Haute école d'art et de design – Genève (HEAD – Genève)

Laetitia is not happy! For the sake of her daughter, whose birthday it is, she straps on her skis for the first time. A few falls later, all she dreams about is giving her rival, who has snatched away her husband and talented skier, a big slap in the face. Her best friend has nothing against it, quite the opposite!

Two young men are playing in a bathtub. Then a third and fourth slip in to join them. They are called Émile and they are looking for their “perfect mother” when a fifth man arrives, the Émile who reconciles them all.

Lucien, a 28-year-old cabaret musician, suffers from pathological shyness. Tonight, instead of doing his standard pianist's routine, he wants to get up on the stage and sing his lyrics for the first time in front of an audience. Waiting in the wings, he calms his stage fright with alcohol and cigarettes. He wants to make it through this hell, which will also be his liberation.

Through paintings that interact on the principle of Russian dolls, we are drawn along the swirling path of the thoughts of a pilgrim, a solitary walker.

Ira Melnichenko, a young Ukrainian refugee in Switzerland with her brother, creates a doll in her own image, through which she revisits the story of a family torn apart by the death of her father, a 2D animator in Kyiv, destroyed by alcohol and dereliction. In her eyes – those of a child forced to grow up too fast – we read tenderness and bewilderment in the face of a vanished world.

To escape from a lack of perspective in Kosovo, Hana decides to resort to the services of Emir, an illegal smuggler in Serbia that will drive her to Hungary. On the way, complications arise as Emir's unscrupulous associates try to take advantage of Hana's vulnerability. In the midst of the frozen winter, Hana's courage and determination and Emir's principles and beliefs will be put to the test.

Gabriel, a young Georgian man, has a love relationship with a transgender woman Amaia, who lives in the Tbilisi suburbs. Embedded in the reality of Georgia, their relationship is threatened. They are given over to the sheer strength of their feelings and are fragile in a violently hostile environment. A narrative of exemplary discreetness.

Adrianna, a young DJ artist and activist in the queer community, has learned to evolve in a world that is sometimes too stifling for her. By creating her own family and learning trades in which she can use all her creativity, Adrianna is spreading her wings.

While the vultures squabble over food, life carries on as usual for a small community in the Spanish mountains. The elderly teach the young to hunt. Those still too young, (im)patiently await their turn. A girl sets out with her donkey. A farewell and a new beginning.

The prisoner Klara Wendel was supposed to be deported from west to east Switzerland. But strange incidents occur during her transport, and all her companions disappear. Klara is found wearing a nun’s habit. To get to the heart of the matter, a tribunal is hastily set up in a barn. The judges want to find out how Klara has managed to escape and why she’s dressed as a nun. On trial by men, Klara somehow manages to take over and become the director of both the trial and the film.

Andreas will soon be twenty. It’s a special moment in which the threads of his life become inextricably entwined into a knot. Entering the adult world and slipping back towards childhood. Studying, football matches with mates, and family life centred around his father’s workshop. A new relationship with a boy his own age and a long-time “friend” who works for his father becomes too much for him. A moment when Andreas has to choose, a knot he tries to unravel, overcome or flee.

Fortune and Kevine, two inseparable friends, play on the same first-division football team in Yaoundé, Cameroon. To achieve their dream of playing for a foreign club, they must fight to gain recognition as female footballers. Kevine signs with the renowned FC Nantes and leaves her country, while Fortune hopes to join her one day.

Luis, a young worker on a farm, helps Vasco finish a contract to cut a huge amount of wood before winter, while his wife in Portugal is about to give birth. In the meantime, the tension increases and the distance becomes unbearable.

Rayane, a black-market delivery man, goes on one fraudulent mission after another to raise enough money to pay for his sick father's operation. After a mission goes wrong, he returns home, money in hand, and comes back to reality: his father has in fact been dead for two months.

Baghdad, early 1990s, in a reality where humans have been replaced by cyborgs, a young couple and their newborn try to flee their country where war has just broken out.

Rokhaya, a young director, returns to her home in Dakar to make a film about a local historical figure. Throughout her research, which consists of interviews with local personalities, discussions with her team and fictional scenes shot on location, we discover the story of Aline Sitoe Diatta.

Between the walls of a prison, a man takes his time: cleaning the floor, drinking tea and telling his story. He remembers his childhood in his homeland and the sea where he grew up. Salah El Amri offers a disturbing perspective on the deprivation of freedom, through a man’s words recorded with striking temporality and chiaroscuro.

Tatum, a young man in his forties suffering from a deep depression, is hired as a museum guard. Tasked with looking after a sculpture that exerts a mysterious fascination on the public, he gradually falls under its spell himself. He protects it as if his very existence depended on it, at the risk of losing touch with reality.

A group of people get together in a strange house and are confronted with the coming of a new world.

At dawn, a group of friends meet on the rooftop of a school in Athens. It's their ritual. Overlooking the city, this symbolic place will be theirs until the next morning.