Smalltown Miss
Estonia 2022 – 18:20 min – Director: Alexandra Pärn
Miina has grown up in a safe home environment. That can’t be said about her best friend, Liidia. Besides having a beautiful friendship and doing normal teenage things in the Soviet smalltown, there is some darkness to be faced. Everything begins to change when Liidia becomes influenced with a new arrival to town, a woman portraying what she aspires to be. A new, better and more confident version of herself, so that she could find a way out of her unsafe environment.
Alexandra Pärn
Alexandra Pärn is studying film directing at the Baltic Film, Media and Arts School in Tallinn. She has also worked as a freelance assistant director with various projects in Estonia.
Thoughts of a Young Person at the Sight of a Dissolving World
Germany 2022 – 16:24 min – Director: Jonathan Berlin
When a young actor travels to Svalbard in the Arctic for the filming of an environmental thriller, he encounters a world in disintegration: the Arctic is being hit by the climate crisis at three to four times the normal rate, with glaciers melting at record speed. Between two interviews with a scientist and an artist, he asks himself in essay form about the status quo and what kind of world we will leave behind.
Jonathan Berlin
Jonathan Berlin, born in 1994 in Germany, studied Acting at Otto Falckenberg School of Performing Arts in Munich and played in numerous films for which he received the German Screen Actors Award as best newcomer. His first directorial work August screened at international festivals, including BAFTA-Qualifier Norwich Film Festival, Dresden International Short Film Festival, Dumbo Film Festival New York, Manchester Film Festival and Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival.
The Taster
Germany 2022 – 29:12 min – Director: Sophia Bierend
The Danube Delta, Romania. Near future. The young Romanian Ozana is chosen to work as the new taster girl for the occupying forces. But already on her first day of work she breaks the most important rule – never look the leader in the eye. Soon Ozana finds herself face to face with the unpredictable man who is occupying her country. All alone.
Sophia Bierend
Sophia Bierend studies screenwriting for her master’s degree at the “Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf” since 2018. In 2019 she worked as an assistant director on the Netflix series Unorthodox and the feature film I’m Your Man.
She has also been working as an assistant for the acclaimed director Maria Schrader ever since. Getting to know Schrader’s way of working was so pleasant and inspiring that she wanted to direct the short The Taster herself and is eager to direct more fiction projects in the future herself.
Into the Realm of the Night
Germany 2022 – 05:39 min – Director: Patrick Müller
The transition from day to night. It magically casts a spell over us, we glide into it like water and enjoy it: despite all its dangers: it is the night we love. Shot with a 65-year-old 8mm camera in Copenhagen in November 2021, while the old amusement park opened during a brief pause in the pandemic.
Patrick Müller
Patrick Müller, born in 1981 in Frankenberg, GDR, has made more than 40 short films, primarily with 8 and 16mm film, seeking to explore poetry within moving images. His experimental works have screened at numerous film festivals around the world and won several awards.
The Fence | Płot
Poland 2022 – 19:19 min – Director: Tomasz Wolski
Somewhere in the countryside two men move into a stud farm. Leszek is afraid of horses, Mikolaj is afraid of everything … For the country people he has always been an outsider. Still suspicious of every step, overprotective of every gesture, he is obsessed with fixing the farm’s broken fence.
Tomasz Wolski
Tomasz Wolski was born in Poland in 1977 and completed several documentary film courses at the Wajda School, where he is now also a lecturer. Further, Wolski is a doctoral student of the Department of Film and Television Direction at the Film School in Lodz. Since then he has produced several documentary films, which have won several awards.
