Triangle Program: Longing For Stability

Program curated in collaboration by Vienna Shorts, DokuFest - International Documentary and Short Film Festival and Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF). An initiative designed by our partener festival Vienna Shorts, this special triangle program brings together three perspectives on the idea of “longing for stability” as understood and translated into curatorial approaches by the programmers of three festivals: Vienna Shorts, DokuFest and BIEFF. In a world where political landscapes are ever-changing, the quest for stability remains a universal aspiration. And so the question arises - what do we want from life as individuals, but also as communities and as a society at large? Across the short films included in these three programs, longing is a driving force. A partly melancholic, partly intense feeling, a longing for a different reality and the desire for more: more peace, more security, more order and beauty, more love, more paradise, more stability. The longing to belong, to feel safe, to not be afraid of the next step, the next day or the next election. A true collaborative project designed to meet audiences from several cultural, political and geographic territories, our triangle program was already shown in Vienna in the context of Vienna Shorts and in Prizren in the context of DokuFest and, finally, now in Bucharest at this year’s edition of BIEFF.

Sections

My Grandfather – A Desk For Each Pupil

Hena Krasniqi | Duration 6’

In the 90s, when the Serbian government forcibly removed students for opposing the curriculum, the director’s grandfather and other volunteers built new desks, ensuring education in Kosovo.

Hope Hotel Phantom

Bojan Stojcic

In November 1995, the leaders of Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia & Serbia met in Dayton (Ohio) to broker a peace agreement that would end four violent years of war in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Negotiated at the Hope Hotel located on the grounds of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Dayton Agreement locked Bosnia & Herzegovina into a simulacra of democracy, through the proxy of a site that was a simulacra in itself: a military base on the other side of the world, an intimidation to the signing parties.

Rabbitland

Ana and Nikola Majdak | Duration 7’

Brainless Rabbits live in Rabbitland, a territory advertised as a seemingly perfect world that bears an unsettling resemblance to the landscapes of war zones, ghettos and slums. Their everyday life seems completely ordered and fulfilled. However, the Rabbits spend their days voting again and again, participating in a simulacrum of an electoral process that takes place once a day. Is this an exemplary free and democratic society or the worst of dystopias painted in vivid shades of pink?

Letters from Silivri

Adrian Figueroa | Duration 16'

Letters from Silivri draws on letters of the Turkish philanthropist and public intellectual Osman Kavala to document a timeline of his imprisonment. By separating voice and image, the film intends to create an echo chamber that allows audiences to listen more carefully to Kavalas letters, while at the same time placing his words in context of the civil society.

Without Kosovo

Dea Gjinovci | Duration 22'

The director and his father take the road to retrace the latter's exile as a 19-year-old refugee from Kosovo in 1968.

Saving Some Random Insignificant Stories

Anna Vasof | Duration 14’

A seemingly simple but multilayered work about memory, loss and how we deal with the past. The starting point was a flood, which left her parents’ house a muddy mess; two days later the director was able to enter and survey the damage, examining and musing over the water-damaged fragments of a life.

OCCUPIED – Lobau stays!

Matteo Molina | Duration 29' 52"

This 30-min cinéma vérité documentary is about climate activists that occupied several construction sites in Vienna, Austria for almost a year to stop the construction of two highways, crossing the nature reserve Lobau. The documentary gives an unfiltered view on what the daily life of an activist looks like and what few individuals can achieve in an extreme situation like an occupation.

Those Next to Us

Bernhard Hetzenauer | Duration 30'

On July 22nd, 2017 in San Antonio, Texas, the police found a truck in a Walmart parking lot with 39 illegal immigrants. A tractor had been transporting them undetected from the border town of Laredo to San Antonio. Because the cooling system inside the truck failed, resulting in extreme heat, eight people died during the transport, and two others succumbed to dehydration in the hospital. Those Next to Us traces the journey of one of the survivors from the transport, Germán López Rosales, from Mexico to San Antonio.

Surfacing Images

Tara Najd Ahmadi | Duration 5'

Surfacing Images is an experimental documentary about film preservation and the destiny of images that are left on their own. Through a phone conversation between a women’s rights activist and a former political prisoner, as they discuss from the works of filmmakers Dušan Makavejev and Bojana Marijan to the films of the 1979 Revolution in Iran and the videos of the Iranian Women’s uprising, this film portrays the irresistible urge of images to resurface and be seen.

Water and Salt

Luisa Mello | Duration 10’ 35’’

During the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, a woman is floating in waters far from home. When everything seems calm, a wave hits and carries her to the depths of her being. Water and Salt is a journey through the consciousness of someone whose country is under threat from a fascist government.

Démontable

Douwe Dijkstra | Duration 12'

War is waged on the kitchen table while a man drinks coffee. The world's on fire. Helicopters shred his newspaper, a drone fires at a plate of broccoli. Démontable is a playful film on the absurd relationship between daily life and global news.

Sensitive Content

Narges Kalhor | Duration 8'

After the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, massive women’s rights and anti-authoritarian protests erupted across Iran, which were violently suppressed by the regime in Tehran. Using social media sensitivity filters as a central metaphor, Sensitive Content explores how one witnesses and documents both historical events and dissent in the modern age.

I Signed the Petition

Mahdi Fleifel | Duration 11'

Immediately after a Palestinian man signs an online petition, he is thrown into a panic-inducing spiral of self-doubt. Over the course of a conversation with an understanding friend, he analyzes, deconstructs and interprets the meaning of his choice to publicly support the cultural boycott of Israel.

Flores del otro patio

Jorge Cadena | Duration 15' 20"

In northern Colombia, a group of queer activists use their extravagance to denounce the disastrous exploitation of the largest coal mine in Colombia through performative actions. Flores del otro patio is a film-manifesto that illustrates the connection between queerness and nature, as well as how empowerment and reclaiming one’s identity can be fertile tools in rescuing a nature plundered by the exploits of capitalism.

Inflorescence

Nicolaas Schmidt | Duration 8'

Autumn again on planet Earth. A couple of rosy rose petals in eternal solidarity enduring great trouble from a heavy thunderstorm. A romantic conceptualism bedtime fable of resistance & redundancy, or the awkward ambivalence of truth, dream, life and love.