Momentum
A cinema in motion – looking forward, around, and deep inside. These filmmakers display awe-inspiring liberty and invite you to embark with them on a transformative odyssey.
2024 Programme
APPLE CIDER VINEGAR
Documentary
Stones are at once the most foundational and the most overlooked part of our lifeworld. When a retired nature documentary narrator passes a kidney stone, she decides to tell one more story, this time about the forgotten realm of stone. Always insightful and playful, Sofie Benoot takes the viewer on a journey meeting Palestinian quarry workers, a passionate British Geologist and Fogo’s lava field residents. These encounters are not detours. They are the essential stepping-stones in a harmonious exploration of the links between the body and the planet we live on, and to which Siân Phillips lends her melodious voice.
FRI 8 | ARC CINEMA | 15:00
WED 13 | ARC CINEMA | 16:00
THE BELLE FROM GAZA (LA BELLE DE GAZA)
Documentary
Upon hearing of a young woman said to have traveled on foot from Gaza to Tel Aviv to save her life, documentary filmmaker Yolande Zaubermann’s investigation leads her to meet several Palestinian transgender women. Israela comes from an orthodox Jewish background and was even married to a rabbi, Danielle was kidnapped from her hometown in the Palestinian territories and rejected by her mother… Their perilous journey between these worlds, driven by the hope to live openly, offers insight into their struggle for self-affirmation amid conflict and oppression.
As with her previous work, Zaubermann spontaneously follows the inspiration stemming from an encounter and finds the darkness of the night to be an ideal shelter for heart-to-heart exchanges.
FRI 8 | TRISKEL | 14:30
SAT 16 | ARC CINEMA | 19:00
THE DAMNED
Fiction
In this haunting film set in 1862 against the backdrop of the American Civil War, a group of volunteer Union soldiers sees their mission change course and gradually elude them.
Roberto Minervini is a multitalented artist whose award-winning work has revolved around American rural life and marginalised population. In The Damned, his first fully fictional film, he concentrates everything that makes up the myth of America: wide open spaces and the conquest of new territories by force of fire, the faith in God. But he does so in a way that runs counter to American cinematic dogma. No heroism, no good and bad guys, and a deliberately anti-spectacular mise-en-scène. Just the horror and misery of war at its simplest. Where a surprise attack by the enemy sees tough men slide into the shapes designed by the soil of the earth in foetal position, at the same time resisting and aware of their possible fate.
Minervini’s filmmaking gesture is at the same time precise and seemingly intuitive. Carlos Alfondo Corral casts his sublime light on this paradoxical wonder.
SAT 16 | ARC CINEMA | 14:00
A FAMILY (UNE FAMILLE)
Documentary
Eligible both for the Documentary and Lookout (youth jury) awards, A Family has floored audiences everywhere since its world premiere in Berlin and its Irish premiere is an unmissable event.
Award-winning French writer Christine Angot goes on a promotional trip to Strasbourg where her father lived before dying several years ago. It is the city where she met him for the first time at the age of 13, and where he sexually abused her over the following years. His wife and children still live there.
Angot takes a camera and knocks on the doors of her family to push them with questions. If healing is impossible, she expects their answers to at least provite clarity regarding their attitudes to her father’s crime, which stretched over so many years.
A cinematographic journey that challenges social norms and family perspectives in dealing with incest.
TUE 12 | ARC CINEMA | 18:15
SUN 17 | TRISKEL | 18:45
IN HIS OWN IMAGE (À SON IMAGE)
Fiction
Based on an award-winning novel, In His Own Image plunges us into the stormy eighties and nineties in Corsica to follow the evolution of the independence movement on the island from the inside and with nuances absent from the official French narrative.
Veteran theatre director and filmmaker Thierry de Peretti takes a non-didactic look at the violent history of his native Corsica, as embodied by Antonia, a young press photographer in love with an independence fighter. The film does not sidestep the impasses of nationalist terrorism, and nor does it deny the Corsican cause: rather, it delicately captures its singularity. It is, above all, the formidable portrait of a woman forging her own path.
An excellent cast of professional and non-professional actors includes the committed director himself. He puts on the costume of the priest, a part both small and absolutely key as he carries a sincere, and intense, anger and grief over the loss of young lives.
FRI 15 | ARC CINEMA | 20:15
INVENTION
Fiction / Hybrid
In the aftermath of a conspiracy-minded man’s death, his daughter Callie inherits his patent for an experimental healing device. She has a few days to decide whether or not she accepts this inheritance.
A highly enjoyable hybrid film, Invention follows Callie as she meets the people who knew her late father and contribute opinions about both the scientific value and commercial potential of the ‘invention’. American indie cinema is very much alive and Courtney Stephens can proudly wave its flag: her intuitive feel for beauty and sense of humour work wonders in revealing some of American society’s current traits and oddities.
