Impulses (2025)

Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice

A tribute to Mallarmé that not only asserts the continuing relevance of his work but also confronts its literary ambiguities with political and cinematic ambiguities of its own. In outline, the film could not be more straightforward: it offers a recitation of one of Mallarmé’s most celebrated and complex poems (it was his last published work in his own lifetime, appearing in 1897, a year before his death) and proposes a cinematic equivalent for the author’s original experiment with typography and layout by assigning the words to nine different speakers, separating each speaker from the other as she or he speaks, and using slight pauses to correspond with white spaces on the original page.

Antoine and Colette

Now aged 17, Antoine Doinel works in a factory which makes records. At a music concert, he meets a girl his own age, Colette, and falls in love with her. Later, Antoine goes to extraordinary lengths to please his new girlfriend and her parents, but Colette still only regards him as a casual friend. First segment of “Love at Twenty” (1962).

Dummy

Using a faceless doll criminal reenacts a brutal crime. But surprisingly he is not the one being judged. There seems to be an odd one out in the investigative group. The film premiered in the Berlinale Short competition programme.

Filipiñana

A film about a girl drawn to a golf course.

Genius Loci

One night, Reine, a young loner, sees among the urban chaos a moving oneness that seems alive, like some sort of guide.

Union County

Cody is a recovering opiate addict in rural Ohio, 45 days clean and enlisted in a strictly enforced drug court programme by the county government. Local sober-living facilities are full, so Cody is living in his car on the outskirts of town and working at the nearby lumber mill to save money and keep busy. But his past doesn't want to forget him.

Memories of a Past

Ramón Aguirre is an old actor from the time of the Mexican Golden Cinema, whose years of fame are completely over. Locked away in his apartment in Tacubaya, afflicted by his unfortunate physical condition, as well as by the resounding change suffered in his city, Ramón only has two hobbies left, writing his memories and regrets in a small diary, mainly that of having lost the love of his life, Silvia, and spy through a small crack on his neighbor, Pedro, who is a writer who suffers from artistic block and constant phone fights with his fiancée, and with whom Ramón has developed a peculiar bond, despite of never having exchanged any word.

Pepper

Today is a big day, it's Pepper's estranged son's birthday. He disowned her 20 years ago for becoming a drag queen. A chance meeting with Charlie, an eight-year-old boy, reminds her the importance of family and doing the right thing.

Field

An elegant, abstracted expression of provincial life in which ordinary everyday details become frozen and magnified as its young protagonists find themselves implicated in a moment of sheer madness.

American Eid

Ameena, a Muslim Pakistani immigrant, wakes up on Eid to find out that she has to go to school. Homesick and heartbroken, she goes on a mission to make Eid a public-school holiday, and in the process, reconnects with her older sister, and embraces her new home, while her new home embraces her.

Dinner Is Served

A Chinese student at an elite U.S. boarding school realizes excellence is not enough when he tries out for a leadership position no international student has ever applied for.

The Little Prince(ss)

When Gabriel, a 7-year-old Chinese kid who loves ballet, becomes friends with Rob, another Chinese kid from school, Rob’s dad gets suspicious about Gabriel's feminine behavior and decides to intervene.

Jesse James

This short film traces the moments between a neighbor’s phone call and the arrival of the police, when Jesse and his lover test the boundaries of their relationship and come face to face not just with what they are losing but with what they have already lost — when Jesse can no longer save his relationship but only himself.

A Tale of the Laundry Game

A night ride, a few beers with an old friend, memories of better times. One seemingly ordinary drive reveals the dark truths of men’s past and a sinister web of strange events.

Alaska is a Drag

Leo's dreams of being an international drag superstar are hard fought working in a fish cannery in Alaska.

Tea

While rehearsing asking out the girl of his dreams, a lonely and highly allergic Circuit-Shack employee gets stung in the throat by a hornet.

Biscut

BISCUT (HOTSTAR-DISNEY RELEASE -2022) In an Indian village ruled by muscle and money, one man sparks a revolution without guns or bullets by betting his life on just the power of democracy. Biscut is the awe-inspiring story of Bhoora, a poor Dalit (lower caste) youth condemned to a daily struggle for survival, who turns a collective curse into a formidable force for change. BISCUT is the Hindi language word for a cookie or a biscuit.

