2024

Filmmaker Elahe Esmaili helps pack up their parents’ house. As the boxes pile up, intergenerational discussions also flare up: Elahe does not wear a hijab, embodying the courage of her generation. Esmaili longs for a deep, existential shift, driven by the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement that pervaded Iran.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an independent investigator or Private Ear. His investigations focus on sound and linguistics. This 45-minute video essay plunges viewers into a chilling chronicle of daily life transformed by the weaponisation of the air, where the terror of repeated incursions becomes a disconcertingly banal backdrop.

Branden, the graduation film by Brussels’ first city poet Lisette Ma Neza, is a collective poem about the fire and smoke of armed conflicts, which turn people into refugees. A poetic conversation with five different women about leaving the place where they were born, about never really arriving. An ode to the displaced woman.

Lamees Almakkawy’s films can be found at the intersection of documentary and fiction, with a particular focus on performance and identity. Dancing Palestine is centered around the dabke, a Palestinian folk dance.

A slideshow records the infatuation of two trans men over a one-year period. The creators collect photographs of real events: their first kiss, meeting each other's parents, a staged wedding, a medical procedure, and the accompanying recovery. The images are, at times, reminiscent of Nan Goldin’s work: raw, fragile, and exceptionally intimate.