Voices Short

23 Barbies in a row. One by one they fall accompanied by a cacophony of humming. Dramatic. Dryly funny.

Syrian photographer Issa Touma recorded the first days of the revolt in Aleppo from his window. An exceptional angle on a war.

When Sadik left Baghdad, his nephew Ali handed him an envelope and asked him not to open it until he reached his home in the Netherlands. In it there was a drawing of a boat.

This tranquil film by artist Prapat Jiwarangsan reflects on the necessary search for belonging in the changed face of Thailand since the 2014 coup d’etat.

On holiday, widow Tamara meets two other older women. During a walk in the woods they discuss light-hearted and serious matters.

A Chilean actress attends a film festival in Lisbon. The day after her film’s screening, she takes a boat to a desolate part of the city, far from everything.

A man lies in bed, paralysed. He can still see and hear and has to suffer the stupid talk of a bunch of idiots. Satire on all sorts of things in Malaysia.

A waiting room at the eye doctor’s offers a stage to an unexpected encounter of three completely different women. Proof that empathy is blind to differences.

A schoolgirl, meticulously observed by a patient camera in a small, yet sensitive story. Perhaps a lesson in life, for it isn’t as innocent as it seems.

Reliving memories of a holiday, a sense of impending doom. An experimental film chronicle, like flipping through a photo album.

In this short graphic dance film, a burka leads a life of its own and plays with the fear of Islam.

Colourful collage in which this experimental film criticises Western ideas on gender, violence, sex and other taboos.

Portrait of a Syrian farmer, the filmmaker’s cousin who, in spite of the war, tries to live his daily life.

Fictional correspondence between a Columbian and a Lebanese woman demonstrates how laws and religion determine the dominant discourse on sexuality.

In the desert, Sultan Zeib Khan makes his rounds of the ruins of a Neolithic necropolis. Amid the tombs, the vastness of the desert is palpable.

What is left of the glory of EUR, the Roman neighbourhood built in 1937 as the pinnacle of perfect fascist urban design?

Chilling eye-witness report of the street argument that led to the cold-blooded murder of DeCarrio Antwan Couley in 2010.

A touching animation and black comedy about a man with cannibalistic tendencies. In his mind’s eye he seeks the source of his misery.

After a dizzying trip through the cosmos we see how an astronaut is flung into space. Rudderless, irrevocably heading for the eternal black hole.

The Gaza Strip as a myth: isolated, timeless, almost inaccessible, extremely tense. The accompanying animation adds a fictional layer.

Named for the mythological Greek king cursed with insatiable hunger, Erysichthon takes as its base an exploration of subcultures through internet-user-generated content.

Julia Feyrer takes her sculptures for a ride across the city and lets the wind take them apart in this charming 16mm silent film.

In Egyptian artist Basim Magdy’s tranquil adaptation of his father’s short story, a man finds himself in solitude after his entire community walks to the beach, never to return.

Marxt explores an inhospitable, rugged environment by drone. There are some fancy villas that protect the inhabitants and their property like fortresses.

How do we experience space? Falling Frames inventively explores the framing and visualisation of three-dimensional perspective through the two-dimensional medium of video.

Two fat Thai schoolboys take a physical test to get into the territorial defence course. This proves to be quite difficult.

A visit from his long-absent father leaves Lado with many unanswered questions. An unexpected adventure helps him understand his dad a tiny bit more.

A dog is prepared for his approaching demise by his boss.

Livia wanders the industrial east of Montreal trying to get her life back on track after a complex break-up. With a supporting role for a peacock.

This film enters a hamlet on the German Wadden Sea like a PhD research project, revealing the painful past of this landscape that looks so tidy.

A journalistic animated documentary that studies the boundaries of professional and personal space using interview techniques.

The camera scans the location where the play El señor Galindez premiered in the 1970s. It feels just as oppressive now as it must have done then.

Elegant minimal animation feels like a summer breeze from Croatia. A simple seaside sketch book evolves into abstractions full of shifting planes and colours.

Empathy is generally a positive emotion though we shouldn’t underestimate the consequences of the stress it can cause. A stimulating essay.

Bertani is a traveller of the mind, more than the body. He writes in more than 100 languages, but hardly ever leaves his home. Language is his gateway to other worlds.

A ceremony on a glacier in New Zealand that erases the racism of colonial history with a Maori blessing.

The island of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean, is the new outermost EU border. On its poor island neighbour, craftsmen are building a kwassa kwassa - 'an unstable boat'.

A compassionate double portrait of two young prostitutes, whose lives connect through Erik, a young man who charms them both for his own financial advantage.

In a Palestinian refugee camp, Reda’s parents have found a bride who is to calm his life. A bittersweet love story.

Welcome to the world of Romanian bureaucracy, where foster daughter Meda is immediately removed from home for administrative, irrelevant reasons.

Melon Rainbow cleans for people she has almost no contact with and spends her evenings working in neon light from her bed.

At Metropolitan Triangle Garden’s digital museum, classical sculptures and contemporary digital waste are of equal value and in constant dialogue.

Navigator consists solely of monumental close-ups of refractions and reflections in a rotating lens system. A magnificent, disorientating watching machine shot on 35mm film.

