Professional Competition 12

1. Boudoir Doll / 闺房娃娃 14:20 China 2025
   

   Directed:	Dandan Luo
   Screenplay:	Dandan Luo
   Production:	Dandan Luo

   
   

   A beautiful lady indulges in the creation of puppets. She often felt that there were hands following her and spying on her in the dark. She did not resist, and she thought she could always coexist with them. Until one night, the hands put ropes on the sleeping heroine, and she became a living puppet. When she woke up, she had entered the world of the magic hand, where a stage play was being staged. In the play, a lady gradually became trapped in a single and repetitive life from freedom and happiness. Outside the stage, the heroine was trapped by countless ropes and was forced to watch this dark and hopeless play. The fire of desire to escape burned blazingly in the hearts of the two people inside and outside the theater. Taking advantage of the night again, they took all possible actions to fight for their own freedom.

2. Time tries all 04:00 2025
   
   

   On their wedding anniversary, the wife, who is a fitness coach, received a handwritten divorce agreement from her husband who left without saying goodbye

3. Mealitancy / Plat de résistance 12:04 2024
   

   Directed:	Marie Royer, Zinia Scorier
   Screenplay:	Marie Royer, Zinia Scorier
   Production:	William Henne, Delphine Renard, Etienne Jaxel-Truer
   Dialogue Language:	French

   
   

   Through audio recordings taken in the field and poetic moving images, the film portrays activists who use food as a tool in their anti-consumerist struggle.

4. I slowly fade away -alone- *in your hug / αργοσβήνω -μόνη- *στην αγκαλιά σου 07:10 Greece 2025
   

   Directed:	Vanessa Ferle
   Screenplay:	Vanessa Ferle
   Production:	Vanessa Ferle
   Dialogue Language:	Greek (Modern)

   
   

   A woman confesses her story of emotional abuse at an old film camera. Marble visual memories and repetitive dialogues with her ex-husband describe her love affair with a manipulative man who refused to grow up. A man who shouted out how much he adored her, but who felt like a child and would remain a man-child at all costs. Even if he had to end her life. "I am a child, it is not my fault, I love you, I can't do otherwise," he told her, every time he stabbed her with his words.

5. The Applicant / El aspirante 15:00 2025
   

   Directed:	Sam Orti
   Screenplay:	Flora Cuevas
   Production:	Sam Orti
   Dialogue Language:	No Dialogue

   
   

   This is the routine story of a civil servant, who lives and works in a tiny, gray, depressing room, whose mission in life is to reject applications submitted to his window, while constantly fearing that someone will show up with all the forms in order, and that he will have to use his green stamp of approval.

6. The Phoenix 04:05 France 2025
   

   Directed:

   Mary Yanko, Marlène Ciampossin

7. Have I Swallowed Your Dreams 06:04 Canada 2024
   

   Directed:	Clara Chan
   Screenplay:	Clara Chan
   Production:	Clara Chan
   Dialogue Language:	English

   
   

   A poetic conversation between an immigrant daughter and her mother about sacrifices and dreams.

8. SuperSchoolers 2. A healthy mind / SuperEscolares 2. Una mente sana. 05:12 Spain 2025
   

   Directed:	Íñigo Echávarri
   Screenplay:	Íñigo Echávarri, Raquel Mateos
   Production:	Íñigo Echávarri
   Dialogue Language:	Spanish

   
   

   Amaya spends a day of play with her friend Telmo, who learns that the mind is like a motor that needs energy to keep moving forward. With tenderness and deep complicity, she shows him that talking, playing, and asking for help are essential keys to taking care of mental health.

9. Buggie 07:54 2025
   

   Directed:	Ellen Jung
   Screenplay:	Ellen Jung
   Production:	Ellen Jung, Citlali Vazquez Bocanegra

   
   

   A puppy gets adopted by her human and returns to the animal shelter as a dog.

10. Dull Spots of Greenish Colours 10:32 Russian Federation 2024
    

    Directed:	Sasha Svirsky
    Production:	Karsten Matern
    Dialogue Language:	English

    
    

    War for our attention has suddenly become an actual war. Information technologies appear not just as mere means for somebody’s ends but as something having their agency, as one of the acting forces rendering possible a horrific event, which is very hard to accept and almost impossible to comprehend. We have no control over it and are doomed to scroll through the newsfeed.

11. Old house Chüechlihus 06:40 2025
    

    Directed:	Marion Lara Nyffenegger
    Screenplay:	Kim Schmid
    Production:	Marion Nyffenegger
    Dialogue Language:	Swiss German

    
    

    The animated film invites viewers on a cinematic journey through time, telling the nearly 500-year history of the Emmental Regional Museum and its former inhabitants.

12. The Doll 9831 11:17 France 2025
    

    Directed:	Ali ZAREGHANATNOWI
    Screenplay:	Ali ZAREGHANATNOWI
    Production:	Ali ZAREGHANATNOWI
    Dialogue Language:	French

    
    

    After the imprisonment of her father, a young girl retreats into a world of handcrafted dolls made by her mother. Through imaginative play, she reconstructs fragments of memory and grapples with deep emotions. These silent dolls become vessels for her inner life — witnessing her struggle with grief, resilience, and the quiet hope of understanding.

13. Georgy Sviridov. The Winter / Георгий Свиридов. Зима 02:49 2023
    

    Directed:	Igor Volchek
    Screenplay:	Irina Margolina
    Production:	Irina Margolina

    
    

    Winter has come to the city. And she came in the form of a Cold Noir Dame…

14. LEVI 07:40 Greece 2025
    

    Directed:	Isidoros Plakotaris
    Screenplay:	Isidoros Plakotaris
    Production:	Isidoros Plakotaris

    
    

    Levi is inspired by the contrast between nature and technological reality, between the conscious and structured, and the unconscious. It is both a digital experiment and a broader visual and philosophical inquiry into the nature of form, movement, environment and communication - or its absence - between different modes of existence. The narrative unfolds within a dual world: beneath the surface of the water lies a realm of organic forms generated algorithmically, while above it, a strictly standardized, mechanical reality prevails. A world of abandoned machines, operating incessantly without purpose, in the absence of their creator. These two worlds do not communicate; they are unaware of one another's existence. The protagonist of the story is a creature that emerges from the ocean depths, a parametric form that transforms, moves, and reacts to its surroundings. In this case, parameterization functions like an artificial genetic code. In the biological world, organisms evolve through chance and necessity, as analyzed by Jacques Monod in his seminal work. In contrast to this organic, mutable reality, the realm of machines offers a vision of strict geometry and order. These machines, also designed through algorithmic procedures, convey a sense of abandonment, repeating ritualistic, purposeless motions. Their image evokes questions about the absent creator and technology as a self-sustaining reality. The world of Levi does not aim to propose a utopia or a dystopia. Rather, it presents a condition of coexistence without communication. The water's surface serves as a boundary between two distinct realities, a kind of cognitive threshold. This metaphor reflects not only the tension between nature and technology, but also the broader relationships between differing subjectivities and life forms in the real world, from human – nature relations to those between human and non-human entities. The work evolves through a blend of futuristic aesthetics and organic abstraction. Influences are drawn from artists such as H.R. Giger and the dystopian landscapes of speculative cinema, as well as from biological microstructures, scientific patterns, and mathematical models. Color palettes, the motion of forms, and the interplay between sound and matter all contribute to an aesthetic experience that oscillates between the uncanny and the dreamlike. Levi is ultimately an act of reflection on natural existence and technology. Here, the art of the imaginary is not merely a narrative device but a means of philosophical exploration and inner inquiry.