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Golden Apricot Film Festival 2026

12–19 July 2026·Yerevan

LineupSchedule

Opening Film

In the Land of Arto

In the Land of Arto

Tamara Stepanyan

2025 · 1h 44m · Drama

Céline arrives in Armenia for the first time to legalize the death of Arto, her husband. She discovers that he has lied to her, that he fought in the war, usurped his identity, and that his former friends consider him a deserter.

Full-Length Films Competition

Babystar

Babystar

Joscha Bongard

2026 · 1h 42m · Drama

7 Selections

Since birth, 16-year-old Luca has been the star of her parents' influencer empire, her every milestone curated for millions of followers. When they announce plans for another child, the cracks in their perfect image widen. Luca spirals into an emotional tailspin, rebelling against the role she's been forced to play and realising how little of her life truly belongs to her. As the pressure mounts, she must decide whether to keep performing for the feed or reclaim her life beyond the spotlight. A biting satirical drama, Babystar explores the rise of family influencing and the children who become both product and commodity.

Father

Father

Tereza Nvotová

2025 · 1h 43m · Drama

11 Awards

A tragic mistake shatters the life of a devoted father, shaking his marriage and isolating him in guilt. As the threat of prison looms, he begins to question whether he deserves to go on living. But when he and his wife come to see that the tragedy was not a personal failure, but something rooted deep in the architecture of the human mind, a fragile path toward forgiveness begins to emerge. Even with this understanding, the question remains: can love survive what no heart was built to endure?

Hair, Paper, Water...

Hair, Paper, Water...

Nicolas Graux

2026 · 1h 11m · Drama · Documentary

Cao Thi Hau was born in a cave more than 60 years ago. Now she lives in a village, with many children and grandchildren to look after. Sometimes, she dreams of her dead mother calling her home – to the cave. The film captures fleeting moments of her daily life, its beauties and economic struggles, and the transmission of her people's language, Ruc, to her grandchildren.

London

London

Sebastian Brameshuber

2026 · 2h 17m · Drama

1 Selection

Bobby drives back and forth on the motorway linking Vienna and Salzburg, picking up strangers from all walks of life to save petrol and chatting to them along the way. Their conversations revolve around work, family, immigration; each new passenger reveals more about Bobby too. As mountains and forests rush by, a quietly political portrait of today's Europe comes into view, neither fiction, nor fully documentary.

No Good Man

No Good Man

Shahrbanoo Sadat

2026 · 1h 43m · Comedy · Romance · Drama

1 Selection

2021, Afghanistan right before the Taliban's return. Naru, the only camerawoman at Kabul's main TV station, struggles to keep custody of her three-year-old son after leaving her serial cheater husband. Convinced no good men exist in her country, Naru is caught off guard when Qodrat, Kabul TV's most important journalist, gives her a career opportunity. As the two crisscross the city reporting on its last days of freedom, sparks fly and Naru starts to doubt herself: could there actually be a good man out there?

Outliving Shakespeare

Outliving Shakespeare

Inna Sahakyan

2025 · 1h 31m · Documentary

3 Awards

"To be or not to be?" echoes through the halls of a derelict Soviet-era retirement home, where a group of its elderly residents rehearse "Shakespeare's Sins" — an original play in which the renowned playwright's own characters confront him over their tragic fates. From casting to premiere night, Outliving Shakespeare follows the retiree theatre troupe as they bond in and between rehearsals, transforming from a lighthearted, warm look at the quiet dignity of aging into a deeper exploration of the loneliness that accompanies it. As the production unfolds, the theatre starts mirroring reality — and the film becomes a portrait of the actors' lives offstage, set in the spartan yet colourful world of their shared home.

Past Future Continuous

Past Future Continuous

Firouzeh Khosrovani

2025 · 1h 16m · Documentary

3 Awards

Maryam is an involuntary immigrant in the US, who after forty years has not forgotten her escape from Iran’s border wrapped in a sheep’s skin. Maryam is always worried about her elderly parents and in constant visual connection with the home in Iran from thousands of kilometers through surveillance cameras. These cameras take her to the days of the 1979 revolution. Today, Iran is again experiencing turbulent days and now Maryam encounters her revolutionary past and revolutionary girls who are challenging the present system.