The beautiful Super 16mm cinematography infuses a soft melancholy, which is sporadically shaken by the appearance of strange, almost dream-like old TV clips clips featuring a man who is presenting his futuristic inventions to a willing show host and for attentive homemakers to purchase. This is in fact lead actor Callie Hernandez’s actual late father, who was in his time the proud representative of a machine called ‘Quantum Pulse Vibe Machine’.
Callie’s achievement in weaving her own story and feelings into Stephens’ inventive fiction was awarded with the Best Performance prize upon the film’s world premiere in the Filmmakers of the Present strand of the Locarno Film Festival.
SAT 9 | TRISKEL | 18:30
THU 14 | ARC CINEMA | 20:45
ISRAEL PALESTINE ON SWEDISH TV 1958-1989 (Israel Palestina på Svensk TV 1958-1989)
Documentary
The new masterwork from the makers of The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 and Concerning Violence, Israel Palestine on Swedish Television 1958–1989 is comprised of unique and visually striking footage from perhaps the most comprehensive archive in the world depicting both sides of the conflict: the Swedish Television archives.
“This is by far the most painful film that I—we—have ever done,” the filmmaker explains. “While the material has been an absolute delight to work with—beautiful images with incredibly interesting characters mixed with human testimonies and geopolitical events—the course of history becomes increasingly agonising. We have really tried to show respect to both the originators of the footage and the participants, with the perhaps outmoded intent to promote notions such as peace and understanding.”
Challenging and changing the conventions of how history is written, the film demonstrates how one country’s media perceived one of the world’s longest conflict. A 206 minute-long must-see.
FRI 15 | ARC CINEMA | 16:00
MOTHER VERA + Q&A
Documentary
From the thick snow of the Belarusian forest to the heat of the reeds in the French Camargue, Mother Vera is the absorbing story of a young Orthodox nun; her turbulent past, and fragile future.
Spellbinding visuals introduce us into the enclosed, shadowy spaces of a convent outside Minsk. Sound and silence submerge us in the rhythm of the place: bells ring, nuns prepare to welcome the community for Easter, priests plunge into ice cold waters for the celebration of Epiphany. During solitary private moments, Vera reveals the painful experiences that led her to the convent and her hope to find true freedom.
A long-haul project fittingly inspired by a snapshot that lingered in the filmmaker’s mind, its beauty equally blooms in the viewer’s mind and soul.
THU 14 | ARC CINEMA | 17:00
SAD JOKES
Fiction
Joseph (Fabian Stumm) and Sonya (Haley Louise Jones) are close friends who are raising their young son Pino together. Joseph is working on a new film idea and struggling, for several years now, to move on from the breakup with his ex-boyfriend Marc (Jonas Dassler); while Sonya is suffering from a depression that increasingly tears her out of her life. When Sonya checks herself into a clinic to recover, Joseph is forced to juggle parenting, romantic possibilities, and his artistic ambitions.
In his second feature, writer/director Fabian Stumm mixes different moods to create a cinematic friction with reality. Sad Jokes is absurdly funny and banal, hopeful and heartbreaking or – like real life – all at once. Stumm, who is also an actor, is incredibly touching as Joseph.
MON 11 | TRISKEL | 17:15
SHAHID
Fiction
A wildly clever film that’s part reality, part fiction, part theatre and part musical!
Director Narges Shahid Kalhor wants to remove “Shahid” from her surname. Passed down from a great-grandparent, the name means “martyr”. She hires an actor to play herself and then, her heroic great-grandfather, who was given the title of martyr 100 years ago in Iran, turns up with his dancing friends to try and dissuade her. The Bavarian district administration sends her to a psychologist, who also has a difficult name… In the end, everyone is hindered: the director by bureaucracy, the actor by the director’s demands, her great-grandfather by his descendant’s determination and the film by itself. The winds of history blow her round and round in circles, as stereotypes and privileges are shaken up, both performatively and inventively. All while having a lot of fun along the way. A tragicomic, defiant act of self-empowerment in exile.
WED 13 | ARC CINEMA | 18:00
THE STIMMING POOL + Q&A
Documentary
Co-created by neurodiverse directors from the ‘Neurocultures Collective’ and artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, THE STIMMING POOL is a unique film exploring a world shaped by neurodiverse perspectives. The narrative unfolds through an autistic camera, capturing diverse subjects navigating environments both challenging and comforting. Characters, some concealing their autism, others thriving in their communities, share a common goal: finding a space free from societal norms—the Stimming Pool.
Filmmaker in attendance.
WED 13 | TRISKEL | 17:15
TRANS MEMORIA
Documentary
In 2012, Victoria became best friends with Meril in Thailand, where they both where pursuing their long awaited dream of going through with gender confirmation surgeries. When Meril decided to end her life, Victoria’s world fell apart.
Ten years later, Victoria returns to Thailand with two friends who are themselves at the beginning of a journey from male to female. An initial plan to reconstruct Victoria’s and Meril’s experience turns into something else entirely.
