hong Kong was rocked by the tumultuous events in October 2014. At the university hall, young souls are assigned to different rooms amid the sounds of rain, studies and heavy discussions. These strangers come from a variety of backgrounds but are united by their passion towards the society. They may have dissenting opinions, but will learn to accept and be sympathetic to each other. The rainy night feels especially ominous when the students ponder at the events in Mong Kok.

Isabelle Nouzha
Belgim, Lebanon
2018 | 00:06:46

Something happened to that city. Could be Beirut.

Bishara Shoukry
Egypt
2018 | 0:17:30

A hand of a young woman moves on the chest of a man, lying on his bed coughing, the hand rubs the chest with a liquid. An old woman’s hand pushes a goat’s skin milk bag, on which a child is swinging on it. From a bore in the belly of the bag, drips the milk on the old woman’s hand, and flows from the young one’s palm. In the morning, when the house gets empty, Salma opens her eyes to the sound of a playful child swinging on the door of her room. When Salma attempts to fathom her, the child flees. Salma follows, yet couldn’t catch… and when Salma tries to trace the child’s footprints, following the same road the child went through, Salma herself disappears, leaving only an image on a water surface, or a reflection on glass. And once the picture has restored life, and the belly gets enlarged with a life, the image leaves its place to another, and a life renounces its path to another… and a leaf falls, one of thousands that fall, daily, without being felt by anyone.