The Currents

The Currents

Milagros Mumenthaler

2025 · 1h 50m · Drama

1 Selection

At the height of her career, Lina, a 34-year-old Argentine stylist, is driven by a sudden impulse after an award ceremony in Switzerland. Back in Buenos Aires, she says nothing, but something in her has shifted — quiet and invisible, it subtly unravels a past she thought she had left behind.

The Lion at My Back

The Lion at My Back

Tonia Mishiali

2026 · 1h 46m · Drama

Armenian Premiere1 Award1 Selection

Mariama, a teenage Senegalese asylum seeker newly released from a shelter for unaccompanied minors, crosses paths with Stella, a Cypriot woman struggling to rebuild her life and regain custody of her child. As the two women form an unlikely friendship, they challenge prejudice, confront their personal traumas, and discover an unexpected meaning of love, solidarity, and family.

The Mechanics of Borders

The Mechanics of Borders

Hubert Caron-Guay

2026 · 1h 37m · Drama

A reserved young man takes to the road to the southern U.S. to bring his older sister back home to Canada.

The Moon is a Father of Mine

The Moon is a Father of Mine

Giorgi Ovashvili

2025 · 1h 40m · Drama · Adventure · Thriller

1 Selection

Georgia, autumn 1991. A willful twelve-year-old city boy, Toma, lives with his grandmother in Tbilisi, forever in trouble at school. Then his father Nemo — just released from prison under an independence amnesty, and a stranger to Toma since he was two — takes the boy to his ancestral mountain village on a hunting trip, hoping to make up for the lost years and teach Toma how to be independent. Bit by bit Nemo reveals that he once killed a man in these mountains. Just as Toma begins to accept his father, he accidentally shoots Nemo dead in what seems a hunting accident, and must drag the body down the snow-covered mountain — fending off wolves, snowstorms and his own nightmares — to bring his father back to the village.

Tristan Forever

Tristan Forever

Tobias Nölle

2026 · 1h 30m · Documentary

1 Selection

For thirty years, Loran Bonnardot, a doctor from Paris, has been visiting Tristan da Cunha, the world's most remote inhabited island in the middle of the South Atlantic — home to some of the most unique species and where only 6 to 8 boats make the journey per year. The volcanic island has become Loran's spiritual refuge, its inhabitants his chosen family and Martin, the fisherman, his best friend. Now 50, Loran travels back to his utopian island once more, but this time without a plan to return: he wants to become one of its 230 permanent residents. Will the island council accept him?

Apricot Stone Shorts

A Quiet Blue

A Quiet Blue

Ovsanna Shekoyan

2026 · 28m

Haunted by post-war trauma, 19-year-old Albert confronts his panic attacks through VR therapy to overcome his fears. Aimlessly wandering with friends through a desolate post-industrial city slowly turns an ordinary day into something he could never anticipate.

Dialogues Solitaires

Dialogues Solitaires

Serouj Hovsepian

2025 · 25m

4 Selections

Torn between confessing his love to Van and the fear of ruining their friendship, Aren drifts through the Parisian night. An encounter with Théo, a former lover, rekindles buried emotions and compels him to redefine the true meaning of love.

For Those

For Those

Emile Parseghian

2025 · 25m

2 Selections

In a remote Armenian village, a young woman struggles with the memory of a loved one lost during the war. As daily life continues around her, grief becomes intertwined with memory, silence, and the collective trauma carried by an entire generation. Through restrained visual storytelling, the film explores mourning, resilience, and the invisible scars left by conflict.

