Browse through the detailed list of the screening films of the 6th Athens Short Film Festival edition and explore our diverse programme.
Adequately
The music video is set in one of the apartments in Soviet Union Brezhnev-era panel house where a merry funeral feast takes place after a silent wedding. The characters meet in the same apartment under different circumstances and face the need of making choices trying to determine the boundaries of adequacy. The chosen era of the mid-80s works like a distorted mirror to today rhyming with the reality in viewers minds. What is adequacy, how is it determined and where are the limits of what is acceptable and who is there to judge?
Leo Gorenstein
All Of A Sudden I Began To Melt
All Of A Sudden I Began To Melt is a short art-comedy film exploring luxury wellness, anxiety and the class politics of wotsits. The entirety of the film takes place over a massage treatment that is flipped on its head by an unwanted visitor floating in a flower arrangement.
Ruth Waters
Between fingers
During her bathroom break, Roni scrolls through a dating app, when suddenly her finger enters a digital finger dimension. In this “finger world” she experiences a journey in search of the one.
Daniel Sweed
Blue
Samira will finally buy her car, but you have to decide on the model. Night falls, shadows roam.
Frederic Bayer Azem
Christmas Threesome
Two friends discuss the parameters of a threesome in an effort to save money on a christmas gift.
Devon Ferguson
Clearance Sale
A man wants the last pair from a sale. There is a catch to getting it.
Sarower Reza Jimi
Forget Me Not
When Kakia finds herself trapped in her own birthday’s surprise party, she decides to take a walk in a path she hadn’t visited for ages, accompanied by a person that knows her better than anyone.
Selini Papageorgiou
Four Friends On A Flat Earth
In Four Friends on a Flat Earth, four friends set off on a road trip to Calais to prove with a laser experiment that the Earth is flat. The friends, who have known each other since high school, each have their own reasons for undertaking the journey. For one, the result of the test must provide hard proof that the Earth is flat, while the other is not so sure yet but is open to an alternate truth. On the journey, they share their experiences from their previous lives, their pains and desires; secrets they did not share with others before. We come to understand better what their belief in the Flat Earth means for themselves and for their friendship. Together they live towards the moment of truth as they conduct their experiments on the white cliffs of Calais. Will this give them the proof they are hoping for?
Tim Bary
Harvesting Our Tea
For centuries, women have picked tea on the steep slopes of Turkeys Black Sea region. It is grueling work, and much of what they earn has traditionally been handed to their husbands. But now a new generation are turning their backs on tea picking, and the industrys survival is uncertain. Harvesting Our Tea follows the young women who hope change is coming and the older ones who fear for their way of life.
Sheida Kiran
Heart Fruit
Late summer heats up the city where people search for their own form of love.
Kim Allamand
Homeward Journey
Chen Yingyings career on Mars is taking off but she hasn’t returned home in a long time. When her granny falls gravely ill, she takes the arduous journey back to Earth to be reunited with her family.
Youyang Kong
It Doesnt Have To Be Today
Four friends sitting at a square in Cologne Finkenberg, looking for the right words and punctuation marks in a WhatsApp message to a girl that will never be sent.
Sophia Julia Groening
Ive Always Wanted To See A Martian
An astronaut finds herself stranded on a foreign planet. Her initial fear gives way to an insatiable need to experience this new planet with all her senses. The astronaut tries to find her footing between the urge to conquer and surrender.
Smaragda Nitsopoulou
Jigging
A homeless woman fishes on a pier and must make a vital decision for survival…Bases on the writers true experience of homelessness.
Emily McNey, Emma Zadow
Killing Ourselves
Maya takes her parents and sister to the desert in order to film them for an additional scene in her film. But the day of filming turns into a never-ending family argument, and it becomes unclear whether they will even manage to cooperate and become a team.
Maya Yadlin
Le Pompon
Sandra is a struggling single mom. But today, she holds her revenge. Her son Ryan will catch the pompon!
David Hourrègue
Life Left Behind
Whilst driving, a woman attempts to reconcile with her past and the scars it left behind.
Valia Phyllis Zwart
Ma Fatsh Leah
One voice, one piano is all that minimalist French outfit Madeleine & Salomon need to create their hypnotic version of MA FATSH LEAH, the single from their second album, Eastern Spring, which covers a choice selection from the repertoire of ‘60s/’70s Mediterranean folk-pop. Clotilde’s melancholic voice tells of a young woman tortured by the interminable wait for her lover in the emancipated Cairo of the 1970s, while the bewitching piano of Alexandre Saada conjures the buzz of a restless city that feeds the sweet madness of her hope, and ours with it. As soon as we have reached the end of this interior journey, we have but one desire: to start all over again.
