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: Andrea Suwito

Year: 2026

In the ancient Bugis way of life in Indonesia, gender non-binary ‘bissu’ were once revered spiritual leaders. Eka, one of the last remaining bissu, decides to leave behind their identity, searching for belonging in a world that insists on definitions.

Director: Nikolai Galitzine

Year: 2026

When a church burns down in a storm, a remote arctic community come together to preserve their identity as they face an uncertain future.