Herostrat

Herostrat

Arthur Nazaretian

2025 · 20m

1 Award

Hamlet is an ordinary office worker struggling to overcome the loss of his beloved. On the surface, he seems to have come to terms with it: he moves through his days mechanically, doing what is required. But beneath that routine, anger and resentment towards the world begin to boil inside him, eventually leading to a series of irreversible destructive acts. Inspired by the themes of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Kafka

Kafka

Vahan Khachatryan

2026 · 16m

A young man named Grigor Grigoryan wakes up from a strange slumber and finds that he has transformed into the XX century writer Franz Kafka. He is choked by profound sorrow and frailty, and he desperately feels the need to understand how he must continue living now.

Lola

Lola

Tamara Ayrapetyan

2025 · 12m

After the loss of her sister, a young dancer is haunted by a song and the grief she can no longer suppress.

Paid Mourners

Paid Mourners

Ovsanna Gevorgyan

2026 · 35m

1 Award1 Selection

"Paid Mourners" follows a family of professional mourners, where the unique trade is passed down through the women of the household. 16-year-old Margo, however, has other plans. A rising TikTok star, she has no interest in continuing this decidedly unglamorous tradition. Her resolve is put to the test when her grandmother, Bavo, announces she has only one week to live. With Margo's mother absent, the responsibility of inheriting the family legacy falls squarely on her shoulders. Determined to pass on the mantle, Bavo has only seven days to help Margo prepare for the role she was born to take.

Relic

Relic

Sona Khachatryan

2025 · 24m

5 Awards1 Selection

Minas, a 10-year-old blind boy with a magical ability to heal, struggles with his father's inability to accept him. His only source of comfort is his grandmother, who works tirelessly to restore his sight and guide him through her love. After her death, the village priest takes Minas in, but the villagers — fearing him and blaming him for past tragedies — turn against him. Minas secretly heals a sick girl, but the priest dies the next day. At his funeral, the villagers argue about repurposing the church for personal gain, highlighting their moral decay. Minas abandons the village, leaving behind a fog.

The Eternal Red

The Eternal Red

Naira Sargsyan

2025 · 11m

A one-armed man steps into an exhibition called "War". As others observe the photos as art, he is fixated on a single image in the corner, where he sees himself as a young man.

Together Alone

Together Alone

Arthur Sahakyan

2025 · 11m

1 Award

The short documentary Together Alone portrays the life of Shura and Ofelya, an elderly couple who lived together in isolation for nearly fifty years in a small house detached from the outside world. The film begins after Ofelya's death and gradually moves backward through time, where memory, silence, and space merge into a single emotional reality. The house itself becomes a living archive of memory, carrying traces of absence and existence through its silent objects, worn walls, and empty rooms.

Regional Competition

A Fire There

A Fire There

Marlene Edoyan

2026 · 1h 34m · Documentary

1 Award

Set in the remote village of Gandzani in southern Georgia, near the Armenian border, A Fire There explores youth coming of age amid uncertainty and change. The village, home to an ethnic Armenian community where echoes of exile and Soviet nostalgia still linger, frames the lives of three teenagers negotiating the tension between inherited traditions and the desire for something new. Henrikh, restless and ambitious, dreams of leaving for Tbilisi to study International Affairs. Karlen, weighed down by family obligations, considers migrant work as his path to independence. Hagop, more rooted in tradition, seeks a meaningful place within the village while quietly questioning its unspoken codes. Against rigid gender roles, social limits, and geopolitical instability, the film offers an intimate portrait of a generation imagining a future beyond their isolated world.

An Incomplete Calendar

An Incomplete Calendar

Sanaz Sohrabi

2026 · 1h 7m · Documentary · Music

1 Selection

A little-known 1980 vinyl is the starting point of this film. "Rhymes and Songs for OPEC" is a special record by the Central University of Venezuela's concert choir to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Layered on songs and rarely seen archives, the film reframes oil not as commodity but as a political leverage for the liberation struggles in Palestine and building Pan-Arab solidarity between 1960 and 1970.

Dream of Another Summer

Dream of Another Summer

Irene Bartolome

2026 · 1h 10m · Documentary

3 Awards

A woman's collapse amid urban ruins sparks an exploration of humanity's connection to physical spaces and a city's resilience in the face of mortality.

