Projects in genres: Woman Director

Synopsis

In POISON we encounter a man (Lucas) and a woman (Edith) who are seeing each other again for the first time in ten years at the cemetery where their only child is buried. They're meeting after many years apart - the body of their son Jacob needs to be exhumed because toxins have seeped into the ground. We follow them over the course of an afternoon, while they wait for their meeting with the cemetery's caretaker - who never turns up. During the course of the afternoon, both Edith and Lucas drop their masks, and secrets are revealed. Lucas has remarried, his new wife is pregnant and he is writing a book about the loss of his son. Edith has never been able to move on despite doing her best to pretend to. It slowly becomes clear that their whole meeting is based on one big lie. Edith fabricated the event to lure Lucas into meeting her after all these years, without knowing what it is exactly that she is looking for. It’s not until Edith and Lucas have exposed their vulnerabilities to each other that they are able to let each other go, and each go their own way.
Official Selection Munich International Film Festival 2024 - World premiere
Official Selection Galway Film Fleadh 2024

Synopsis

Sam's search for identity gets interrupted by a mysterious neighbourhood fox. Together they embark on a magical journey to the attic to discover the surprising things they might have in common, and how to celebrate the ways in which they differ.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024 - Short Film Competition

Synopsis

As the fear of her impending adulthood becomes louder, a sedentary girl is asked to go to a party.

Synopsis

Friends, colleagues and strangers compare notes on their journeys with hormonal birth control - and its indelible effects on their mental health.

Synopsis

A work of speculative cinematic writing, the film is about war and displacement, architecture and place-making. It tells the fragmented biography of the so-called Rock Church, an iconic building in Helsinki and its architects who were excluded from the canon of Finnish modernism. The architects' personal history of displacement due to the Finnish Winter War of 1939 and Soviet occupation is braided with the war on present-day Gaza.
Past and present histories, temporalities and geographies fold into, and over one another collapsing time, place and identities narratively to consider, in the gentlest of tones, the impact of atrocities on contemporary lifeworlds.

Synopsis

Divided by barriers and borders, the three sisters confront their childhood after spending decades apart in culturally and politically diverging countries. For all of them, one moment in life determined everything that followed.
An emotionally revealing essay film.

Synopsis

Marmar listens to the stories told by her grandmother’s friends as they play an illicit game of cards. Based on childhood memories and shared stories, AND GRANNY WOULD DANCE is a tale of love, grief and resilience. At its heart, it is a tribute to the solidarity of Iranian women.
Official Selection Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024 - World premiere
Palm Springs International ShortFest 2024 - Best Short Animation Audience Award - Winner
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

When a massive Chinese factory complex attempts a high-stakes expansion in rural Ethiopia, three women in search of prosperity have their faith in industrialisation tested to the limit.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2024 - Documentary Competition - World premiere
Tribeca Film Festival 2024 - Documentary Competition - Jury Special Mention
Warsaw Film Festival 2024 - Documentary Competition - Jury Special Mention

Synopsis

BRANDED is a woman’s defiance, in the face of atrocity, to uphold Art and Freedom. Set at some time, in the past, present, or the future. A Ukrainian woman, captured by a regime that forbids artistic expression, challenges her oppressors. She is anonymous, without a presence in the world, the non-existence of a political prisoner. Pacing around the cell, her words directed at the Wall behind her. The Wall that protects her from what is beyond. From other cells, noises of torture are heard. The sounds of conflict increase as the war comes closer. Knowing she will die, her dreams are of the life she used to have, with freedom, laughing and painting in her studio. Her concern is not for herself when she asks, is this the end of Art? She has a vision and imagines Leonardo da Vinci visits her, and asks him, will Art survive? Her desperation increasing, she paints with her own faeces and urine on the Wall. Collapsing, she imagines a future artist visiting her cell. He tells her, Art cannot die, artists are the future.
Kateryna Polishchuk, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, is the voice of the woman in the cell.

Synopsis

As the Palestinian identity continues to be threatened with erasure, Palestinians turn to their folk dance, the dabke, to assert their existence. Ultimately, they dance because they love life, and insist on living it.
Official Selection Leuven International Short Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

A day in the life of Claire. FARM DAYS is a heartfelt glimpse into the world of a farm manager and her twelve alpacas as they engage in feeding, trekking, and community volunteering in the woods of Sheffield, UK.

Synopsis

Mayaw's indigenous Taiwanese roots and his daughter's biracial identity are at the heart of their transcendent dreams. As Mayaw's mind fades, the call of his homeland grows stronger, leading to a magical reconnection with the help of lullabies and mystical guardians.