Marion Auvin
Made of Flesh
With a touch of blush and a few drops of lip gloss, Lucie is getting ready to start her training day to become a hostess at a motor show. A lifelong car enthusiast, she has the secret hope of being noticed by the prestigious EBBE brand. However, she is unaware that the training has only one true goal: to make her and the other 15 girls into premium women.
Florence Rochat, Séréna Robin
Maria Theresa Gives Birth
Maria Theresa has just become the new emperor of the Habsburg Empire and she is being prepared to give birth to her fourth child. In a big ball room servants are bringing food and drinks while she has to deal with the threats of the surrounding countries who want to attack Austria. It seems easy to conquer a female emperor. When Theresa’s pains become more frequent and the labor starts soon, they let the high-ranked guests in. It’s an honour to be invited for the birth of the royal heir. Among the guests there is one Hungarian Nobleman who has the solution for Theresa’s problem: he can offer soldiers to go against the dreaded enemy, Frederick the Prussian king. First Theresa is reluctant to ask for this huge favour from the Hungarian but as her pain hardens she doesn’t care about etiquettes anymore and just says whatever she wants. Eventually she gets the army she needs and she gives birth to a son. She is a real Emperor from now on.
Nikol Cibulya
Original Skin
In an alternate world where having sex means swapping bodies with the other person, a young woman struggles to be herself, defying her small conservative community where swapping is taboo. A deeply intimate portrait of identity in transition.
Mdhamiri á Nkemi
Queer Parivaar
When a mysterious gate-crasher appears at their wedding, Madhav and Sufi are forced to face past secrets and reflect on what makes a family. Queer Parivaar is a story of multi-generational LGBTQ+ identities and experiences, narrated musically through an ambitious original soundtrack, and created by a majority South Asian LGBTQ+ cast and crew.
Shiva Raichandani
Sheets
A family surviving in a totalitarian dystopia is faced with the dilemma of reporting a family of immigrants who suddenly their seek help or preserve human dignity by endangering their own safety.
Evi Gjoni
Stratis
On the most isolated island of the Aegean Sea, a man faces a series of paradoxical challenges struggling to survive in exile.
Antonis Maros
Summer Breeze
A recently divorced middle-aged man receives a smartphone from his daughter and reconnects with the first love of his life who asks him to meet
Alexandros Rellos
Sun & Shadow
There was light and it was brutal. Shadows could not heal. The Boy had fallen into sleep. The Girl was recalling and sand was everywhere.
Melina Loukanidou
The Doll
After consulting with his relatives a 35-year-old father consents to the marriage of his 14-year-old daughter. As individuals with differing perspectives his family grapple with the decision.
Elahe Esmaili
The Door
Curiosity brews as two women are charged with pressing a button that leads to a mysterious nowhere. People enter but never leave. What is behind this door? For one, the unknown doesnt plague them in the slightest. For the other, the answer must be known, despite all risks. Would you dare to cross The Door?
Pierre H. Ollier
The Lighting
The Lighting aims to revisit and clarify the issue of discrimination rooted in technological development and image production through an interdisciplinary exploration. The work comprises three narratives—three professional Togolese photographers explore how to use instruments to compensate insufficient exposure for dark skin tones; a leading software engineer developing facial recognition algorithms at Taiwan’s MediaTek talks about how they have created a camera algorithm that is highly popular on the African continent; moreover, the artist uses Kodak’s Ektachrome, a popular film in the 70s, to produce a kung fu film in the style of exploitation film, using images of the famous Black martial art film star, Jim Kelly, in Bruce Lee’s movies in the 70s. The work is also interlaced with an animated Bruce Lee as the narrator trained by facial motion capture and a speech recognition algorithm.
Chihying Musquiqui
To The Dust
Living in the expanse of the Wild West, a disabled woman is forced to fight not only the elements but also her own grief when confronted with an unexpected loss.
Sophia Youssef
Too Rough
After a night of intoxication, a hungover and hysterical Nick wakes up next to his boyfriend Charlie and must conceal him from his own homophobic and dysfunctional family.
Sean Lìonadh
U.N. Slap Commission
A positive conspiracy theory about the UNs greatest secret. When diplomacy fails, the UN Slap Commission comes in. Their duty: Keeping politicians in check – by delivering a hard slap in the face. This mockumentary follows slap bureaucrat Joschka Grimm and his colleagues as they offer first-time insights into the art of slapping and the science behind it. We will witness how they slap world leaders like Trump, Merkel and Obama and change the course of history – one slap at a time.
Valentin Burkhardt, Stephan Kämpf
Zabut
Nunzia, a thirty-year-old with fertility problems, returns to her childhood home in Sicily, in the ancient district of Zabut. Here, with the complicity of her mother and her new cabinetmaker assistant, Nunzia rediscovers desire, as in an archaic pagan ritual.
Giuseppe Schillaci