*Note*: daytime screenings take place at The Dracula’s Ghost Riders Club, while the evening screenings are hosted at the **Scala Cinema, unless otherwise indicated.
10:30 | Introduction by the President of SMAFF Martin Hatebur
10:40 | Introduction by the Artistic Director Stefano Rabolli Pansera and the Managing Director Diana Segantini
First Movement: The Music of Things
10:50 | Introduction to the movement by Stefano Rabolli Pansera
11:00 | Concertino, 8 variazioni di un ricordo, Renato Leotta
2025 · IT · colour · 15’ · In competition
A journey across the Mediterranean Sea to catalogue specimens of Posidonia oceanica, an endemic seagrass that produces large amounts of oxygen. The leaves of the posidonia were collected and translated by the artist, according to their pigmentation, into musical scores, which were then performed by wind instrumentalists in an attempt to imagine an interspecies dialogue between humans and the plant.
11:15 | The English Occupation of Cyprus, Alexandros Pissourios
2023 · CY · colour · 2’ · European premiere · In competition
A study of time and light across the Cyprus Museum unfolds alongside the discovery of a polka titled The English Occupation of Cyprus in the museum’s photographic archive.
11:17 | Screw, Michael E. Smith
2007 · US · colour · 1’ · In competition
Michael E. Smith’s video works condense an entire world of relationships into just a few seconds of moving image, evoking states of physical, emotional, and economic fragility.
11:18 | Nothing Is More Mysterious. A Fact That Is Well Explained, Anna Franceschini
2010 · NL · colour · 12’ · In competition
Through a rigorous choreography of camera movements, the work investigates the relationship between image, music, and machine, transforming the score of a mechanical pianola into a visual experience.
11:30 | Talk with Anna Franceschini
11:45 | Break
12:00 | Flying Glove (#1, #5, #7), Giulia Guidi
2023 · DE · b/n · 2’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
Flying Glove (#1, #5, #7) is a series of three animated gloves inflated by the wind.
12:05 | Talk with Giulia Guidi
12:20 | Golden sunset, Dominic Michel
2026 · CH · b/n · 30’ · In competition
Golden Sunset traces a subjective map of attention through fleeting sounds and images encountered in public space, revealing how everyday environments become charged with memory, desire, and cultural projections.
12:50 | Search for Life II, Stephanie Comilang
2025 · AE, CN, PH, DE · colour · En, Tl, Sama, Zh · 18’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
Search for Life II immerses viewers in Comilang’s signature form of documentary science fiction, weaving together stories from sites historically associated with pearl diving, live-streamed dispatches from Chinese pearl markets, and a musical soundtrack emphasising the significance of song for those working at sea and the diasporic nature of life in the Gulf states.
Second Movement: The Collective Voice
15:00 | Introduction to the movement by Artistic Director Stefano Rabolli Pansera
15:10 | Recife tem um coraçāo, Rodrigo Sena
2026 · BR · colour · Pt/en · 20’ · Swiss premiere
Silvio Silva, known as a brega music phenomenon in Recife, Brazil, hosts a livestream with his followers to raise funds for a new speaker.
15:30 | The Singing Lesson I, Artur Żmijewski
2001 · PL · colour · 14’
A group of young students from the Institute of Deaf-Mute in Warsaw perform the “Kyrie” from Jan Maklakiewicz’s 1944 Polish Mass inside the Holy Trinity Evangelical-Augsburg Congregation in Warsaw, their voices rising uncertainly yet resolutely into the vaulted space as the solemn, monumental resonance of the organ surrounds them, transforming what might at first seem like dissonance into an arresting, deeply human act of devotion and artistic expression.
15:45 | Asking the Repentistas – Peneira & Sonhador – to remix my octopus works, Shimabuku
2006 · BR · colour · 17’
In this Shimabuku’s videowork, the artwork becomes a facilitator for an interaction between different cultures and interpretations.
16:00 | I’m Not, Shuang Li
2024 · US/DE/CN · colour · En · 6’ · European premiere · In competition
Short story of a fandom.
16:05 | She who moves, Tra My Nguyen
2025 · VN, DE · colour · Vi/en · 14’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
Riding away from rural Vietnam, a solitary woman’s motorcycle journey becomes a meditation on transformation, memory, and rhythm — until a second skin emerges from a well, transforming displacement itself into an act of survival.
16:20 | Bearing Fruit of Fondness, Grounds of Coherence #2, Xin Shen
2025 · CN, UK · colour · Zh/en · 6’ · In competition
Filmed in North Skye, the work explores elemental kinship and the conceptual erosion of mother-child relationships that extends to nation and citizen, land and dweller. It is a 16mm black and white film hand processed with a type of invasive cotoneaster native to Eastern Asia.
16:30 | Break
16:45 | Olho da Rua, Jonathas de Andrade
2022 · BR · colour · Pt/en · 26’
Featuring a cast of 100 people, Olho da Rua (Out Loud) is divided into eight acts and presents performative propositions before the camera as exercises in looking. Simple actions are performed – such as improvising an assembly, sending messages to the camera, and staging a collective celebration that turns the public square into a grand stage. Filmed over two days at Hipódromo Square in Recife, the film features a cast of people experiencing homelessness who are connected to public shelters and non-governmental initiatives supporting vulnerable populations.
17:15 | Jangadeiros e Canoeiros, Jonathas de Andrade
2025 · BR · colour · Pt/en · 13’ · Swiss premiere
Drawing from the world of the jangadas and canoes of Northeastern Brazil, the film finds in conversations about color, landscape, and abstraction a gateway into the emotional imagination of local sailors. Moving between performance, documentary, and images from the São Francisco River regatta, it weaves a narrative suspended between everyday life and fiction.
17:30 | Talk Leonardo Bigazzi with Jonathas de Andrade
**20:00 | Two People Exchanging Saliva, Natalie Musteata & Alexandre Singh
2024 · FR · b/n · Fr/en · 36’ · Swiss premiere
In an absurdist Paris, a personal shopper challenges the status quo.
**20:45 | Lucia di Luciano, Fabio Cherstich
2026 · IT · colour · It/en · 60’ · World premiere
Lucia di Luciano is an intimate conversation between artist Lucia di Luciano and filmmaker Fabio Cherstich, in which paintings become the starting point for stories of memory, friendship, and a lifetime devoted to art—while paying tribute to the extraordinary talent of an artist whose significance has only recently begun to receive the recognition it deserves.
**21:45 | Talk with Fabio Cherstich
**Venue: Scala Cinema