The starting point for this video piece is an image of artist Maryam Jafri's sculpture 'Anxiety', that has been turned into a stock photo for licensing on a major photographic agency's website without the artist's prior knowledge or permission.
A voiceover traces the work’s trajectory from a readymade sculpture for sale at an art fair to a stock photo for licensing online and finally, to a video commissioned by a Kunstahalle, a space meant to guarantee the autonomy of art. The work reflects upon the role of originality, artist labour and copyright in our culture of sampling and remixing.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2020 -Bright Future
A monster film with no monsters. Inspired by the existence of taxonomies of monsters at the heart of Early Modern European science, the film explores and reinterprets a way of seeing the natural world that is almost impossible to imagine from today’s vantage point. Early Modern naturalists were guided by a logic in which scientific truths were discovered through visual analogy. The word ‘monster’ comes from the latin ‘monstrare’, meaning to show, to reveal, to demonstrate. A DEMONSTRATION picks up on these themes in a poetic exploration of the boundaries of sight and the metamorphosis of form.
Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2020 - Berlinale Shorts - World premiere
Across countries and over years, Noura and Machi search for answers – their loved ones have been forcibly disappeared in Syria. With no information to anchor their limbo, hope is the only thing they can hold on to.
A day in the lives of a 12-year-old kid with special needs and his 14 year-old-sister, when she chooses to be the motherly figure in her brother's life, unlike all the days up until that moment, when she thought it was forced on her.
Sandra (Dunne), on the surface of it, is a young Mum struggling to provide her two young daughters with a warm, safe, happy home to grow up in. Beneath the surface, Sandra has a steely determination to change their lives for the better and when it becomes clear that the local council won’t provide that home, she decides to build it herself from scratch.
With very little income to speak of and no savings, Sandra must use all her ingenuity to make her ambitious dream a reality. At the same time, she must escape the grip of her possessive ex-husband and keep him away from her and her girls. The lionhearted Sandra draws together a community of friends to support her and lend a helping hand and it is the kindness and generosity of these people and the love of her young daughters that help rebuild her own strength and sense of self.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2020 - World premiere
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2020
In patriarchal Nepal, Belmaya, at 21, has given up on finding happiness. An uneducated Dalit, with an oppressive husband and baby daughter, she yearns for freedom. Rewind to 2006, when she was a rebellious teenager living in a girls’ home. Grabbing the chance to learn photography, she wanted to change her world. But the home locked away her camera.
I Am Belmaya follows her transformational journey from 2014 as she once again picks up the camera, this time to train as a documentary filmmaker. But are her husband and community ready for this? Struggling against violent opposition, Belmaya makes a personal film, Educate Our Daughters, which wins hearts and awards, taking her to places she never dreamed she would go.
An 8-minute animated short set over two time periods. In 1999 a boy becomes obsessed with the Y2K bug; In the distant future a girl is learning to be a priest in a religion based upon the ‘artifacts’ left behind by the boy. The people in the future speak in a partially understandable dialect of English that has evolved over time.
The cult of personality is terrifying, insane and at times hilarious. We are interested in how humans fabricate meaning and place their most deep-seated fears in the most unlikely of gods. The Year 2000 was simultaneously the beginning of the future, and the end of world. NEW YEAR is a humorous film that looks at humans struggling with their mortality, over thousands of years, through stories, ritual and religion.
Ominous cinegrams of Albrecht Dürer’s 'Melencolia' print intercut, like cascading scythes, with depictions of a woman in a field, evoking repetitions that exist in harvest rituals, as well as in gestures of madness. Spectres of familial anxieties creep into this loose take on the myth of Poludnica (noonwraith or Lady Midday), a Slavic harvest spirit that could cause madness in those who wandered the fields alone.
A young couple living alone in the woods must contend with a life-altering illness that manifests itself in a violent and terrifying way. Rose’s disease is a vampiric, parasitic thirst for blood. As her hunger grows, all humanity seems to give way to a feral violence that harms both her and those around her. The pair’s love strains under the burden of Rose’s illness, and it is only a matter of time until the secluded life that they have built is upended entirely.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2020
The sudden disappearance of his wife and children sends Will on a frantic search across Europe to regain his family and piece his life back together. He locates them in a remote village in France, but relief turns to horror when Will discovers his baby son has mysteriously died. Grief struck, Will secretly buries him in a bid to protect his wife. But by burying the truth, Will now risks destruction. As the mystery behind his wife’s actions start to take a dark and menacing form, Will sets out to discover the truth about his wife’s disappearance and his son’s tragic death—no matter the cost.
Shot in one single take, the film follows a 13 year old Bangla girl from East London escaping a forced marriage with the help of her girlfriend. Part of the Arri Trinity challenge.
Desperately building against the inevitability of time, a restless young woman is awaiting another upcoming loss. But maybe more important things never seem to be told.