What is on the other side of your innermost wish come true? To which extent does your body define you? The film, despite its short running time, tackles these fundamental questions in the most honest – and thus incredibly touching – way.
SUN 10 | ARC CINEMA | 19:00
WED 13 | ARC CINEMA | 21:00
TRIUMPH
Fiction
1990s Bulgaria. A high-ranking military task force launches a top-secret mission to unearth a mystical artefact, possibly extraterrestrial in origin, which could change the course of humanity. Aided by the Generals’ personal psychic, Pirina (Margita Gosheva), and the Colonels’ gifted daughter, Slava (Maria Bakalova, Oscar nominee for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Ivana Trump in The Apprentice), who are both ‘signal conductors’ able to channel alien communications on how to find the object. But it soon transpires that what they search for may be very different to what they unearth. What is equally strange is that this film is based on an actual news article from the time.
The third film from co-directors Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, Triumph is surreal, satirical and hilarious. Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.
MON 11 | ARC CINEMA | 18:00
SUN 17 | ARC CINEMA | 20:30
TWST - THINGS WE SAID TODAY
Documentary, Hybrid
Taking its title from The Beatles song of the same name, and using the Fab Four’s arrival in the United States for their now legendary 1965 Shea Stadium concert as a launchpad, TWST – Things We Said Today takes this moment to harness a snapshot of the America of the time, a collage of captured reality and ethereal memory. Weaving together archive footage overlaid with animations, and narrated personal accounts threaded with a fictional short story, director Andrei Ujica’s expertly curated visual symphony takes us floating through contrasting perceptions, from Beatlemania to the Watts Riots, the streets of Harlem to The World’s Fair.
THU 14 | TRISKEL | 20:30
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (UNE LANGUE UNIVERSELLE)
Fiction
An introverted man – played by filmmaker Matthew Rankin, who uses his own name – leaves Montreal to return to his native Winnipeg in order to visit his ailing mother. Time and space seem to be turned upside down in this absurd, deadpan comedy: Farsi is the official language of the isolated Canadian city, and everybody speaks it. It is a fact that is not questioned, and was perhaps always true? And indeed, as if we were in a film by the late Abbas Kiarostami, two children embark on a quest through a maze of similar-looking buildings, and they involve a confused Matthew, unsure of where he can find his elusive mother.
Universal Language is the passion project of a filmmaker so enamoured with Iranian cinema and culture that he learned to speak perfect Farsi, convinced that he was born in the wrong place. He brings his motherland of choice into a dystopian version of his native country’s snowy landscapes, and movie magic ensues. It’s effective, funny and stylish, and interesting in many ways, the first of them being that boundless love for another culture that started with film discoveries.
SAT 9 | TRISKEL | 13:30
TUE 12 | ARC CINEMA | 16:00
VIÊT AND NAM (TRONG LÒNG ĐÀT)
Fiction
Viet and Nam love each other. Both are miners, working 1000 meters below ground where darkness prevails. One day, Nam decides to leave the country via an agent who smuggles people in shipping containers, it causes a rift between his love for Viet and the desires for his own future.
Shot in sublime 16mm, this stunning debut feature is at the same time a sensual love story and an exploration of a country’s anguished recent history. The depths of a coal mine are where two young men can love each other without censorship and literally see the stars. Whereas on the surface, mourning and conflicting aspirations still threaten a country’s unity.
The film was banned by Vietnamese authorities for its title and content that give off a “bleak and negative image of Vietnam” and now officially waves a Filipino flag.
WED 13 | ARC CINEMA | 20:15
WHEN THE LIGHT BREAKS (LJÓSBROT)
Fiction
When the light breaks on a long summer’s day in Iceland. From one sunset to another, Una, a young art student encounters love, friendship, sorrow and beauty. Rúnar Rúnarsson poignantly dramatizes the strangeness of a day when someone you love dies. The feeling that everything is shrinking together with your heart, and at the same time of being very much part of nature and aware of all of the world’s tragic beauty.
The film’s talented young cast hit all the right notes and their vibrant performances allow us to truly enter their emotional world. When the film ends, we leave with a sense of gratitude for having met them and for having shared this important moment in their life.
The film will be introduced by its producer, Heather Millard.
This screening will be preceded by Rúnarsson’s short film O (2024, 19 mins)
FRI 15 | ARC CINEMA | 20:00
WINDLESS (BEZVETRIJE)
Fiction
Kaloyan returns home to handle the sale of his late father’s apartment. What starts as a routine task soon becomes a journey of self-discovery and a reflection on childhood traumas and the passage of time.
Windless is not its story. It is an exceptional piece of filmmaking by a filmmaker, Pavel Vesnakov, who proves a true poet and visionary. The melancholy that contaminates the viewer when admiring these strikingly beautiful pictures of the human condition soak into your soul, never to leave it again. Ognyan Pavolv Fyre, who plays Kaloyan, is excellent.
FRI 8 | ARC CINEMA | 15:30
MON 11 | ARC CINEMA | 16:00