Dry Leaf

Dry Leaf

Alexander Koberidze

2026 · 3h 6m · Drama · Fantasy

4 Awards

Lisa, a photographer, has gone missing. The last known detail is that she had been photographing rural football stadiums in villages across Georgia. Her father, Irakli, sets out to search for her, traveling from place to place. Levani, Lisa's best friend – and an invisible person – also sets off to help.

Habibi Hussein

Habibi Hussein

Alex Bakri

2025 · 1h 36m · Documentary

3 Awards

A Palestinian projectionist embarks on a journey through the West Bank, seeking parts to restore an old movie theater's projector when a German NGO arrives to renovate it, clinging to hopes of reclaiming his former position.

Here, Elsewhere

Here, Elsewhere

Comes Chahbazian

2026 · 1h 7m

1 Award

July 2023. Nagorno-Karabakh has been under siege by Azerbaijan for seven months already. Sensing war is coming, I ask my friend Artziv to film his present life with his wife Tatev and their five children. Through images of unexpected tenderness, a silent resistance emerges in the face of deprivation. Two months later, war breaks out.

Inside Amir

Inside Amir

Amir Azizi

2025 · 1h 43m · Drama

1 Award12 Selections

Inside Amir follows a young man in Tehran on the verge of emigrating. He moves through fragmented memories, unfinished conversations, and slow days shaped by emotional tension. His bicycle becomes his only constant companion, carrying him through a city filled with memory, silence, and absence. The film drifts between past and present, exploring love, loss, and the quiet weight of departure.

Safe Exit

Safe Exit

Mohammed Hammad

2026 · 1h 53m

1 Selection

Samaan is a 23-year-old Christian Coptic security guard in a residential building in Cairo; he suffers from PTSD after witnessing his father's murder during childhood by a fanatic terrorist group killing Christians in Libya. Ten years later, Samaan, out of fear, is forced to hide a wanted terrorist in an apartment in the building where he works.

The Westoxicateds

The Westoxicateds

Gilda Pourjabar

2025 · 1h 27m · Documentary

The Westoxicateds is an autobiographical documentary about how forbidden rock songs, in the repressive atmosphere of post-1979 Iran, shaped the teenage minds of filmmaker Gilda Pourjabar and her brother Siamak. Returning to Tehran, she retraces the obstacles and friendships forged in the 1990s while hunting for bootleg cassettes in their residential complex of Ekbatan — once an icon of modernization, later a breeding ground for a rebellious youth culture. Blending personal narrative, archival footage, and doodle animation, it traces the sociopolitical shifts after the Revolution, when the Islamic Republic declared war on "Westoxication": the intoxicating influence of Western culture.

With Hasan in Gaza

With Hasan in Gaza

Kamal Aljafari

2026 · 1h 46m · Documentary · War

11 Awards

Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered. This footage is now a testament to a place and time that no longer exists. What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 — a man lost to time and war — led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown. As the camera moves through Gaza's streets and landscapes, it records fleeting moments of everyday life. With Hasan in Gaza transforms this forgotten footage into a cinematic reflection on memory, loss and the passage of time.

Out of Competition Shorts

Aborted

Aborted

Vrej Kassouny

2025 · 13m

"It takes two to tango." Until there is room for only one. Two souls are trapped between love and annihilation. Inside a single room, where every embrace is both salvation and execution, one must be aborted for the other to survive.

Domestic Demon

Domestic Demon

Anahid Yahjian

2026 · 6m

1 Award7 Selections

A housebound mother's hunger for agency and control among the mutating textures and temporalities of her home sets off an uncanny transformation. Shadow and silhouette capture the surreal ways in which time spent dutifully in the home changes us as we dare to ask, "how can I still be free?" A portrait of matrescence and post-partum depression in the time of pandemic lockdown, narrated in Western Armenian, the filmmaker's endangered mother tongue.

For The Sketch Film

For The Sketch Film

Grigor Khachatryan

2025 · 26m

Miles

Miles

Oksana Mirzoyan

2025 · 9m

A poetic short film exploring distance — physical, emotional, and generational. Through fragmented memories and intimate observation, the film reflects on migration, belonging, and the invisible ties that connect people across continents and time.

