The Watergate Caper: Richard Nixon and the Death of the American Dream

Director: Shane O'Sullivan

Year: 2000

The story is set in London in the present day. A young Chinese girl (Lili) runs away from an arranged marriage in Hong Kong and comes to London in search of rock-idol Bobby Gillespie. She finds his flat but he's recently moved. An Indian commercials director (Jamal) answers the door and seeing the lost look on Lili's face, invites her up for coffee. He takes a liking to Lili, casting her in a tampon commercial and adopts her as his muse - until his Muslim family finds out. Drawn in by the music and fashion of London's Asian subculture but with no experience of living abroad, Lili stumbles from one cultural faux pas to another until a young, inexperienced Japanese detective living in London (Go) is assigned by her father to track her down. Her short attention-span and inability to stick to one style or boyfriend for more than ten minutes leave him weaving in and out of London's East End searching for clues. The longer he looks for her, the more he falls under her spell until finally, he must choose between turning her in and keeping his business or falling in love. Ravi, the middle-aged owner of a popular Muslim tea-shop in the area, becomes a central figure in bringing the lost souls together in this deadpan detective comedy celebrating the youthful energy of multi-cultural London.

Director: Hasan Kattan

Year: 2026

For 14 years, Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi have journeyed together through war and storytelling. Their bond was forged on the frontlines of revolution where their cameras recorded terror and hope, laughter and heartbreak – moments that defined a generation. Years later, their story takes an unexpected turn. Confined inside a UK asylum hotel, Hasan and Fadi document a new chapter shaped not by bombs, but by waiting, bureaucracy, and exile. Amid rising anti-refugee hostility, they turn the camera inward exploring friendship and displacement and how filming itself becomes an act of survival when the future is so uncertain. Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam 2026 - World premiere

Director: Hannah Wu

Year: 2025

"A journey through the pages of my mother’s old Chinese-English dictionary, featuring tigers, socialists and roundabouts." An experimental animated short about language, meaning and moving through the world (one drawing at a time). Combining ink drawings on paper with direct animation on 35mm film, various definitions of the Chinese character for ‘walk’ take on meanings in turn literal, historical, personal and abstract.