Morning screening
10:00 | Nécessité, Wojciech Puś and Stefan Węgłowski
2024 · colour & b/w · PL · No dialogue · 40’ · World premiere · In competition
Made-up, found, collected, translated, learned, exercised, digested. Nécessité is an imaginary archive, an abstract moving image made of nonexistent but possible celluloid and digital material of documenting light. These bits and pieces of made-up records were found at the forgotten attics, collected by phantasmal, experimental archivists. The film’s music is performed as a live set.
10:40 | Overnight Coup Plan, Marina Xenofontos
2025 · colour · CY · Cypriot dialect, El, En/en · 13’ · In competition
During the 50th anniversary of the Cypriot Coup d’État, Overnight Coup Plan follows a group of girls from Limassol on their way to Ayia Napa, an open-air theme park for teens and tourists located beside one of the UK’s largest military bases on the island.
11:00 | Talk with Marina Xenofontos and Rosalia Namsai Engchuan
11:20 | Break
11:30 | Race of a hippie, Alessandro Di Pietro
2024 · colour · IT, USA · En · 11’ · In competition
A resurrected hippie corpse wanders through a spectral forest in a speculative tale merging archival truth and artistic fiction—a cinematic collage reimagining Paul Thek’s legacy through digital relics, posthumous attributions, and a haunting meditation on time, memory, and authorship.
11:40 | Monument, Jeremy Drummond
2025 · colour & b/w · USA · En · 18’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
Beginning in ghostly abstraction and accumulating texture by texture into a droning meditative trance, Monument deepens to a visual and sonic intensity, mixing Super 8 film with video footage to create a complicated, multilayered encounter with the tension of protest and reclamation.
12:00 | Paraflu, Michela de Mattei, Invernomuto
2025 · colour · IT · En · 24’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
Paraflu traces the return of the wolf to Northern Italy, exploring it as a symbol of conflict and transformation. Blending 16mm and AI-generated footage, it shifts between human and animal perspectives, blurring investigation and fiction.
12:30 | Talk with Simone Trabucchi (Invernomuto) and Stefano Rabolli Pansera
Afternoon screening
15:00 | Empty Rider, Lawrence Lek
2024 · colour CH, UK · En · 16’ · In competition
Framed as a courtroom drama, a sentient self-driving car is accused of the attempted murder of its human operator.
15:20 | The (Un)event (side c), Linn Phyllis Seeger
2024 · colour · UK · En · 7’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
Gesturing towards prevalent vernaculars of the American road movie, The (Un)event (side c) simulates an aimless and unsuccessful drive through New York City within a map that becomes the territory.
15:30 | Night Song of a Wandering Cowboy, Andrea De Fusco
2023 · colour · IT · En · 12’ · Swiss premiere · In competition
A videogame character goes on a metaphysical journey exploring the boundaries of his world and encountering glitches, anomalies and existential problems.
15:45 | This Light Is Not Ours, Cedric Arnold
2025 · colour · TH · Th/en · 24’ · World premiere · In competition
This Light Is Not Ours explores a tradition of film screenings for spirits in Bangkok’s Daoist shrines, merging documentary observation with material experimentation on 35mm film.
16:15 | Break
16:30 | Introduction by Roísín Tapponi
16:35 | XRAY EYES, Lewis Teague Wright
2024 · colour · UK · En · 17’ · European premiere
Through warped digital landscapes and flickering film, XRAY EYES dissects how we witness, remember, and reconstruct what we see.
17:00 | The Old Child, Felipe Esparza
2021 · colour · CN, FR · Bo/en · 16’
Philosopher Zhuang Zi once dreamt he was a butterfly. This pleasant daydream tells this old story from a new perspective. Modern butterflies apparently dream in VR. Nature, technology and spirituality seamlessly meld when a monk and a child both embrace modern technology in their own way.
17:20 | Whipping Zombie, Yuri Ancarani
2017 · colour · IT · Ht/en · 30’
In a remote Haitian village, a ritual dance, slaves and masters: it’s the zombie dance. Riding on a hypnotic and relentless music, inducing trance and evoking the rhythm of working muscles, men whip and fight one another, until they die and be born again in an infinite cycle. Kale Zonbi, Whipping Zombie, the title of a unique ritual shot for the first time, taking place in a paradise where it is impossible to forget the horror of the past.
17:50 | Talk with Yuri Ancarani and Leonardo Bigazzi
Evening screenings
20:00 | Talk with Ewa Hess and Cedric Arnold
20:30 | In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai
2001 · colour · CN · Cn/De, Fr · 100’
At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and exquisitely abstract cinematography, this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past 25 years of cinema.
22:30 | Prize Giving Ceremony at the Dracula Club