COMPETITION PROGRAMME 4 - Unscripted Lives
ARTIS LARGE HALL
Thursday, 21 August 2025
7:40 PM – 9:05 PM
85 minutes
How much can we truly say about a life? A journey through different cultures, different countries, with different experiences and stories — we try to explore the aesthetics of reality.
Tickets available HERE!
Films will be screened in the original language with English subtitles.
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MORE ABOUT THE FILMS:
African American Express
Director: Sydnie Baynes
Year: 2024
Length: 2 min 41 sec
Country: Canada
Production: Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema - Concordia University
African American Express is an abstract animation exploring the impact of consumerism in the Black community. Told in the style of Soviet Propaganda, this animated short dissects the pattern of excessive materialism and consumption prevalent within the Black population.
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By the Way
Director: Mahboobeh Kalaee and Ali Fotoohi
Year: 2025
Length: 6 min 30 sec
Country: Iran
Production: Mahboobeh Kalaee and Ali Fotoohi
When the electricity came, Majid fell in love with it. However, it wasn't the right place and time for such an amour!
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Double or Nothing
Director: Tokay Sirin
Year: 2025
Length: 9 min 40 sec
Country: Switzerland
Production: Hochschule Luzern Design Film & Kunst HSLU
Inspired by an anecdote from booming Tokyo in the 1980s, the film tells the glamorous story of the real estate shark Akio Kashiwagi. Akio's passion is illegal gambling in the underworld. An American is on his trail and tries to track down stolen money. He realizes that he can only win it back at the gambling table. The master gambler Akio accepts the challenge. However, he doesn't realize that his only really dangerous enemy in the game is himself with his insatiable greed for more and more.
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I Died in Irpin
Director: Anastiasia Falileieva
Year: 2024
Length: 11 min 22 sec
Country: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine
Production: MAUR film, Artichoke, Plastic Bag Studio
On February 24th in the morning my boyfriend and I decided to go from Kyiv to Irpin to see his parents. It is hard for me to recall the chronology of those days, my mind blocks and minimizes all the memories, erases them, but the only thing I know for sure is that every day everything rapidly became worse.
Trailer https://vimeo.com/1010184733
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Madeleine
Director: Raquel Sancinetti
Year: 2023
Length: 14 min 58 sec
Country: Canada
Production: Raquel Sancinetti
Every week, two friends born 67 years apart share their life stories in a senior home's living room. The younger friend convinces the 107-year-old lady to join her in an adventure: a road trip to the sea.
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Shadows
Director: Rand Beiruty
Year: 2024
Length: 12 min 20 sec
Country: France, Jordan
Production: Piano Sano Films, Shaghab Films
At a crowded airport, Ahlam, a 14-year old mother, is running away from Baghdad, the only place she’s ever known. As she fights the shadows lurking around her, she reflects on her journey to reclaim her life.
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Snake Soup
Director: Zack Demirtshyan
Year: 2025
Length: 7 min
Country: Armenia
Production: Bada Productions
The story of "Snake Soup" follows a soldier on his way to the battlefield, whose encounters along the way become the foundation for his blissful imagination. After a devastating explosion on the battlefield, his vivid recollections of the past intermingle and culminate in a delirious haze.
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The Graffiti
Director: Ryo Orikasa
Year: 2025
Length: 12 min 33 sec
Country: Japan
Production: The Yanai Initiative at UCLA; Waseda University
The moment the first gleam of sunshine trickled in gently stirring the folds of a shallow sleep... that was when the graffiti appeared. The film brings a prose poem by Makoto Takayanagi to life, read here by the poet himself.