Being John Smith
United Kingdom, documentary, 2024, 26’
Director: John Smith
Screenplay: John Smith
Reflecting on his life and career by way of his generic name, the English avant-garde legend grapples with mortality and legacy through a spare, wry deployment of text, image and voice—a confessional journey revealing just how important a name can be.
City of Poets
Netherlands, documentary, 2024, 21’
Director: Sara Rajaei
Screenplay: Sara Rajaei
Cinematography: Mohammad Mahdi Yaghobian
Editing: Nathalie Alonso Casale
Sound: Milan Gataric
Music: Milan Gataric
Production: Near/By Film
Through a collage of personal archive footage, the history of a metaphorical city emerges where every street is named after a poet. When the system changes and war begins, the names are replaced and refugees arrive, leaving residents lost amid the memories of forgotten poets.
Man Number 4
United Kingdom, documentary, experimental, 2024, 9’
Director: Miranda Pennell
Screenplay: Miranda Pennell
Editing: Miranda Pennell
Sound: Philippe Ciompi
Cast: John Smith (voice)
Production: Miranda Pennell
A close examination of a single digital photograph taken on 12 December 2023 in Beit Lahia, Gaza. Beginning with blown-up pixels and slowly pulling back, forms emerge—people, weapons, buildings—provoking questions about what it means to be an onlooker.
L’Avance
France, fiction, 2024, 18’
Director: Djiby Kebe
Screenplay: Djiby Kebe, Ahmadou Bamba-Thiam
Cinematography: Tara-Jay Bangalter
Music: Lyele
Cast: Saabo Balde, Julia Faure, Juliette Speck, Djibi Diakhaté
Production: Chérubins Productions
Aliou, a rising student at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, sells a painting of his late mother to a renowned collector for 5,000 euros. Delivering it becomes a long journey weighed down by the contradictory demands on a young artist of African descent: to succeed without betraying his roots.
The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing
United Kingdom, documentary, 2024, 17’
Director: Theo Panagopoulos
Sound: Hannan Jones
Music: Alexandra Katerinopoulou
Production: Scottish Documentary Institute
A Scotland-based filmmaker of Palestinian descent unearths a rarely-seen Scottish archive of Palestinian wildflowers – silent 16mm films shot by a missionary in the 1930s–40s – and reclaims the footage. A tender essay on image-making as both testimony and violence.