Sandiwara

Sandiwara

Sean Baker

2026 · 11m · Drama · Comedy

1 Selection

Set in Malaysia, Sandiwara follows a middle-aged actress whose everyday life gradually becomes indistinguishable from the performances she gives on screen. Through a compact and emotionally precise narrative, Sean Baker explores performance, identity, and the blurred boundaries between reality and fiction. The title comes from the Malay word for "theater" or "performance."

The Swallow's Toast of Faith

The Swallow's Toast of Faith

Hovhannes Ishkhanyan

2026 · 47m

Journalist Mnatsakan Azizyan and singer Juletta Arustamyan have been forcibly displaced several times over the past thirty years. Suren, a student and event host, meets them in an attempt to understand the discussions surrounding the possible settlement of Azerbaijanis in Armenia. What he discovers, however, goes far beyond what he expected.

Yerevan Premieres

Big Story in a Small City

Big Story in a Small City

Gor Kirakosyan

2006 · 1h 30m · Drama · Comedy

7 Awards

The feature film is based on true events that changed two families forever. The story, both comical, satirical and a tragedy begins in the city of Yerevan, Armenia. Grigor Janoyan, a professor of agriculture at the University of Yerevan, dies from a freak accident, almost as strange as the events that soon follow. In accordance with Armenian tradition, the relatives bring the deceased into their home for the "viewing" by his friends and family before the burial. The family, consumed with grief fails to realize that the body on the dining room table is not Grigor. A friend of the family, while paying respects, discovers the mistake. Grigors look-a-like, Ruben Pashayan was the head of Armenia's organized crime families. Trouble is inevitable, but as the story continues, Grigor's son Hayk and his friends begin the quest of finding his father's body.

Bitter Christmas

Bitter Christmas

Pedro Almodóvar

2026 · 1h 52m · Drama · Comedy

1 Selection

After her mother dies in December, advertising director Elsa immerses herself in work to cope. When a panic attack forces her to take a break, she decides to travel to Lanzarote with her friend Patricia. The story of these women run parallel to that of a screenwriter and film director, exploring how life and fiction are inseparably linked, sometimes painfully so.

Dance of Life

Dance of Life

Arsen Aghajanyan

2026 · 1h 40m

The film is dedicated to Armenian filmmaker Harutyun Khachatryan — a key figure in documentary cinema. Through a deeply personal and reflective lens, Dance of Life explores the inner world of its protagonist, portraying how he "dances" through life — a personal rhythm that remains largely unseen by others. In Armenian, the title carries an additional poetic layer: kenats par ("Dance of Life") echoes kenats tsar ("Tree of Life"), reinforcing the film's thematic connection between movement, growth, and the unseen essence of a human life.

DDTXXCentury

DDTXXCentury

Sergey Kuznetsov

2026 · 1h 40m

A musical documentary-feature visualizing the songs of Yuri Shevchuk's rock band DDT against 20th-century Russian history. A young man returns from war to his provincial hometown in the 1980s, moves to Leningrad, and endures success and unrequited love while witnessing dramatic historical events — each episode built around one DDT track, alternating dramatized scenes with archival footage, documentary fragments and animation.

De Gaulle: Liberté

De Gaulle: Liberté

Antonin Baudry

2026 · History · Drama

June 1940. France is collapsing and signs the armistice. In the midst of the chaos, one man refuses to surrender. Alone against all odds, this unknown general escapes to London to save what remains of a dream: freedom. Without an army, without support, without hope — but with a fierce conviction: France, his France, has not laid down its weapons.

De Gaulle: The Sovereign Edge

De Gaulle: The Sovereign Edge

Antonin Baudry

2026 · 2h 39m · History · Drama

June 1940. France is collapsing and signs the armistice. In the midst of the chaos, one man refuses to surrender. Alone against all odds, this unknown general escapes to London to save what remains of a dream: freedom. Without an army, without support, without hope — but with a fierce conviction: France, his France, has not laid down its weapons.

