19-year-old Tomek whiles away his lonely life by spying on his opposite neighbour Magda through binoculars. She’s an artist in her mid-thirties, and appears to have everything – not least a constant stream of men at her beck and call. But when the two finally meet, they discover that they have a lot more in common than appeared at first sight…

Noah and Madison are artists who want to change the world, and they begin their marriage as most couples do – full of hope and idealism, sure that their love will solve all their problems. But marriage isn’t all about the great times people post on social media. It’s also about the arguments over petty stuff, and the arguments over big stuff, and the longstanding resentments that no one wants to even bring up. Seven Short Films About (Our) Marriage tells a story of raw authenticity in seven episodes spanning fourteen years of their marriage as they reckon with racism, career challenges, medical issues, and more.

From the perspectives of a dozen diverse viewers, this documentary short explores the peculiar ritual of watching film. How is the medium experienced by people with sensory impairments, strong religious beliefs, or lovesickness? A story about moving images and their audience.

This collection of five short films artfully portrays desire’s ability to both empower and destroy those who encounter it. In “The Summer House,” sultry teen Jane (Talulah Riley) is courted by a former beau, Richard (Robert Pattinson), during the chaotic summer of 1969. Other tales revolve around a waitress (Amy Adams) desperate to rescue her young daughter, and a techie (James Franco) who uses gadgets to keep emotions at bay.

The film is an adaptation of the well known short story “Miss Christina” by Mircea Eliade. Moscu arrived at the mansion with his girlfriend, Sanda, the young artist Egor Paşchievici notes that her entire family worships Miss Christina, her aunt murdered in unclear circumstances when she was just 20 years old, during the riots of 1907. Egor is inexplicably drawn into a portrait of Miss Christina and begins to dream. Soon, however, the boundary between dream and reality is blurred and Miss Christina, love Egor, is brought back to life through occult rituals even by her family. When realized, however, that life is in danger Egor Sanda decides to fight the ghost.

A man and his sentient napkin friend save the world from a dark evil in a cabin deep in the Utah mountains, and also learn to love. Based on the short of a same name filmed in 2014.

A traumatic event – a sudden suicide attempt – opens a gap in the everyday life of a family of three. Their lives change fundamentally, as if they’ve been pulled into a war invisible to everyone else. The plot is limited to the most acute, a short period of time and a situation that boils down to the most important thing – to save a loved one. The film was based on the personal experience of the director, who also plays the leading role.

Four eminent Indian directors explore sex, desire and love through short films in this sequel to 2018’s Emmy-nominated ‘Lust Stories’.

An adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s classic play about human frailty, in which secret loves and long-held resentments threaten to tear a family apart. The film is a recorded performance of an award-winning production of Anton Chekhov’s classic play at the Harold Pinter theatre in London, made shortly after the show was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mother and daughter – Big Edie and Little Edie Beale – live with six cats in a crumbling house in East Hampton. Little Edie, in her 50s, who wears scarves and bright colors, sings, mugs for the camera, and talks to Al and David Maysles, the filmmakers. Big Edie, in her 70s, recites poetry, comments on her daughter’s behavior, and sings “If I Loved You” in fine voice. She talks in short sentences; her daughter in volumes. The film is episodic: friends visit, there’s a small fire in the house, Little Edie goes to the shore and swims. She talks about the Catholic Church. She’s ashamed that local authorities raided the house because of all the cats. She values being different.

This film is a glimpse into the life, love and the unconquerable spirit of the legendary Bruce Lee. From a childhod of rigorous martial arts training, Lee realizes his dream of opening his own kung-fu school in America. Before long, he is discovered by a Hollywood producer and begins a meteroric rise to fame and an all too short reign as one the most charasmatic action heroes in cinema history.

Music, art and chaos in the wild West-Berlin of the 1980s. The walled-in city became the creative melting pot for sub- and pop-culture. Before the iron curtain fell, everything and anything seemed possible. B-Movie is a fast-paced collage of mostly unreleased film and TV footage from a frenzied but creative decade, starting with punk and ending with the Love Parade, in a city where the days are short and the nights are endless. Where it was not about long-term success, but about living for the moment – the here and now.

The film is a lyrical exploration of a particular family situation and the human relationships within it. Devoid of any moral judgment, the eye of the director studies the boundaries of human behaviour and explores how far an individual can go, driven by love and the spirit of survival. Andrea Pallaoro was born in Trento but at the age of 17 moved to California to study filmmaking. His short film Wunderkammer was presented at the Sundance Film Festival. This year he brings his first feature-length film to the Orizzonti section.

Meltdown, a Zombie/Comedy utilizing a stylistic mix of Shaun of the Dead and Mad Max, is an extension of the short that won Jake Mulliken and Lucky4Productions RAW Artists’ Pittsburgh Film Maker of the Year in November, 2013. The film follows Zeke (Robert McMurray), Callie (Alicia Marie Marcucci), Les (Seth Gontkovic) and Hunter (Jake Mulliken) on the eve of Hunter’s 29th birthday as they share in a few drinks on a seemingly dull day in their hometown of Somerset. The day takes a turn for the worse as everyone they have ever known are suddenly transformed into aggressively murderous flesh eating freaks. The four comrades are forced to hack and slash their way through the reanimated corpses of their closest friends and loved ones, only to find themselves on the precipice of a post apocalyptic wasteland littered with monsters and the looming threat of their fellow survivors.

