The Flesh of Language

Director: Karimah Ashadu

Year: 2025

With no single protagonist or linear narrative, the film immerses the viewer in a spectacle of strength through an intimate portrait of bodybuilders in the slums of Lagos. Inflated muscles, bulging veins and luminous skin glistening with sweat fill the screen. Shot almost entirely in close-ups, the camera hovers so near its subjects, moving softly like breath on skin, that at times figures become blurred, abstracted forms. Karimah Ashadu’s slow, measured pans across backs, chests and arms meditate on visibility, drawing attention to the embodiment and representation of the Black male body without rendering it singular or fixed. The metallic clang of barbells is punctuated with guttural sounds of exertion set against the ambience of the streets. Breath and muscle move in syncopated sonic choreography, and the men’s commitment to the ritual of maintaining the body is evident. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2026 - Forum Expanded - International Premiere

Director: Burak Çevik

Year: 2026

At midnight, two lab assistants study an unknown substance using machines and procedures that are unclear to us. They pursue knowledge through the strict logic of the laboratory. As exhaustion settles in, one of the assistants brews Turkish coffee for the other, and the night shifts. The process becomes a fortune-telling, and the scientific gaze gives way to intuition. Moving from analysis to foresight, the two women imagine another method of knowing, a space where rational inquiry and intuitive perception coexist. Official Selection Berlin International Film Festival 2026 - Forum Expanded - World premiere

Director: James Hosken, Katie Eggleston, Lauren Fitzpatrick, Mimi Harmer

Year: 2025

An interactive stationary VR experience that invites quiet reflection on nature, slowness, and change. It offers a moment to sit, observe, and influence the atmosphere in a peaceful, dreamlike virtual world. The experience places the audience on a hilltop, looking across at a lone tree gently swaying in the breeze on another hill. The audience can move their hands gently to influence the wind. The seasons cycle over the course of ten minutes, the visual and audio aesthetics shifting with the changes. The piece emerged from thinking about how nature changes quietly around us, often unnoticed. We invite the audience to consider how small gestures and moments connect us to the world’s larger cycles, and how ephemeral and fragile those cycles are.