Tripoli Cancelled

Director: Naeem Mohaiemen

Year: 2016

A photograph circulates, showing five men staring out of a window. Actually, four look out; the last man breaks protocol and looks at the camera. The stage is a bombed out building. All five men wear military fatigues. The colour must have been olive green. The photograph, snapped by a Magnum freelancer, is a glowing artefact. Alongside it is a blurry newspaper photograph showing the Dhaka funeral of two men at the national Baitul Mokarram mosque: fighters for Palestine. The two photographs are evidence of the presence of Bangladeshi guerrillas in Lebanon in the 1970s, joining and fighting for the PLO in its struggle first for domination, then only survival. Official Selection Berlinale 2016 - Forum Expanded

Director: Stephanie Zari

Year: 2026

With the clock ticking on her trip to the amusements, a downbeat ten year old girl needs to act quickly to make her funds count and win her dream prize, but she hasn’t contended with the self-appointed king of the amusements and his attempts to thwart her simple plan.

Director: Blaize Mott

Year: 2026

Donald, a lonely young man desperate to improve his dating life, hires a manipulative pick-up artist, Charles, to teach him how to meet and attract women. Over the course of one night in London, Donald is pulled into a world of performance, pressure and control, where confidence becomes coercion and desire begins to blur with power. What began as a harmless lesson on love transforms into a night where the methods he is instructed to use to achieve his goal are far darker than he could have ever imagined.