Die My Love

Die My Love

Lynne Ramsay

2025 · 1h 59m · Drama

A hopeful young and loving couple, Grace and Jackson, move from New York to an inherited house in the country. Grace tries to find her identity with a new baby in the isolated environment. Yet as she begins to unravel, it's not in weakness but in imagination, strength and a stunning untamed vivacity that she discovers herself anew.

Dreams

Dreams

Michel Franco

2025 · 1h 38m · Romance · Thriller · Drama

1 Selection

A powerful socialite and a promising ballet dancer begin a dangerous affair. When he secretly crosses the US-Mexico border, she takes desperate measures to protect their future together.

Fatherland

Fatherland

Paweł Pawlikowski

2026 · 1h 22m · Drama · History

1 Award

In 1949, German writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika embark on a road trip across a Germany in ruins, from US-dominated Frankfurt to Soviet-controlled Weimar.

Fjord

Fjord

Cristian Mungiu

2026 · 2h 26m · Drama

1 Award

After the deaths of Mihai's parents, Mihai and Lisbeth Gheorghiu leave everything behind and move with their children to a remote village in Norway, hoping to rebuild their lives near Lisbeth's family. There, they grow close to their neighbors, the Halbergs, whose warmth offers the promise of a fresh start. But the fragile peace begins to unravel when the Gheorghius' young daughter, Elia, arrives at school covered in bruises.

Mariinka

Mariinka

Pieter-Jan De Pue

2026 · 1h 34m · Documentary

5 Awards

In Eastern Ukraine, childhood neighbours find their lives violently derailed by a shifting frontline. Natasha, a promising boxing talent, becomes a military paramedic. Angela, who lost her parents young, survives by moving goods to both sides of the front. Caught in a modern Greek tragedy, brothers Mark and Ruslan now fight on opposite sides — against each other — while their youngest brother Daniil follows the war from the safety of an adoptive family in the United States. Filmed over a decade on 16mm, Mariinka begins long before the world watched the full-scale invasion. The highly anticipated second feature by Pieter-Jan De Pue, following his Sundance-winning debut The Land of the Enlightened.

My Big Fat Armenian Family

My Big Fat Armenian Family

Sev Ohanian

2008 · 1h 38m · Comedy

Cultures clash between old-fashioned Armenian parents and their progressive, Americanized teenage kids, all during a weekend road trip to Palm Springs.

Razlogov

Razlogov

Anastasiya Razlogova

2025 · 1h 13m · Documentary · Animation

1 Selection

A film about film scholar and cultural expert Kirill Razlogov, featuring his final, previously unpublished interview, rare archival materials, and exclusive photos from his family's personal archive, as well as a custom animation narrated by the subject's voice, illustrating his memoirs.

Sinners

Sinners

Ryan Coogler

2025 · 2h 18m · Horror · Action · Thriller

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

The Dreamed Adventure

The Dreamed Adventure

Valeska Grisebach

2026 · 2h 27m · Drama · Adventure · Thriller

1 Award

The story of a woman living in the border region between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, who agrees to partake in a special deal in order to help a friend. However, this will lead her into a dangerous situation, and she will have to confront her desires

The Garden That Dreamt Of You

The Garden That Dreamt Of You

Jasmine Razarian

2025 · 56m

The Story of Documentary Film

The Story of Documentary Film

Mark Cousins

2026 · 4h

Mark Cousins’ monumental, globe-spanning history of nonfiction cinema, following the documentary form from the dawn of cinema to the present and pairing canonical classics with forgotten works. A follow-up to “The Story of Film: An Odyssey”; the festival block screens the opening chapters.

The Unknown

The Unknown

Arthur Harari

2026 · 2h 19m · Fantasy · Drama

1 Selection

David Zimmerman, almost 40, is a photographer but no one knows it. When friends drag him to a wild party, he spots a woman in the crowd and can't take his eyes off her; he follows her. A few hours later, David wakes up — in the body of the unknown woman.

Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master

Wondrous Is the Silence of My Master

Ivan Salatić

2025 · 1h 33m · Drama · History · War

In 19th-century Montenegro, the free mountain territories are surrounded by Turkish forces, isolated from the West and steeped in conservatism, patriarchy, and superstition. Morlak, a poet and bishop inspired by the historical figure Petar II Petrović Njegoš, leads his tribe in resisting the invaders. Gravely ill, he is sent to southern Italy in search of a cure. The journey takes him to a house in Naples, a city that contrasts sharply with his homeland’s isolated hills. As Morlak contemplates his existence, his loyal servant Djuko struggles with profound nostalgia, driven by the fear of his master’s death in a foreign land.

Twisted Apricot

Café Flesh

Café Flesh

Stephen Sayadian

1982 · 1h 15m · Drama · Science Fiction · Comedy

18+

In a post-apocalyptic future, a mysterious condition has rendered most people incapable of sexual activity. The remaining few become performers in the surreal nightclub Café Flesh.

Obsession

Obsession

Curry Barker

2026 · 1h 49m · Horror · Thriller

After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for — but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.

Rosebush Pruning

Rosebush Pruning

Karim Aïnouz

2026 · 1h 37m · Comedy · Drama · Thriller

1 Selection

A contemporary reimagining inspired by Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket, exploring family tensions, desire and rebellion.

Saccharine

Saccharine

Natalie Erika James

2026 · 1h 53m · Horror

1 Selection

After succumbing to an obscure weight-loss craze involving the eating of human ashes, lovelorn medical student Hana finds herself haunted by the ghost of the person she's eating.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

Jane Schoenbrun

2026 · 1h 46m · Horror · Comedy

1 Selection

After years of slapdash sequels and waning fandom, the Camp Miasma slasher franchise is handed over to an enthusiastic young director for resurrection. But when she visits the original's star, a now-reclusive actress shrouded in mystery, the two women fall into a blood-soaked world of desire, fear, and delirium.

Made in Germany

Highway Deer

Highway Deer

Abolfazl Saffary

2025 · 1h 34m · Drama

1 Award1 Selection

Abbas works as a motorcycle courier delivering food across the city. One day, he accidentally finds himself riding behind a famous social-media influencer who mistakes him for a stalker during a live broadcast. What begins as a misunderstanding quickly spirals into a viral online scandal, drawing thousands of viewers into a storm of judgment, speculation, and misinformation. As events escalate beyond anyone's control, the lives of both Abbas and the influencer are dramatically transformed. Through dark humor and social observation, Highway Deer explores the power of social media, public perception, and the fragile boundary between reality and digital narratives.

Doc Alliance

Cold Call

Cold Call

Stefanie Schroeder

2025 · 16m · Animation

1 Selection

An ordinary phone call unexpectedly develops into a tense psychological encounter. As the conversation unfolds, misunderstandings, assumptions, and hidden motivations begin to surface, transforming a routine exchange into a revealing confrontation. The film examines communication, isolation, and the fragile boundaries between strangers.

Errabonda

Errabonda

Emma Harris

2026 · 20m

1 Selection

A young woman wanders through an unfamiliar landscape searching for connection and meaning after a personal loss. Moving between memory, imagination, and reality, she encounters strangers whose stories gradually reshape her understanding of grief and belonging. Through lyrical imagery and intimate observation, Errabonda explores movement, solitude, and the possibility of emotional renewal.

Minimum Love

Minimum Love

Maja Penčič

2025 · 1h 16m

1 Award1 Selection

'How are you?' asks the director of people leaving a Prague subway station. The short answers of tired passers-by are followed by statements from Czech youth, recorded from an almost unbearable proximity. Furious drunkenness is replaced by tender embraces, and behind harsh words lie immediate reflections on an uncertain world. They talk about sex, feminism, the war nearby, the climate crisis. Night is the film's basic colour — connecting the sounds of city streets with long, silent shots of loneliness. Each of the film's eight scenes shows not only exhaustion from life, but also love that is missing, longed for, and always falls short.

