New Focus programmes on artist-filmmakers Matthew Lax and Timoteus Anggawan Kusno

We’re delighted to announce two new shorts Focus programmes for IFFR 2025, celebrating the queerly theatrical work of US-based artist, writer and filmmaker Matthew Lax and the critical approach to the lingering shadows of colonialism and dictatorship presented by Indonesian and Amsterdam-based visual artist and researcher Timoteus Anggawan Kusno. Additionally, the first selections for the Short & Mid-Length strand have been revealed, including ten world premieres and two international premieres.

Matthew Lax’s distinct dialectical approach queers interpretations of varied subjects, including archival texts, animal behaviour and power dynamics through performance and documentary. Working with actors and non-actors, Lax’s films prioritise critical discourse and community building which further question meaning and interpretation. Under the Focus programme, two of Lax’s works will have their world premieres: A Tired Dog Is a Good Dog, Part Two and Gay Men’s Book Club.

Timoteus Anggawan Kusno works with archival material, installations, performance and institutional interventions. He has been blending the boundaries between fiction, memory and history. By questioning the making of historical narratives and exploring the shadows left behind by coloniality, his work exposes narratives that have been left unseen or unheard. The programme will include the world premieres of Fever Dream and Unreleased, and will contain, among other works, his recent film Tunggang Langgang. The focus programme marks Kusno’s return to IFFR, following the screening of his work Dear Shadow, My Old Friend in 2024.

Short & Mid-Length first selections

In the Short & Mid-Length programme, the festival is welcoming back several returning filmmakers including Lipika Singh Darai with a world premiere of B and S, an exploration of the friendship between two trans women, following both the screening of her short Night and Fear at IFFR and the Hubert Bals Fund support received for her feature Birdwoman in 2023.

Additionally, Nuno Boaventura Miranda presented the HBF-backed Kmêdeus at the festival in 2020, and now presents The Last Harvest, following three characters navigating life in Lisbon’s Cape Verdean community. Brazilian filmmaker Pethrus Tibúrcio, co-director of HBF-supported CineMart 2021 project Marina, presents their debut short Tell Her What Happened to Me.

IFFR regular US-director Andrew Norman Wilson returns with Silvesterchlausen, on a mysterious tradition of the same name that takes place every New Year’s Eve in Switzerland’s Appenzell. Stefan Ivančić, producer of HBF-backed feature The Load (IFFR 2019) and director of Soles de primavera (IFFR 2014), presents the world premiere of Upon Sunrise, a piercing portrait of a single mother in Serbia. Alongside this, Helena Wittmann returns with the world premiere of A Thousand Waves Away following the screening of her feature Drift in 2018, and Rajee Samarasinghe will world premiere You’re a Shadow, a portrait of an exorcist in Sri Lanka, alongside his feature in the Bright Future programme, Your Touch Makes Others Invisible.

Nigerian-British artist and filmmaker Jenn Nkiru returns to IFFR following Rebirth Is Necessary (IFFR 2018) and Black to Techno (IFFR 2020). She is also part of The Ummah Chroma collective, whose work was shown in Art Directions in 2020. At IFFR 2025, Nkiru presents the international premiere of The Great North, a meditative film about Manchester, UK. Also hailing from Manchester is filmmaker Hope Strickland, who presents the world premiere of a river holds a perfect memory, tracing the interrelation of water, memory and labour between the UK and Jamaica.

My Brother, My Brother will have its world premiere: an autofiction animation by Berlin-based Egyptian filmmaker Abdelrahman Dnewar and his late brother Saad Dnewar. While Ulu Braun (Maria Theresia und ihre 16 Kinder, IFFR 2011) presents the world premiere of Gerhard, an AI-produced biopic on the artist Gerhard Richter. New York writer and filmmaker Eliza Barry Callahan, whose debut novel The Hearing Test was published earlier this year by Catapult (US) and Peninsula (UK), presents the world premiere of The Non-Actor, featuring Victoria Pedretti and Maya Hawke.