Projects in genres: Experimental

Synopsis

Through the psychoanalytic and introspective voiceover of a young post-pandemic Chinese migrant in Europe, the film interweaves her private memories of intimacy with public narratives of resistance. As her reflections unfold, she and her community navigate secrecy, repression, survival, looming precarity, and displacement, all while confronting the personal cost of existing in a world that demands their silence.

Synopsis

PLAYING WITH FIRE introduces audiences to an intimate virtual performance by Yuja Wang, inviting guests to witness the physical and mental act of performance through repertoire personally selected by Yuja, ranging from Bach and Chopin to Debussy, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. From this repertoire, writer and director Pierre-Alain Giraud has crafted a narrative and created transformative visual and musical worlds in collaboration with artist Gabríela Friðriksdóttir. At the center of the space, both real and virtual, is a Steinway & Sons Spirio concert grand piano, which acts as the bridge between the concert hall and the artist’s inner visions. The Spirio system—an advanced self-playing technology that can precisely record and reproduce the keystrokes of live performances—recreates Yuja’s virtuosity on the physical instrument in real time, synchronised with the holographic fingers of her virtual self. Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2026 - Immersive Competition - World premiere

Synopsis

Between film screenings across the world, Mark Jenkin muses on cinematic influences, ponders cultural history and reflects upon home. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2025 - World premiere Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2025 - European premiere

Synopsis

With no single protagonist or linear narrative, the film immerses the viewer in a spectacle of strength through an intimate portrait of bodybuilders in the slums of Lagos. Inflated muscles, bulging veins and luminous skin glistening with sweat fill the screen. Shot almost entirely in close-ups, the camera hovers so near its subjects, moving softly like breath on skin, that at times figures become blurred, abstracted forms. Karimah Ashadu’s slow, measured pans across backs, chests and arms meditate on visibility, drawing attention to the embodiment and representation of the Black male body without rendering it singular or fixed. The metallic clang of barbells is punctuated with guttural sounds of exertion set against the ambience of the streets. Breath and muscle move in syncopated sonic choreography, and the men’s commitment to the ritual of maintaining the body is evident. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2026 - Forum Expanded - International Premiere

Synopsis

In this South Asian team sport, players repeating ‘kabaddi’ frantically cross boundaries on the court, tagging their opponents before returning. Ka ba Ddi is a high-energy team sport originating in South Asia played between two teams of seven players on a divided court. Players respond to boundaries, bodies think in relation to each other: lines of the court, focal points for players movements. Stretching back into their own territory; a vocabulary of movement that make connections with what is happening in the wider world, in domestic UK politics but also internationally. Territory has never felt so terrifying or so contested. The rules based order of Kabaddi stipulates that one team sends a single "raider" into the opposing team's territory, the aim is to tag/touch as many players as possible from the opposing side before retreating back into your own territory. Rules govern our bodies, we live in a series of ever increasing courts both materially and ideologically. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Short Film Competition

Synopsis

An evocative virtual reality experience from director Sacha Wares with music by Dan Jones and Evelyn Glennie. For the first seven years of her childhood, American artist Judith Scott shared a bed with the twin sister who adored her. One night, everything changed. This beautiful multi-sensory biography transports you to a sun-kissed 1950’s family home in Ohio, placing you at the heart of Judith Scott’s devastating story of love and separation. Official Selection CPH:DOX 2026

Synopsis

A vampiric trio move through sacred ruins, where bodies blur, relics stir, and both life and death appear in shadow. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2025 - World premiere Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2026

Synopsis

Beneath the polished floors of the Triennale di Milano, the ground begins to stir - an awakening of memory and matter. Plant, prion, soil, microbe… a fissure appears, first noticed by the cleaners. What starts as a subtle disturbance evolves into SPIKA, a strange ecological disruption that hungers for further disruption. This short film imagines a world overtaken by symbiotic life- plants and proliferating microbes that spread across the city, energised by SPIKA. The sculpture reimagines urban sustainability through Microbial Hydroponics (Mi-Hy), integrating hydroponics with microbial fuel cells to promote symbiotic relationships between plants and microbes. SPIKA becomes a prosthetic rhizosphere, transforming household waste into natural fertilisers. It challenges architecture’s legacy of ecological disruption and proposes an alternative: a closed-loop, living architectural core that turns buildings into metabolic hubs for the city. The film was created using 16mm celluloid, various film stocks, and plant-based hand development rituals to evoke the organic essence of SPIKA. It responds to the sculptural installation exhibited at the 2025 Triennale di Milano, and draws on a fictional conceit developed by the Experimental Architecture Group. Official Selection Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival 2025

Synopsis

Forensic science is scrutinised when a fictional investigator questions procedures and motivations in the politicised 1999 bombings of flats in Russia. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2025

Synopsis

Locked and loaded with film tape, a man explores an abandoned rave house, once known as The Warehouse, that was once the beating heart of the South West’s clubland.

Synopsis

A girl, Ping, faces conflict with her girlfriend Lala's homophobic and aggressive father. As tensions escalate, Ping is forced to take action to save herself and kills him. Then she makes him into a cake. This act becomes a ritual of transformation - a severing of ties, a step into anew phase of life. Official Selection London International Animation Festival 2025 Official Selection London Short Film Festival 2026 Official Selection Kaboom Animation Festival 2026

Synopsis

A contemporary ghost story that resurrects legendary British comedian Tommy Cooper, who famously died mid-performance in 1984. Blending machine learning, VHS footage, archival materials, and a trained impersonator, the film follows Phil, an unemployed magician trapped in the decaying home of the director’s late schizophrenic uncle. Phil’s hallucinatory act navigates the alienation of late capitalism, touching on social class, identity, mental health, and delusion—all punctuated by his trademark jokes and failed magic tricks. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2026