#5 Riots Unbound


(BALi, KulturBahnhof Kassel)

Responding to the current crises means not only addressing power relations and violence, but also the forms of protest that oppose them. Short films can serve as a guide: they show us how to defend ourselves, sharpen our gaze, and make ourselves heard. The refusal to remain mere spectators of the collapse creates a tension that demands we do not look away. (Malin Kuht, Matti Ullrich, Carolina Vestena)

Man Number 4

CN: Violence Gaza, December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker.… >>>

  • Duration: 10 Min.
  • Director: Miranda Pennell

Yield Point

As the eyes seek protection and comfort, the agents of homogenization are silencing those who speak out. In this climate of radical silence and ignorance, the narrator describes the various muscles humans use to turn away from what they confront. Meanwhile, images intertwine, resembling bodies with muscles capable of stretching beyond the frame, resisting and challenging the authority of the seemingly factual and neutral narrative.

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  • Duration: 17 Min.
  • Premiere: World Premiere
    • Director: Erfan Aboutalebi

    一場沒有發生過的暴動 (A Riot That Didn’t Happen)

    After the anti-immigration riots occurred in the UK in early August 2024, the far-right called to attack immigration centres across the country. The left urged to stand up against racism. I joined and jot down what I saw with my camera and reflected from the perspective of a former activist. I recalled a counter-protest, when I was young, in 2011 in Hong Kong, against the pro-Beijing camp and right-wing opposition to the foreign domestic helpers' right of abode. That was my first arrest and a turning point in my social activism.

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    • Duration: 5 Min.
  • Premiere: World Premiere
    • Director: Chung Hong Iu

    Dirty Care

    CN: Violence In a public toilet, above the rooftops of Vienna at sunrise, in a trailer park and in a snowy landscape, we are instructed and trained to defend ourselves against a physical attack. DIRTY CARE describes the efforts that non-normative women have to make in order not to be exposed to patriarchal violence or to be capable of standing up to it. The film portrays scenes of empowerment, intimacy, resilience and companionship.

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    • Duration: 17 Min.
    • Director: Isa Schieche

    Silence of Homa

    Homa is a mythical bird that never lands on the ground. Sometimes it is portrayed as a phoenix that keeps rising from the ashes. In the midst of social unrest, the famous rapper Homa searches for her voice in the studio. She is frustrated until, in her nihilistic rage, she is visited by a strange bird-man-djinn.

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    • Duration: 17 Min.
    • Director: Azin Feizabadi