A certain kind of form was needed to be able to render, on screen, the complexity of the colours, the textures and – ultimately -, the lives that pass through the hands of Zoe Lucas. For decades, the ecologist has kept a small island off the coast of Canada under observation, acting as a living, crucial memory of this natural habitat. For this reason, an insect species represents more than a trophy meant to be stuck with a needle; a herd of wild horses is more than an occasion for contemplation. As fascinated by the raw beauty of nature as the film proves to be, it eventually ends up just as angst-ridden, to the extent that not even this place located in the middle of the ocean is safe from man’s destructive action. “Geographies of Solitude” thus builds itself as an elegy in vivo to a not-so-fanciful idea about a lost paradise: a space-time where nature can evolve untouched, in an almost cosmic spectacle. (Victor Morozov)

“The Fabulous Ones” takes its name from a group of transgender female friends who, having reached middle age, reunite in the villa that witnessed their process of identity formation.
The reunion is occasioned by the unsealing of a letter written by one of them (Antonia, now deceased) to the others, in which she leaves them her possessions (the most precious one being their story itself) and addresses them a final request. Roberta Torre, a fiction film director with a fascination for the dynamics of disadvantaged or even marginal communities, indulges here in a game without rules, in which she playfully blends documentary and fiction, reality and its mise-en-scène, as well as the face and its mask: the group of friends plays their own roles, thus offering a profoundly subjective perspective, yet one that is all the more revelatory in regards to the past – and, by implication, the present – of the transgender community. (Liri Chapelan)

Shuli Huang’s short film unfolds as a dialogue – at times real, at times imagined – between him and his mother: the young man calmly defends his life choices, from his artistic vocation to his attraction to men, while the woman is overwhelmed by the panic of seeing him irrevocably drift away from the model of the perfect son which others - relatives, neighbours, acquaintances - seem to have ingrained in her. The images, shot with a Super-8 camera, exude the warmth and the solar nostalgia that characterize the remembrance of a generic, postcard-like childhood, beneath which, the filmmaker suggests, boil the passions and the insubordination which will eventually define us as adults. (Liri Chapelan)

During the 1990s women from Moldova began to work abroad to be able to support their families. Little by little, time and distance take the form of packages crossing the border: mothers used to send boxes of food and presents that one could only dream of back then and received video tapes with their children in return. Using solely archival images (the raw footage consisted of over 100 hours of film), the director captures the fragility of family bonds through the eyes of a generation of mothers and daughters constrained to live by themselves, the history of a generation forced to transition from communism to capitalism. This is a film made by a woman about women, centered around a collective experience she was a part of as well, where men have more of a supportive role. Although the characters live their lives so transparently and intimately on screen, the viewer’s sense of discomfort is as real it gets: one cannot help feeling somewhat like those mothers, so close, and yet absent, because the main dilemma, - parental love vs. financial security –, is still present among us. (Sorana Stănescu)

As the 2014 war in Eastern Ukraine was wreaking havoc, a group of social workers were toiling away in a temporary accommodation centre near the front. They wanted to create a safe space for children in the maximum nine months they could spend there and to then offer them the best future possible – sometimes this would be a family and other times an orphanage. Through the destinies of three children who struggle against the uncertainty of the future, the film manages to tell the story of an entire generation, that of children who lose their parents “to war or to alcohol” and become adults much too early. We thus have an unprecedented and intimate perspective on a subject everyone thinks they know (the war in Ukraine and its consequences) and on a reality everyone thinks they understand (the combination of alcohol, violence, and poverty in Eastern countries.) There is despair in this reality – every child who leaves the centre is immediately replaced by another, with an almost identical story –, but there is also hope and raw joy, in the children’s play or in the reunion with a grandmother who assumes the role of both mother and father. (Sorana Stănescu)

Rooted in the first wave of workers revolts to hit Serbia since the advent of capitalism, the film divides itself between factory workers, playing their own role, who find that their working place was looted by their bosses, and young incendiary libertarians (actors), inflaming the struggle and discussing with demonstrators issues around that beast: capitalism.