La Jetée

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

Paradise Lost?

After discovering that John Milton is buried within London's Barbican grounds, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard reimagined his epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’ as part of Doug Aitken's Station to Station project. The piece uses the architecture and atmosphere of the Barbican to update the story, which is told in three parts.

Carne

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.

The Box Man

A man reacts with violence when a pair of eyes spy on him from inside a cardboard box.

Hold Your Breath

When four friends jump in a swimming pool, their unspoken expectations start bubbling up to the surface.

The Amber Amulet

The Masked Avenger can make things happen. Though at 10 he is considered young for a justice fighter he has already proved himself highly effective in the pursuit of peace. He has discovered powers that are locked inside gems and minerals and uses them to keep Franklin Street safe. But something is wrong in the house at the end of the street. There is a woman in trouble. When The Masked Avenger leaves a 'happiness questionnaire' in her letterbox a series of events are set in motion that no one could predict. This is the story of a superhero, a beagle, an amber amulet and the potential that is locked inside all of us.

Body Beautiful

A heavyset woman who keeps being harassed by her aerobics instructor and her attempts to get even with him on a Body Beautiful contest.

Kind Mother

An estranged mother arrives at the silent retreat that her daughter is attending. When the two women engage in an unusual - and fantastical - power struggle, limits are tested, generational trauma is brought to light, and together they must grapple with mortality and forgiveness.

Broken Bunny

A young girl’s moral compass and perspective on mortality are challenged when she tries to save a brutally wounded rabbit.

Anecoica

Ana, a poor woman, agrees to be locked in an anechoic chamber, the most silent place in the world.

The Russian Sleep Experiment

Russian researchers funded by the Soviet Union during WWII are testing an expirimental gas on subjects deemed enemies of the state. The experimental gas is meant to eliminate the need for sleep, but all goes wrong as the gas has unexpected effects on the subjects.

A Man's Voice

Paulo, a young gay boy with an abusive mother, meets Tom, a young gay man who makes his money bedding women.

The Rabbit Hunters

A deceased filmmaker experiences a posthumous dream in which he attempts to reunite with his wife. (Homage to Italian film director Federico Fellini in the year of the centennial celebration of his birth.)

Self Portraits or: How to talk endearingly to possible victims

Quinn is a grade school teacher who is exploited by a group of memoryless individuals who reeducate his long-term partner Amy.

White Spirit

Avoiding uncomfortable pauses in a conversation is an art. Creating such moments in a conversation is a job, more precisely, this is White's job. In this whimsical musical short, dance along with White, a man who interferes in conversations at appropriate - or quite inconvenient - moments.

Siemiany

Andrzej and Michal are two young teenagers who come together every summer in Siemiany, a small tourist village on the countryside. Their friendship has grown into years of great memories. However the boredom of the countryside and the feeling of unity amongst the boys take their friendship to a new level of sexually loaded intimacy.

Victim or Hero

"Victim or Hero" is a short film about the battle between fate and willpower. Do we accept the role of the world’s victim, or take control as the hero of our own story?

Stationary Bike

Adaptation of Stephen King's story "Stationary Bike". After the tragic death of his wife, Boris loses all meaning in life, and his only desire is to be with his beloved again. Her old stationary bike becomes a bridge that connects his world with the path to his wife.

Katshinau

In New France before the British Conquest, Marie, an indigenous slave, serves the local surgeon. Her daily life of household chores is bleak and alienating. The encounter with a young girl she presumes to be her child will give her motivation to undertake radical actions.

Mirrors

Julian is a melancholic teenager on holiday at the family cottage. His holiday gets a twist when a mysterious neighbor confuses him. A summertime coming-of-age drama.

Tsuyako

In postwar Japan, Tsuyako, a factory worker and mother, must decide between duty and love, her family and her freedom.

Foreign Uncle

Sining brings his American boyfriend, Patrick, back to China when he goes to visit his family. Everyone's attitude towards Patrick changes once Sining inadvertently comes out, except for his 7-year-old nephew’s, Naonao.