Cuban artist Adrian Melis stages an intimate interview with his father, a communist revolutionary, whose face speaks volumes in light of his rapidly changing country.

As a Syrian refugee in Beirut, Walid wants to do everything by the book, but that proves difficult in this time and place.

What happens to you when you find out after the Charlie Hebdo attacks that you knew one of the men who went to Syria to join IS?

Ling’s childhood friend Mei has died. Together with Mei’s sister, Ling visits the place Mei died - that lies in an imposing landscape - for the first time.

While a storm approaches Havana, Emilio and his neighbour Omara Portuondo talk about the past and dream of things out of reach.

Murad and Masha are getting married. But their romantic date dynamite fishing takes a surprising turn. A whimsical tale of love, death and stop-motion.

A son seeks his father’s approval. He relates what it’s like to be raised in a country with a culture different to that of your father.

A 20th-century collage: ranging from Marilyn Monroe, moon missions and dancing twirlers to military parades. One of the first video mixing experiments.

Portrait of Baltimore after Freddie Gray’s death. A confused city in pain that counted both protests and classical concerts among its responses. Screens before The Other Side.

The life of racing cyclist and city Don Quixote Willem Koopman can be described as going from the podium to the gutter. High time a film was made about this intriguing man and his tragic life. With and by many big names from Rotterdam.

Images cycle and combine into dream-like passages that reveal the infinite potentials of sight within the finitude of everyday objects. Based on a poem by Michael Snow.

The director’s father crossed over from Tripoli to Italy as a child. His story aligns seamlessly with that of the current stream of migrants and their experiences.

After years spent in prison, Erkin returns to his village. A compelling and beautifully paced portrait of a broken man.

Nine-year old Silver directed his first film during his birthday party in 1992, re-enacting the LA riots with friends.

Much to his chagrin, Daniel has to accompany his mother to an oncology conference. An unexpected meeting makes it an interesting weekend after all.

Autist Donna Washington comments on footage of her and her fellow patients, shot 50 years ago at the psychiatric clinic.

Which selections do you make when you record the war around you? Women and children in Cizre gain a voice with their own documentary.

Alexandra Navratil’s photo-essay takes the perspective of the chemically contaminated lake Silbersee to illustrate the slow torture man inflicts on Earth.

Between Armenia and Turkey lie the ruins of once bustling Ani. The silence is increasingly broken by birdsong. Has everything been staged?

The director, who was born in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war, works out her personal history. Painful, yet not sentimental.

A few fleeting moments between a Brazilian student getting ready to leave for Europe and her mother observing her silently. A loving farewell.

A musical film experience. The sound, not the images, tells the story. An homage to the founders of the Western genre. With brutal wind instruments.

Experimental film about unwanted childlessness in a world where heterosexual relationships dictate. The possibility of pregnancy can be gifted, shared and undertaken together.

A woman descends a staircase whose steps float off, becoming triangular. Spatial and geometric illusions created using unusual camera work and the choreography.

Diving deep into the often obscure global flow of materials, in this instance copper, The Powder of Sympathy sets in motion a frantic flow of images combined with feverish pounding, hissing and rattling sounds sourced from West Africa, the USA and China.

Sound itself is an object here and so is language, as sound effects trigger an off-screen narrative and letters rain down in a thunderstorm.

Richard Dinter from Sweden talks about his life as a kleptomaniac: from the triumphs of stealing to the poor example he is for his daughter.

Freddy is on his way to love, but how he’s going to get there isn’t clear. A road movie with three encounters and excellent acting.

Familiar sights of everyday life are abstracted by Sebastian Buerkner’s lush digital animation that contemplates the place of spiritual transcendence today.

In a realistic animation style, a little avatar reconnoitres the world around him, without leaving the four walls of his house.

A girl who misses her father slowly becomes entirely possessed by grief. It seems as if an outside force has taken control of her emotions.

A girl goes to school, plays basketball and takes the bus home. An ordinary day, were it not for an incident that will change her mood entirely. A short story from Turkey about what it is like to be young and female in a metropolis.

An impression of the average evening of a family in Palestine’s conflict zone. Faint sounds. A prayer, a poem. The sound of a family.

Sandro Aguilar gets inside the minds of people at the Paredes de Coura music festival. His suggestive perspective adds a liberal pinch of alienation.

A modern Romeo and Juliet meet on a city bus. Of course they fall head over heels in love. A classic story in a far-from-classic reworking.

On the banks of the Meuse, Wim Gijzen erects a new town sign: The Hague. What happens when you swap the names Rotterdam and The Hague?

A thin cake delivery man and a lonely welder meet in this funny, tender film with great roles by Jack Wouterse and Wart Kamps.

From the perspectives of a dozen viewers, this documentary short explores the peculiar ritual of watching film.

Triptych that reveals life on earth in all its gruesomeness and beauty. Destruction, be it natural or human, plays a major role.

Advert for the weapons industry. Playful and light in form, serious content that reflects on the role and power of the arms sector.

Sandor is an avid collector of old-fashioned cameras. The filmmaker shoots a warm portrait of this ordinary man using the latter’s camera collection.

A love letter in collage style, consisting of found footage and a strange reading of Kang-Chien Chui’s work, karaoke and diary videos.