Sleeping Close (Italy) by Giulio Pereno

Fragments of the lives of fourteen women form a unique composition in which reality and symbolism alternate, an echo of all other possible lives.

In human adversities, there are 'topoi' that recur like variations of the same melody. Growth, pain, sacrifice, choices and, above all, love, are present in everyone's existence in a thousand forms, similar and yet unique. With the fragments of many lives, it would be possible to compose a single one in which to find the echo of all the others. In the chapters of 'Sleeping close', a woman experiences the stages of her own evolution through the changing features of fourteen female protagonists. She dies a symbolic death, only to be resurrected at the end with all those women who have gone before. 

Running time: 01:49:00

Cataract (Denmark) by Jonatan Egholm Keis

A desperate woman robs a gas station with her nearly-blind younger brother and catapults herself into deep water in order to pay for his cataract surgery. Nina has been clean for a year and wants to make amends to her sister Lisa, who has always been by her side. Lisa lives alone with her daughter, after having been left by her partner. Nina wants to apologise for endangering the child, but Lisa struggles to forgive her. What we come to find out that the daughter is actually Nina's and the danger an unspeakable crime.

Running time: 00:09:01

Surrender (United States) by Jess Dang

A recovering compulsive gambler responds to her past trauma after 100 days of abstinence.

Running time: 00:19:33

The Stone Putter (Sweden) by Nils Agdler

The Stone Putter is a cinematic portrait of a serious and physically strong middle-aged woman, deeply focused on throwing stones in a desert-like landscape. How did she get here? What do the stones symbolize – as alien in the landscape as the woman herself in her black dress? Here you can sense a story about both sadness, integrity and stubbornness, about intersecting paths and about continuing forward without bowing to others. Both the stones and the woman are filmed from a variety of angles, giving the viewer an opportunity to experience the event from different perspectives, and for a moment possibly drop the anthropocentric gaze.

Running time: 00:08:00

The Station (Brazil) by Cristina Maure

The Station tells the story of Sofia, a mysterious woman who arrives walking to "Vila Clemência" in the hope of catching a train, because the train she was on broke down.  As the train does not appear, Sofia has no other choice that stay at the boarding house that the National Railway Company offers to passengers that casually arrive there. Thus begins his saga that consists of trying to leave that place to go after her husband, who abandoned her for another woman. We see her conviviality with the other passengers confinated there, some of them for a long time. Each one, deals with their destiny waiting for a train that can pass several times a year or can go more than 10 years without passing. The film shows how even planning each step, human being can end up walking paths never before imagined, because we really don’t have control of anything.

Running time: 01:43:51

Mind Control Attempt No. 1 (Canada) by Erin Audley

Mind Control Attempt No. 1 is an experimental short film challenging bodily control, layering images and sounds to evoke urgency and tedium, ultimately immersing viewers in the visceral experience of needing to use the bathroom.

Running time: 00:02:48