The International Film Festival NoFilter Kino invites you to a special screening of short films that form a collective meditation on the theme of contemporary urban life. For instance, “Overtime” by Vieri Dalla Chiesa is a hypnotic portrait of endless office work and machines creating their own autonomous ecosystem.
This program is more than just a selection of films. It is a map of the affects and anxieties of our time, an intervention into the very ways we see. In “MÉRITOCRATIE” by Stéfan Boucher, symbolic capital (the Félix award) undergoes a ritual dematerialization, laying bare the emptiness of symbolic exchange.
For a thoughtful audience, these films offer not mere images of reality, but tools for its critical rethinking through marginalized practices: noise, silence, and the radical reassembly of sensory experience.
LIKE DEW BEFORE A THUNDERBOLT VOL.1
by Benjamin Poumey
(4:50, Switzerland)
1st volume of a collection of shorts films shot on Super 8 in Geneva, inspired by Jiseiku (farewell poems) written by Samurais in the 16th and 17th centuries.
ODYSSEY
by Daniel Jaśniewski
(6:58 min, Poland)
The room I’m renting is very noisy because there’s a busy street nearby, which is why I decided to make a road movie from a bed-level perspective. I thought it would be a good way to observe the microcosm of everyday existence and how abstract it can be. The external noise becomes the narrative axis, forming the soundtrack which is composed of acoustic smog recorded from the bed and the street. While shooting, I used natural lighting and urban light pollution, which fills the room as it gets dark. I also included shots of billboards standing along the street, which seem like urban scarecrows to me.
CAFÉ KUBA: WHO DARED TO AWAKEN THE DEAD MEMORY
by David Shongo
(27:44 min, Congo)
At its core, Café Kuba explores Kinshasa through the silent presence of a mobile coffee vendor navigating the vibrant streets of the Bandal district. Filmed after the M23 rebel group’s capture of Goma, as they threatened Kinshasa, the film portrays a city on the brink of conflict. David Shongo avoids framing the vendor as a conventional protagonist. Instead, his silence becomes his strength—absorbing and reflecting the city’s tensions, frustrations, and private conversations.
LAZARUS FEEDS
by Tini Martyna Dubicka
(3:35 min, Poland)
A visual experiment on the topic of the food system within Lazarus, an inner-city district in Poznan, Poland. The local community expressed their grief over modernisation of the local farmer’s market. A return to the Earth calls for the end of violent consumption.
EPITAPH FOR DETECTIVE DOG
by Michał Krzyczkowski
(7:18 min, Poland)
A memory through the eyes of a child raised in a small Polish town. Cartoons on VHS tapes, Jesus, and the nearby slaughterhouse all become threatened when a blinding light of the future appears on the horizon.
OVERTIME
by Vieri Dalla Chiesa
(8:22 min, Italy)
The offices’ lights are always on in the big city. An untiring populace dwells within the skyscrapers in the limitless night, and the dark could not bring an end to their maniacal race. Finally, even when all the human beings are asleep, machines keep working for them. Obedient, they know no overtime.
INVASIVE SPECIES
by Risto-Pekka Blom
(5:45 min, Finland)
Invasive species are a threat to biodiversity, including all other invasive species. Note: The film includes a musical performance by an extremely harmful invasive species.
MÉRITOCRATIE
by Stéfan Boucher
(12:41 min, Canada)
Industrial and visual ballet staging the noise infused transmutation of a Félix award.
All XII NoFilter Kino programmes
At Close Quarters
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Fiction Swing
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Metanarratives & Vagrant Cinema + Food & Footage:
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Solo Soul Sauna
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Tamed Algorithms
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Through Sounds of Sirens
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Under Pressure
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