Metropia

next stop is...

A filmic letter to New York City, the subway, and self.

STRATA INCOGNITA

STRATA INCOGNITA, is a trans-scalar and trans-temporal journey across the geographies that articulate soil as an agro-industrial infrastructure, but also as an ecosystem and a somatic archive of crimes, memories and myths.

cloud 1

Experimental short film showing a single 10-minute shot of the sky.

El ruido del tiempo

In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.

มาหา-นคร

The uncomfortable feeling caused by the loss of identity experienced by provincial youngsters who move to Bangkok. Depression might result from growing up in the provinces in the middle of Bangkok, which is a different atmosphere. feeling unrecognizable and eventually losing your identity and thoughts without realizing it.

The eight Alps

A solo audiovisual performance. Eighth entry into deeply beguiling series of works responding to the Alps acted as the closing night event of Alchemy Film Festival. The images are studies of the Alps degraded and distorted live at the front of the auditorium; the picture pixelated, streams of colour engulfed the screen like a crashed desktop, and as hawks hovered over the mountains they left staggered trails of glitches across the screen like computerised vapour trails. The audio was also created live using short atonal precomposed tracks. The aim was to create a digital alchemy, an abstracted journey into the mountains, a wild wonder inside and out.

Outtakes from Jo

Outtakes, commentary from Zefier's third film: Jo; or The Act of Riding a Bike.

No Norte da Saudade

Kalú Kariú, a trans artist and poet from northern Brazil, reflects on how “saudade”, an untranslatable feeling of profound nostalgic longing, becomes a powerful source of creation. After eight years away from his roots, Kalú invites us into a space where memory, distance and identity intertwine, and art is born from absence.

Red Autumn

A Experimental Docu-Drama about the Red Army Faction's formation, and events leading up to their imprisonment and death, from 1970 to 1977.

Los habitantes del pasto

Juan Méndez Bernal leaves his house on the 9th of april of 1936 to fight in the imminent Spanish Civil War. 83 years later, his body is still one of the Grass Dwellers. The only thing that he leaves from those years on the front is a collection of 28 letters in his own writing.

Terpsichore

Terpsichore is a captivating exploration of dance as an art form, illuminating the passion, discipline, and vulnerability that transform movement into poetry. The documentary follows three distinct yet interconnected artists: Cece Trapani, an Irish dancer; Aurora Maur, a burlesque performer; and the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company (DCDC), a renowned contemporary dance ensemble. Through their stories, Terpsichore reveals the universal language of dance—one that transcends genre and speaks to the depths of human emotion. Intimate interviews and behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage offer a raw, unfiltered look at the artistry behind each performance, capturing the essence of dance as both personal expression and a bridge between artist and audience. More than a showcase of technique, Terpsichore delves into the soul of movement, celebrating its power to connect, inspire, and reveal the unspoken truths of the human spirit.

AlieNATION

This short film shot in a small town in Sweden navigates themes of nostalgia through an original monologue, reflecting on gender identity struggle and the pursuit of a new beginning in a foreign land.

Los días azules

Two Travellers to a River

When asked a question on politics, late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once answered: “I write about love to expose the conditions that don’t allow me to write about love.” In TWO TRAVELERS TO A RIVER Palestinian actress Manal Khader recites such a poem by Mahmoud Darwish: a concise reflection on how things could have been.

Deshilando Luz

A film essay that intertwines the director's gaze with that of her late mother. Beyond exploring mourning and absence as exclusively painful experiences, the film pays tribute to her mother through memories embodied by places and objects that evidence the traces of her existence. The filmmaker asks herself: What does she owe her mother for who she is and how she films? To what extent does her film belong to her?

Canale grande

A young woman is fed up with the usual consumer's television and begins to make her own television, or more correctly, closevision. She is now a reporter who wanders around Berlin with her camera and 'telecasting apparatus' on her back. Her livingroom has been transformed into a studio and here the different programs are assembled and aired: statements, interviews, realistic and phantastic programs.

Acoustic Ocean

Acoustic Ocean is an artistic exploration of the sonic ecology of marine life in the North Atlantic. Located on the Lofoten Islands in Northern Norway, the video centers on the performance of a marine-biologist diver who is using a life-size model of a submersible equipped with all sorts of hydrophones and recording devices. In this science-fictional quest, her task is to sense the submarine space for acoustic and bioluminescent forms of expression.

Rutin

An experimental half-documentary half-fiction about a young person’s routine of getting to sleep and waking up.

A Train Arrives at the Station

“This film was a gift to me. I make no claims for it, nor do I offer any apologies. It comes from work on The Thoughts That Once We Had. There was one shot we had to cut whose loss I particularly regretted. It was a shot of a train pulling into Tokyo Station from Ozu’s The Only Son (1936). So I decided to make a film around this shot, an anthology of train arrivals. It comprises 26 scenes or shots from movies, 1904-2015. It has a simple serial structure: each black & white sequence in the first half rhymes with a color sequence in the second half. Thus the first shot and the final shot show trains arriving at stations in Japan from a low camera height. In the first shot (The Only Son), the train moves toward the right; in the last shot, it moves toward the left. A bullet train has replaced a steam locomotive. So after all these years, I’ve made another structural film, although that was not my original intention.”