Can I Hug You?

Director: Elahe Esmaili

Year: 2024

Against the backdrop of the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement in Iran, filmmaker Elahe Esmaili is helping her parents to pack up the family home. As the boxes stack up, discussions flare between the generations: Elahe does not wear the hijab, embodying the courage of her generation’s struggles. But can changing a society be as simple as moving house? Official Selection Visions du Réel 2024 - World premiere Official Selection Sheffield DocFest 2024 Official Selection Telluride Film Festival 2024 Official Selection Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2025

Director: Julia Fry

Year:

Using ideas from Carl Jung - exploring and accepting the inner world, Carolyn Abbate - analysis of dissonance to find the narrative voice - and Hilde Lindemann Nelson - using narrative to repair damaged identity, I filmed my process of creating puppets and recorded some of the thoughts that arose as I made them. I utilised emergent practice in the filmmaking, which meant letting go of preconceived ideas to let narrative arise in the moment. I wanted my puppets to unite, rather than fight in the traditional Punch and Judy manner.

Director: Virginia Heath

Year: 2027

A feminist musical documentary, an ethical telling of a true-crime story. An anti-true-crime documentary, the film is a bold, cinematic portrayal of a unique Irish singer-song writer Keeley Moss. Every song Keeley writes and performs celebrates the life of, and demands justice for, Inga Maria Hauser, a young German backpacker, sexually assaulted and murdered in Northern Ireland in 1988. As the facts of Inga Maria's case migrate from Keeley's meticulous blog into her songs, the Director ‘investigates the investigator’ to capture Keeley's fever dream of the intense week of adolescent freedom Inga Maria enjoyed, before she became a 'murder victim'. Through the prism of the Director's feminist gaze, and the actress-cast-as-Inga, Keeley and Inga Maria's personas blur, a rejection of the murder porn audiences are so fatigued by. Through the empathy the Director clearly feels for Keeley’s difficult adolescence and her subsequent obsessive mission, we feel the devastating impact Inga Maria's violent death had on two generations of her family and their anguish at the continuing lack of justice. Perhaps most remarkable of all, we discover the unexpected and profound gifts that Inga Maria has rewarded Keeley's dedication with.