This Oscar-winning animated short film tells the story of one man’s love life as seen through the eyes of his best friend and dog, Winston, and revealed bite by bite through the meals they share.

A psychological horror film based on the short story by H.P. Lovecraft. Daniel Upton’s relationship with his friend Edward Derby is abruptly changed after Edward becomes romantically involved with Asenath Waite, a hypnotist with an odd reputation. As Edward’s behavior becomes more erratic and events unexplainable, Daniel investigates. Is it madness…or something far more terrifying?

A young woman in the Army must make tough decisions when her love for an older woman causes her to question just where she is going. Adapted from Deb Shoval’s 2011 short film of the same name.

Tell Gordon Hello was spawned off of Morgan Rodner’s love of two things: film and comics. During a writer’s block that all artists come across at some point in their lifetime, Rodner met Paul Louis Harrell while directing another short film. Rodner soon discovered that Harrell had a pastime of playing the Joker on Hollywood Blvd for tips which was the catalyst that put the wheels into motion for Tell Gordon Hello. – Written by Morgan Rodner

Visually dark and sinister short film illustrating the devil’s twisted view of humanity, our hopes and dreams, life, love and struggle together with the sacrifices we make for success.

To a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. From the melting clocks and hourglass sand, to the figure rendered in strips, to the character covered in eyeballs, the style and themes of Dalí are clearly recognizable throughout. Destino is an animated short film released in 2003 by The Walt Disney Company. Destino is unique in that its production originally began in 1945, 58 years before its eventual completion. The project was originally a collaboration between Walt Disney and Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, and features music written by Mexican songwriter Armando Dominguez and performed by Dora Luz. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows in 2003.

Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend’s new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon. Natalie, with short neat hair and a snappy, droll manner, is a plumber; she has a holiday planned in America, but little else. Last is Nicola, odd man out: a snarl, big glasses, cigarette, mussed hair, jittery fingers, bulimic, jobless, and unhappy. How they interact and play out family conflict and love is the film’s subject.

The Residue of a Relationship is a short film that looks at the leftovers of love and tries to piece together what it all means.

Paul “OtaKing” Johnson drops a real treat in the form of this “Star Wars: TIE Fighter” animated short. Complete with appropriately radical electric guitar solos and impressive attention to detail, “TIE Fighter” casts the forces of the Galactic Empire not in the role of disposable cannon fodder seen in the Star Wars films, but as near-suicidally reckless angels of death. Johnson animated this 7-minute short over the course of “four years’ worth of weekends,” and his love and attention-to-detail shows.

Donald Trump has become a beloved cult figure for many Russians. The short film uses found footage, fake news and state-controlled political programming to reveal the variety of ways Trump’s newfound Russian supporters express their devotion.

Patch Town, inspired by the award-winning short film of the same name. After years in a loving home, Jon, a toy, was forgotten, deserted and ultimately betrayed by his adoptive mother. He returns to live a sad life as a worker on the line; a life of factory work and oppression in a place where hundreds of cabbage babies are born every day. The thankless task of shucking, picking, and processing these newborns to go out into the world and to their new mothers has taken its toll on Jon. With each new birth, Jon slips deeper into sadness, lamenting the days when life was good and he was loved.

Six animated shorts eschew traditional animation by featuring supernatural elements and darker themes, such as alien snatchings, life among mannequins and a spiritual rebirth. Among the films are “Ape,” which features a couple fighting over a cooked monkey every night; “The Story of the Cat and the Moon,” which is a tale of unrequited love; and “Gentle Spirit,” which is based on a Fyodor Dostoyevsky story.

Gravity & Grace may be writer and critic Chris Kraus’ final and exuberant attempt at an artists’ career. Kraus is best known for her novels, (I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, Torpor and most recently Summer of Hate), her art criticism (Video Green, Where Art Belongs), and her work in publishing subjective narratives through Semiotext(e)’s Native Agents Series, which she founded. Prior to writing, Kraus was an artist, actress and filmmaker. She made short, experimental, low-budget films, and one feature, Gravity & Grace; its failure on the market is chronicled in detail in her book Aliens & Anorexia.

Since they were both five, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko – the ugliest girl in the village. Her love for Ryosuke is so boundless that she has her face surgically altered to suit his taste – but still he wants nothing to do with her. Ryosuke goes in for fleeting romance – for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. But when he finds out about their affair, he has Ryosuke’s little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger falls into Momoko’s hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, so she can finally have him (or almost him) for herself. And this is just the first five minutes of Lisa Takeba’s short-but-powerful feature debut. Just like in her previous short films, the director – who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game – throws a lot of genres and techniques into the mix: from science fiction to gangster films, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR