Films A-Z
Sessions
Re-imagining Leiden Shorts
Timetable

A

4

Mehdi Fikri, 11 min. (France/2021)

France, November 2015. After the Paris terror attacks, the state of emergency is proclaimed to facilitate the work of police forces. 4 AM. A policewoman helps colleagues to conduct a search, but soon finds out that things aren’t going the way they’re supposed to.

A

Simon Norton, 1 min. (Australia/2020)

This official music video for the band ALESTORM was made during the 2020 COVID-19 quarantine from March to June 2020. Thirty students...

Corina Schwingruber Ilić, 10 min. (Switzerland/2018)

Under the spell of mass entertainment on the high seas.

Yoriko MIZUSHIRI, 6 min. (France, Japan/2021)

Living things, artificial things, geometry shapes, and lines. When these different things encounter, a new direction is born.

Alexander Gratzer, 7 minutes (Austria/2019)

While two uniformed guards divulge themselves as spineless beings, animals carry on philosophical dialogues about important existential issues.

B

Isadora Neves Marques, 22 min. (Portugal/2022)

Mirene and André, and Carl and Vicente, are both couples in their mid-thirties. While Mirene and André struggle with their fertility, Vicente decides to undergo an experimental procedure, implanting an ovary in his body in the hopes of having a child with Carl.

Thelyia Petraki, 25 min. (Greece/2020)

Greece 1986-1987, a little before the fall of State Socialism and just at the end of the Cold War. In front of Anthi’s eyes the country is changing, the world is changing and with them Christos seems to be changing too.

C

Camila Kater, 12 min. (Brazil, Spain/2019)

Rare, medium rare, medium, medium well and well done. Through intimate and personal stories, five women share their experiences in relation to the body, from childhood to old age.

SeO, 5 min. (South Korea/2021)

A black comedy about an unidentifiable strange creature that will satisfy the desires of those who seek fear for sheer pleasure.

Daewoen Yoon, 17 min. (South Korea/2021)

Chang-hyeon, a transgender prostitute encounters a visitor who seems both familar and alienated to him.

D

Cyan Bae, 17 min. (The Netherlands/2020)

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a series of video letters are sent to the director’s sister in Seoul. Should we want to return to the ‘old normal’?

Samir Karahoda, 15 min. (Kosovo/2021)

In post-war Kosovo, driven by the ambition of keeping their beloved sport alive, two local players wander from one obscure location to another carrying with them the only possession of the club: their tables.

E

Gabriel Gauchet, 28 min. (Cuba, Germany/2010)

Nighttime in a quarter of Havana. A couple of men are playing a game of dominos while the women pass the time gossiping. Out of the blue, a man finds the granddaughter of Mercedes and Ramón at a park close by. It looks like she's been raped. The situation escalates, as chauvinist tendencies are incited to the point that a culprit must be found at any cost.

Chaerin Im, 6 min. (South Korea/2021)

Exploration of masculinity begins with the Minotaur, a mythical creature Picasso used to portray himself in his etching print series. The Minotaur goes through a violent struggle between being male and female. Finally, lines blur and boundaries of sexes disappear.

F

Leonardo Martinelli, 20 min. (Brazil/2021)

A delivery man dreams of having a motorcycle. He was told that everything would be like a musical film.

Rafael Manuel, 24 min. (Philippines, United Kingdom/2020)

The self-contained cosmos of the golf course reflects societal structures. Although new 'tee girl' Isabel still has to learn the rules, she's already looking for loopholes to subvert the system.

Mitch McGlocklin, 7 min. (United States/2020)

A life insurance company uses an AI algorithm to determine the risk of a new applicant. The subsequent denial sparks a period of introspection for the individual in question.

Marco Jemolo, 7 min. (Italy/2017)

In an anonymous police station, F.K.asks the Law for help in the attempt to report the abuses he has been through.He will end up stuck in an endless nightmare

Olivia Martin-McGuire, 15 min. (United Kingdom, Australia/2021)

The story of a grandfather’s perilous swim from China to Hong Kong that parallels his granddaughter’s own quest for a new freedom.

H

Tebogo Malebogo, 10 min. (South Africa/2020)

After Tau comes to a realization about their sexuality, it sets in motion a cascade of thoughts and emotions in Tumelo - nothing will ever be the same between them.

Paula Rodríguez Polanco, 27 min. (France, Colombia/2020)

Fourteen-year-old Maria spends her time in the extensive tropical garden of her family house. When she meets her brother and his friend Adrian on motorcycles during the New Year celebrations, she decides to flee with them to find paradise on earth together.

Melisa Liebenthal, 22 min. (France, Argentina/2020)

Here and There is an essay film that studies what being at home means.

Niklas Pollmann, 15 min. (Austria, Germany/2021)

Two lost souls in London. Connected through a poem in German and the question of how they will meet.

I

Elsa Rosengren, 30 min. (Germany/2020)

A late-summer morning in Wrangelkiez, Berlin, Elpi, a young Greek woman, receives a phone call from a long-lost friend. As the day progresses, Elpi’s apprehensive wait for their reunion interweaves with the lives of other neighbourhood locals.

Maria Estela Paiso, 14 min. (Philippines/2022)

The world is about to end. Maya is forced to go home to the province of Zambales.

L

Léahn Vivier-Chapas, 14 min. (France/2021)

Who will best play her part: the dancing lioness or the little girl we attempt to tame? Only the Boob Fairy will know who is really worthy of her attention.

Veronica L. Montaño, Manuela Leuenberger, Joel Hofmann, 6 min. (Switzerland/2020)

The salmon want to reproduce. While the salmon men are swimming upstream in a testosterone-driven race, the women at the source of the river indulge themselves in a fertility dance. But the roles aren’t set as clearly as the men expect.

Joder von Rotz, 8 min. (Switzerland/2021)

Little Miss Fate lives in a world driven by fate. When the opportunity arises, she slips into the role of the world leader. Unintentionally she creates a monster, which greedily wants to suck up all the love of the world. Overwhelmed by the rapid development, she loses control.

Diana Cam Van Nguyen, 13 min. (Czech Republic/2021)

She finds letters full of love her dad wrote her 15 years ago. Now she fights to get that love back.

M

Varun Raman, Tom Hancock, 4 min. (United Kingdom/2022)

In the wilderness, a tree begins to question whether it may actually be a man tripping on hallucinogens.

Stéphanie Lagarde, 16 min. (Netherlands/2021)

As an intelligent elevator discovers the world, we get to know the invisible links between extreme heights and extreme depths.

Antoine Chapon, 19 min. (France/2020)

A former military game designer was spotted in a video game competition organized by the army. Before going to war, he made video game scenarios that prepared soldiers to cultural shocks and healed trauma.

Olga Lucovnicova, 20 min. (Belgium, Portugal, Hungary, Moldova/2021)

After 20 years of silence, the filmmaker returns to the house of her great-grandparents, where, at the age of nine, she faced the abusive sexual behaviour of her uncle.

O

Paloma Orlandini Castro, 18 min. (Argentina/2021)

A personal and sexual diary. A fake user’s manual whose sophistication and audaciousness free it from the traps of what has to be said and the agenda of commonplace.

Ariane Labed, 27 min. (France/2019)

After answering an ad on a dating website for Eastern European women, Olla leaves Ukraine and heads to French suburbia to move in with Pierre, who lives with his elderly mother. However, the suburbia cannot temper her desires, and nothing goes as expected.

P

Ann Oren, 13 min. (Germany /2020)

A foley artist creates sounds for a film starring a dressage horse and dissolves into his own imitation. Shot on 16mm film, PASSAGE winks at Eadweard Muybridge’s pre-cinematic experiments with horses.

R

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, 30 min. (Thailand/2020)

The queer espionage film made in the tradition of Cold-War-era Thai dubbed film. A ladyboy prostitute-cum-spy is assigned a mission to disguise as a cis-masculine gay to acquire important information from an idealistic student activist.

S

Katarina Rešek, 23 min. (Slovenia/2021)

Three best friends, sworn virgins, get into a fight with local boys. When things get rough, they are saved by girl in the becoming.

Weijia Ma, 15 min. (France, China/2020)

Lu and Wei are two young girls living in a village nestled on the banks of a river. As the one-child policy has led some families to drown baby girls, they both have a special relationship with this river, which looks like a cradle of tragic stories.

Dorian Jespers, 20 min. (Belgium, Russia/2020)

Fedor is a young locksmith in Murmansk, a frozen city in the obscurity of the Russian Arctic. Client after client, he roams through the alleys of concrete animated by a fantasy that isolates him from the city and its population.

Réka Bucsi, 10 min. (Hungary/2014)

Forty-seven brief but vivid vignettes about the paradoxical nature of our world, seamlessly intertwine perplexing scenes of poetical absurdism with the ironic, the grotesque, and the beautiful. Is this the symphony of life?

T

Magnus Igland Møller, Mette Tange, Peter Smith, 7 min. (Denmark/2020)

God is a single parent and amateur programmer. He’s working on project ‘Earth’ but never seems to get a break from the kids. One day though, he finally gets a breakthrough

Saulius Baradinskas, 18 min. (Lithuania/2021)

Nikita loves to listen techno music and dreams to go to Berlin and visit the famous club “Berghain”. His mother Irena doesn’t know about his son’s dreams and soon enough their mutual expectations will clash.

Javier Mrad, 12 min. (Argentina/2009)

Once upon a time... Old magazines gently dance in the wind. A super-8 camera crawls over a wooden table while an old carpet flows in and out. Suddenly, a mouse and then, a whole civilisation running towards its inevitable destiny.

Jacqueline Lentzou, 14 min. (Greece/2020)

Sofia is panicky, again. The Universe decides to contact her. An other-wordly dialogue. A planet symphony for Mars, where people dream awake and fight for love.

David Pinheiro Vicente, 15 min. (Portugal, France/2020)

The summer festivities of a Portuguese village are suffused with sensuality and violence in this enigmatic portrait of a tightly knit family.

V

Suzannah Mirghani, 7 min. (Qatar/2021)

Suzi doll is an ego-warrior. The director’s online avatar, marching to the algorithms of social media. She is lit by temporary outrage. A trending indignation. A passion that is fashion. A politics of the popular.

W

Aline Höchli, 11 min. (Switzerland/2019)

Slugs have a hard time keeping up with the pace of life in the city of insects. When a financial crisis hits, the industrious bees only see one solution.