Russia/Chechnya : Voices of Dissent

Director: Carlo Nero

Year: 2006

An Englishwoman wakes up in the middle of the night in a small hotel in a poverty-stricken foreign city where a civil war is being fought. She has a fever, and tries to remember why she has returned to this frightening country. During the night, she starts to retrace her happy childhood and her relatively happy adult existence as a kind, hard-working professional woman who loved her family and friends, appreciated music and the arts. But she is also retracing the unusual events that have led her to this place, and how the people she has met on that journey began to change her understanding of the world. Now, in this lonely hotel room she is struggling with a new and unpleasant perception of herself and her life. As the dawn breaks, her fever subsides and with it comes an honest appraisal of herself. With gut-wrenching clarity she has come to understand her responsibility for the violence of poverty and exploitation she sees in the world.

Director: Julian Konczak

Year: 2025

Following a pilgrimage through the sacred sounds of India – a land of many faiths, including Vedanta, Islam and Buddhism. Using striking visual material accompanied by an evocative, multi-layered soundtrack, the audience is taken on a unique sonic journey through the sacred sound practices of many of the world’s key religions. A combination of interviews, performances, and natural sounds creates a rich, immersive cinematic experience. With an intimate, direct camera style, viewers can get close to the many spiritual practitioners, musicians, and meditation teachers who form the fabric of the journey. Bubbling hot springs, subtropical nocturnal symphonies of insects, and harsh, frozen mountain winds combine with mantra chanting, classical Hindustani music, and the dynamic temple sounds of drums and trumpets. This audiovisual tone poem invites you to experience heightened sensory awareness and the transformative, healing power of sound.

Director: Eamon Bourke

Year: 2026

Filmmaker Eamon Bourke lost his mother, Sue, when he was three and has no memory of her. When his father decides to sell the remote Lake District home where she died, Eamon returns with his camera to document the house and its clearing. Among Sue’s belongings - diaries, poems, photographs and tapes - he discovers a box of damaged cassette recordings. After painstakingly repairing them, he uncovers something extraordinary: his mother’s voice. Through these intimate audio diaries, Sue speaks candidly about motherhood, sings to her children, and captures fleeting family moments Eamon never knew. One final tape records her describing the onset of hepatitis, days before she fell into a coma and died in 1983. Another, more haunting still, features three-year-old Eamon calling out to his unconscious mother in hospital, in a desperate attempt to bring her back. As Eamon pieces together this archive, he confronts the enduring impact of early loss, speaking with his father and sisters while retracing the emotional landscape of his childhood. Set against the vast beauty of the Lake District, a deeply personal exploration of grief, memory and love - an attempt to recover what was lost, and to finally say goodbye.