SHORTS PROGRAM | 89 MINS

The protagonists in these five stunning, beautifully-shot, and stirring international narrative shorts must confront their past, find ways of negotiating their complicated present, and test the waters of an uncertain future. Their lives are haunted by memories, trapped between standing still and moving forward. The Swedish film BEAR is about a young man’s rekindled emotional and intimate relationship with his only love–his charming talking childhood teddy bear. In the Brazilian BURN, a young man’s final visit with his boyfriend to his now-empty childhood home before its scheduled demolition resurfaces his emotional connection to the house and to a childhood friend. In THE DISTANCE OF TIME, set in a dark and dreary near-future in Peru, a young androgenous Indigenous man faces a future without his lover, who is struggling against an unnamed disease. In ALL THE AWARDS I NEVER GAVE YOU unresolved tensions and lingering feelings are rekindled when two young Brazilian actors attending an awards ceremony unexpectedly cross paths in the bathroom. In WARSHA a Syrian migrant in Beirut finds a rare moment of solitude in the cab of the construction crane at his worksite where he can finally release his secret inner diva.