PROGRAM 1 - Starlights
Thursday 26 October, 16.00-17.00
Midnight City | Midnattsbyen
Fiction, Norway, 2023, 4:56, Nordic
In the city of Tromsø at midnight, a group of friends meet for one last adventure together, before they all go their separate ways. Throughout the night they laugh, they cry, and they reminisce about the past. Additionally, upon realizing that their final chapter is now coming to an end, they also contemplate on how the future might challenge their relationship with one another. Midnight City shines a light on the chaotic yet beautiful time of innocent youth, and the fears that arise when we feel the end of it approaching.
Director, Writer, Producer: Elise Xiaqi Eriksen
Cast: Elise Xiaqi Eriksen, Martine Solhaug, Viktoria Olsen Tollefsen, Kevin Berro, Oda Madeleine Sand Aronsen, Hanna Berg
Cinematography: Bård Henrik Mathisen
Robots
Animation, Czech Republic, 2022, 9:01, International
Forbidden love, robots and an escape from a horrifying general. Mr. Robot unexpectedly and unconditionally falls in love with Mrs. Robot despite being in a bustling city of constantly hurrying robots, where the General in office has forbidden the word "love" to be pronounced even in a hushed voice. A short puppet stop-motion animation serves as a music video for a song Roboti by the Garyho Hausbót band and tells a story of love and how important it is to "stop being robots".
Director: Ondřej Brýna
Ruthless
Fiction, Ireland, 2021, 13:08, International
In 1970’s Northern Ireland, a young boy, bereft of his mother, defies his father to get the Glam Rock album he so desperately wants. It’s Belfast - early 70’s… BOOM! Something’s in the air and it’s not a bomb, it’s a revolution. Glam Rock is drowning out the noise of armored cars. As British soldiers patrol the streets, kids are glued to Top Of The Pops, entranced by Marc Bolan, the androgynous, satin-clad, glitter-god. In a high-rise flat lives a recently bereaved father and his ten-year-old son PJ, who is desperate to get his hands on the new T. Rex album Electric Warrior. Ruthless is a humorous, heartwarming story of how a prosthetic leg and a T. Rex album become the conduit for overcoming grief.
Director: Matthew McGuigan
Writer: Kate Perry
Producers: Leo McGuigan, Paul B. McGuigan
Cast: Jay Lowey, Jonathan Harden
Cinematographer: Aidan Gault
My Sisters In The Stars: The Story of Lee Yong-soo
Animation/Documentary, USA, 2023, 9:55, International
Born in Daegu, Korea in 1928 under Japanese occupation, Lee Yong-soo was taken away from her home at the age of 14 by the Imperial Japanese Army and forced into sexual slavery on the front lines of the Pacific Theater in World War II. She is now one of 11 remaining known “comfort women” survivors in Korea out of a system that claimed more than 200,000 women and girls from Japanese-occupied territories throughout Asia from 1932 to 1945. Lee Yong-soo continues to fight for justice for a crime the Japanese government continues to deny and suppress.
Director, Writer, Animator: Ian Kim
Producers: Harry Kim, Kay Park, Sophie Kim
Cast: Yong-soo Lee
The lights of Kyiv
Documentary, Switzerland, 2023, 16:30, International
Before her compatriot Serhii Tykhoniuk’s watchful camera, Lisa evokes her hometown, the loss of the keen sense of freedom that she connects with it, its smells… as many fragments of imagination that people forced into exile take with them in their suitcase.
Director, Writer, DoP, Editor: Serhii Tykhoniuk
Producer: Paolo Moretti
Composer: Mathys Nouspikel