Hanging Gardens

Director: Ahmed Yassin Al-Daradji

Year: 2027

After accidentally insulting President Saddam Hussein on stage during a performance of Hamlet, theatre actor Salem faces a looming death sentence. To escape the execution, he continues playing the role of Hamlet, feigning insanity, and is sent to a psychiatric hospital, where his condition awaits evaluation. Trapped in a facility filled with the lost souls of Saddam's regime, Salem must navigate a precarious balance between his will to survive and the fear of genuinely losing his mind. Salem catches the attention of the hospital director, who becomes increasingly wary of his growing influence over the patients. But, he finds an unexpected ally in Adyan, a young, ambitious, and deeply committed psychiatrist tasked with assessing his condition. Adyan, however, faces a moral dilemma: remain loyal to her duty, deliver an honest verdict and secure her promotion, or risk everything to save Salem. They defy institutional norms and stage a play with the patients. What begins as a simple exercise of Salem's diagnosis and patients' therapy becomes an unexpected triumph, drawing so much attention that it reaches Saddam Hussein, who grants Salem a presidential certificate of appreciation, officially declaring him mad.

Director: Matt Nicholas

Year: 2026

Dr. Atkins, the hospital’s expert in removing “foreign objects”, finds himself in a bind when he forgets to get a present for his big wedding anniversary. When the perfect gift presents itself inside a patient, will he be willing to risk it all for love?

Director: David Skynner

Year: 2026

A 50-year-old widow, Emma, has lost everything since her husband, Sam, was killed and her final refuge, a holiday lodge in Cornwall is due to be repossessed too. She is harried by debt collectors, seeing things, agoraphobic, and convinced she is losing her mind. Desperate, she calls for help from any God listening, and in a dark wood, something hears her. Her dead husband is haunting her and appears and talks to her in the dead of night. Emma’s starts to experience dreams of a magical wood and strange figures of butterflies and men made from twigs start to appear in and around the lodge. Sam is advising that she must let go of the old, in order let a new life in, but this terrifies Emma. Emma starts to see moments from her future; each bleaker than the last and fears for her own survival. With eviction imminent, Emma agrees she must surrender, whatever that might mean. A creature made from forest appears and helps her to escape. She follows it into the magical wood from her dreams and is baptised in a beautiful river. When she emerges, she is reborn and ready for her new life.