Foreigners In Universe

The works in Foreigners In Universe interrogate the fractured relationships between individuals and the systems—technological, ideological, ecological—that seek to define, confine, or erase them. Drawing on Hito Steyerl’s notion of the “poor image” and its critique of digital realism, this program embraces glitch aesthetics, hybrid media, and speculative narratives to dismantle the myth of a coherent, universal reality. Each film operates as a counter-mapping of power, whether through the colonial logics embedded in energy infrastructures (Is Every Republic Constructed on Flat Earth?), the anthropocentric gaze that objectifies non-human life (No Horses on Mars), the socio-economic violences underlying mental health crises (Days in Winter), or the weaponization of history and language in fascist propaganda (Easter).

These films reject linearity and resolution, mirroring the chaos of contemporary existence. Is Every Republic… employs solar-powered, algorithmic mediation to literalize the entrapment of “progress” within extractive paradigms, echoing Steyerl’s assertion that “the free flow of images is a euphemism for their capture.” No Horses on Mars subverts the road movie’s humanist gaze, framing the horse not as a romanticized Other but as a consciousness resisting quantification—a challenge to Laura Mulvey’s theories of spectatorship by decentralizing the human as the locus of narrative. Meanwhile, Days in Winter and Easter deploy fractured soundscapes and polyphonic voices to confront the tension between individual agency and systemic oppression, channeling Gilles Deleuze’s “society of control” through their destabilization of memory and ideology.

Collectively, these works ask: How do we navigate—or dismantle—the architectures of power that render us foreigners in our own worlds?

NO HORSES ON MARS

Bea de Visser (Netherlands, 15 min)

We experience a trailer ride on the highway and wake up from anesthesia in a veterinary clinic. ‘No horses on Mars’ is practically a road film, whose POV’s from the horse is the most effective element of the film. The horse appears as the galloping mind that resides in all domesticated horses. The human being is introduced as a screen viewer who follows the horse, wants to measure, records and knows her as an object. Ultimately, from the human perspective in the film, there seems to be a glimmer of recognition for the individuality of the horse.

EASTER

Ksenia Yurkova (Austria, 15 min)

The work studies the prerequisites of a new doctrine of war in modern Russia. Formally, it is built on a speculative polyphony of voices belonging to the older generation of the author’s family. The divisions within this micro-community were defined through origin, geography, class, “low” culture, and the ubiquitous expansion of “high” culture. These elements might have continued to coexist had they not been held hostage by aggressive propaganda, which emasculated all differences and reduced them to a single aesthetic conception of hubris.

DAYS IN WINTER

Carsten Fuhrmann, Mark Klotz (Germany, 30 min)

The film essay, ‘DAYS IN WINTER’, is a fictional reconstruction of a real event. It delves into the mind of the main protagonist as he plans his own demise.

ONE NIGHT ON SATURN

R Seventeen (UK, 7 min)

After the rave two boys come down beside the river.

RAVAGE: PART A

Tiffy Yingy Cheng (Portugal/US, 20 min)

We’re all just admins of thought! Amid a small-town war, a mediocre call center contractor gets a suitcase for her fatuous small talk.

DYSRHYTHMIA

Ygor de Oliveira (Brasil, 5 min)

Within the mind of a man overwhelmed by racing thoughts, the routine of work and a lost artistic dream intertwine. His internal struggle comes to life through dance, his only escape from the mental chaos consuming him.

IS EVERY REPUBLIC CONSRUCTED ON FLAT EARTH?

Clinton Sleeper (3 min)

In this short work created using a webcam, a python sketch, and raspberry pi running on solar power, still images of the sky are captured and sequenced every minute for the life of a single battery charge cycle. The resulting film is accompanied by a software generated sine wave vibrating at 126.2hz in harmony with the sun. Finally, a throwaway joke becomes the voiceover toward more broad questions about how we become locked into ideas about unfathomably big things. The film presumes that the current energy crisis, as defined by streaming media, artificial intelligence, and the various associated systems is also a condition of the colonizer logic adopted long before any of these technologies were conceived.

DELIVER THE MESSAGE : 25 YEARS LATER

Gina Lee Ronhovde (US, 3 min)

The messages came from another place. What does it mean? Who’s the dreamer? What year is it?

NO HORSES ON MARS

EASTER

DAYS IN WINTER

ONE NIGHT ON SATURN

RAVAGE: PART A

DYSRHYTHMIA

IS EVERY REPUBLIC CONSRUCTED ON FLAT EARTH?

DELIVER THE MESSAGE : 25 YEARS LATER

All programmes

Animation

Anthology

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Filmic Variety

Foreigners In Universe

Hidden Madness

Horror

Human & Algorithms

Leviathan’s Dream That Was Forgotten in a Moment

Solo Soul Sauna

Stiching Lines

Walls and Sounds

11th edition | 2025 | Programmes

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4th edition | 2018 | Programmes