20 Handshakes for Peace

On the outskirts of the city, the new modern buildings are silent, and the motorway bridge drones. Birds are circling in the sky, and a young man, concealed by his hoodie, is riding his e-scooter along a park path. The only irritating element is the rifle over his shoulder. Cyclepaths conveys a mood of high alert, even though the disaster has, in fact, already happened.

Punk author Kathy Acker’s work is the starting point for a conversation about gender identity and body transformation and is linked to the punk movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

A journey to the underworld begins within our own entrails. This film explores the intimate rhythm of digestion only to next investigate the becoming of geological eras, inspired by Gamaliel Churata’s El Pez de Oro, in which he states, “we all carry the dead alive; that the dead live.”

Swollen Stigma is a visual, surrealistic narrative about a woman travelling both literally and psychically through several rooms. Memories, or fantasies, of another woman, fill her imagination. The film proposes lesbian imagery, and its shifting points of view jump between the protagonist, fantasy spaces, and her lover, making an internal world leak into what is external.

Filmed in Shatila, a refugee camp built in Lebanon when thousands of Palestinians fled their country in 1948. At an undetermined moment in the future, the refugees’ dream of returning to Palestine becomes a reality.

Filmmakers Paul Shemisi and Nizar Saleh embark on a journey from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Germany to screen their latest film. However, during a layover in Angola, their trip takes a harrowing turn when airport authorities question the authenticity of their documents.

A sleeping man dreams of a city at dusk. He is every angelic lover, caught off guard. The film goes in and out of his pulsating erotic dream: heated up, he dreams of landscapes, even of becoming the landscape.