Semangat (Spirit)

Director: Lilyana Torres, Carlos Morales

Year: 2027

When filmmaker Lilyana Torres learns that her grandfather hired hitmen to nearly kill her father, she sets out to confront him in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and force an apology. The attack left her father with cracked ribs, a broken nose, and loose teeth. Its architect was his own father. Like much of Lilyana’s family history, nobody spoke of it again. So she begins planning his murder. In darkly comic fictional reenactments, Lilyana trains for revenge with the help of a retired detective. Some methods are efficient, others grotesque, all adapted to an ageing man. Against these fantasies, family home videos reveal a more unsettling contradiction: birthday parties, tenderness, and a grandfather who once appeared devoted to his son and granddaughter. How could a parent put their own child’s life at risk? Before Lilyana reaches him, her grandfather dies peacefully in bed, taking every explanation with him. Determined to complete the film, she casts an actor named Perfecto to play him and kills him on screen, again and again. But the performance exposes the question she cannot escape: what does revenge actually resolve? Lilyana confronts the possibility that the violence she wants to destroy may already live inside her.

Director: Jeevan Singh

Year: 2026

A coming-of-age drama exploring identity, faith and belonging. What begins as an internal conflict develops into an emotional journey that forces the central character to confront what his faith, family and heritage truly mean to him. Inspired by true events, Life Is 4½ Metres is an intimate and heartfelt story about growing up, the bonds between father and son, and the quiet struggles that can shape a young person’s identity. At its heart, the film explores how the traditions we sometimes question can ultimately become the things that connect us most deeply to who we are.

Director: Mandy Williams

Year: 2023

A six-minute experimental film about the climate crisis with a narration arranged in seven sequences. The themes of coastal erosion and rising sea levels emerge and submerge throughout the film, drawing on history as well as possible futures. The video's exploration of coastal erosion and the role of fossil fuels begins from a local south coast perspective, while highlighting the global crisis.