Playback. Ensayo de una despedida (Playback). 2019. Argentina. Directed by Agustina Comedí. In Spanish; English subtitles. 14 min.
This fiction-documentary hybrid is a tenderly crafted love letter to a group of Argentine drag queens and trans women as they lose their community to AIDS against the backdrop of an oppressive regime. North American Premiere
Nach zwei Stunden waren zehn Minuten vergangen (After Two Hours, Ten Minutes Had Passed). 2019. Germany. Directed by Steffen Goldkamp. In German; English subtitles. 19 min.
Anonymous male inmates go about their daily routines in Germany’s Hahnöfersand juvenile detention center. Questions of time, identity, and the realities of space convene in this quietly devastating documentary from Steffen Goldkamp, who captures a simultaneous sense of inertia and restless longing as it permeates the prison. North American Premiere
Happy Valley. 2020. Hong Kong/USA. Directed by Simon Liu. 13 min.
In Hong Kong, echoes of resistance and turmoil are sensitively captured on 16mm in this poetic rumination of public spaces and everyday life in a metropolis in upheaval. World Premiere
Siyah güneş (Black Sun). 2019. Turkey/Germany. Directed by Arda Çiltepe. In Turkish; English subtitles. 20 min.
A death in the family occasions a man’s return to an Aegean Turkish island, where an impending storm puts his trip on a circuitous route. Winner of the Locarno Film Festival’s Pardino d'Oro for Best International Short Film, Arda Ciltepe’s Black Sun is a laconic, 16mm-shot road movie where fleeting encounters and the indefinite hold of grief take shape in vivid sensory detail. New York Premiere
T. 2019. USA. Directed by Keisha Rae Witherspoon. 14 min.
Keisha Rae Witherspoon’s sui generis quasi-fiction follows three grieving participants of Miami’s annual T Ball, a fabricated event where community members honor their dead by modeling wildly imaginative R.I.P. t-shirts. Combining elements of Afrofuturism and cinéma vérité, T is a powerful examination of mourning through the seen and unseen forces that influence our will to live. New York Premiere