Some of You Fucked Eva

Some of You Fucked Eva

Lilith Grasmug

2025 · 15m

15 Selections

2002, North Carolina. Teenagers recall the investigation into the mysterious fainting of high school cheerleaders.

The Case Against Space

The Case Against Space

Graeme Arnfield

2026 · 1h 12m · Documentary

1 Award

In the days leading up to Christmas 1973 three astronauts went on strike. Floating above the Earth, they downed tools onboard Skylab, NASA's first-ever space station, withdrawing over disagreements about their working conditions. To date they remain the only people to organise in outer space. Reconstructing the tense day leading up to the strike, The Case Against Space is a real-time investigation of absurd experiments, alienating technical language and constantly surveilled bodies. Based on transcripts of exchanges between the astronauts and mission control and shot in claustrophobic close-up on a 1970s CCTV system, it is a collective testimony on struggle amongst the stars.

The Divided City of Mitrovica

The Divided City of Mitrovica

Marko Grba Singh

2025 · 18m · Documentary

1 Selection

Mitrovica is a city in Kosovo ethnically divided between Albanians and Serbs. The landscape of the place, frozen by conflict, narrates two poems about dying mothers. Two people seem to be lost in ruins as the cherry trees blossom.

Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest

Viv Li

2026 · 1h 30m · Documentary

2 Selections

After unexpectedly remaining in Berlin following the pandemic, a young Chinese artist finds herself caught between two worlds: the alternative queer culture of Berlin and the traditions and expectations of her family in Beijing. Through humor, self-reflection, and personal observation, the film explores migration, identity, belonging, and the challenge of constructing a self between different cultures.

Tributes

Bashu, the Little Stranger

Bashu, the Little Stranger

Bahram Beyzai

1989 · 2h · Drama · War

1 Selection

Ten-year-old Bashu is orphaned when his Persian Gulf village is bombed. Hiding in the back of a truck, he is taken north around the Caspian Sea, where he jumps off. The people in this alien land take a dislike to the little stranger and deride his skin and accent. Nai, a woman whose husband is away, finds the boy and accepts him as her own son.

Satantango

Satantango

Béla Tarr

1994 · 7h 19m · Drama

Based on the book by László Krasznahorkai, Sátántangó follows members of a small, defunct agricultural collective living in a post-apocalyptic landscape after the fall of Communism who, on the heels of a large financial windfall, set out to leave their village. As a few of the villagers secretly conspire to take off with all of the earnings for themselves, a mysterious character, long thought dead, returns to the village, altering the course of everyone's lives forever.

Retrospective: Jessica Hausner

Club Zero

Club Zero

Jessica Hausner

2023 · 1h 50m · Thriller · Drama · Comedy

Miss Novak joins the staff of an international boarding school to teach a conscious eating class and forms a strong bond with five students that eventually takes a dangerous turn.

Hotel

Hotel

Jessica Hausner

2004 · 1h 16m · Horror · Drama · Mystery

2 Awards1 Selection

Irene takes a job as a receptionist at an isolated hotel in the Austrian Alps. When she learns that her predecessor disappeared without a trace, she becomes increasingly obsessed with uncovering the mystery. Surrounded by strange stories and unsettling events, she gradually loses her sense of security and reality.

Lovely Rita

Lovely Rita

Jessica Hausner

2001 · 1h 19m · Drama

1 Selection

Rita is an outcast teenager in suburban Austria, misunderstood both at school, where she's disdained by classmates, and at home, where her staunchly religious mother and temperamental father bemoan her inability to fit in with their comfortable bourgeois life. When Rita sets out to seduce her school bus driver, she sets in motion a series of events that changes everyone's lives irrevocably.

Other

Amelie

Amelie

15 July 2026 · Nairi Cinema

Jean-Pierre Jeunet France, Germany . A painfully shy waitress working at a tiny Paris cafe, Amelie makes a surprising discovery and sees her life drastically changed for the better. From then on, Amelie dedicates herself to helping others find happiness in the most delightfully unexpected ways. But will she have the courage to do for herself what she has done for others?

Schedule subject to change. Presented on Esora.