Benasco(2024)

Magnicidios Poe(es)

The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.

Sirens 77 True Love(en)

Two gay men in Japan discuss the end of their respective relationships.

Enys Men(en)

A wildlife volunteer on an uninhabited island off the British coast descends into a terrifying madness that challenges her grip on reality and pushes her into a living nightmare.

Inland Empire(en)

An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

Barbara(en)

Previously lost exploitation film which chronicles the sexual journey of a teenager who introduces her own family to the liberated ways of the free love rebellion.

11 Letters Inside(ru)

This is a story about a man who believes that he has two “selves” - external and internal. That is, an organism is a certain conglomerate of cells, each of which is a separate individual. This hybrid creature has a certain common personal “I” that uses the entire organism, and is the organism itself, which has its own will. According to the character, one can communicate with him, which is what he is trying to do. He wants to reach him and comes up with different ways of communication: injecting substances under the skin or intravenously, tattooing texts on the body, swallowing objects. The answer would come in the form of a rash or other physical manifestation that had to be interpreted. As a result, communication is carried out and the second “I” agrees to die.

Harta Cutrura(en)

Unsatisfied photographer captures the photo of an eccentric homeless man. But, what seemed to be the answer to her lack of inspiration carries a much greater emotional responsibility.

Midríase(pt)

Is the eye the window of the soul? - Mydriasis is a movie that reflects about the early discoveries of queerness and its impact on the self perception of a person.

Salem's Flames(en)

A chauvinistic young man pays a visit to a new nightclub named "Salem's Flames", unaware that he is about to meet his comeuppance at the hands of a coven of witches.

House(ja)

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

The Scary Movie(en)

Martina and Sonja, cross-dress in vampire capes and werewolf claws, re-enacting familiar horror tropes. A corresponding soundtrack of stock screams and "scary" music suggests that the girls' toying with gender roles and power dynamics may have dire consequences.

THE WORLD IS CONSUMING ME AND I CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM THE FALL(pt)

Feel(en)

Within a dense and mysterious forest two figures emerge, ADAM, urgently searching for something, and ELLE, desperately pursuing him. He will not answer her urgent questions and rushes ahead leaving her alone and isolated. The power of forest forces these individuals to confront their fears and find some kind of unity through coming together with a childish game.

ZAPPER!(en)

In a surreal universe where bananas fire laser beams and soup cans are used as grenades, a wacky cast of gangsters are thrown into a deadly game to battle it out over a mystical longboard in this trippy take on the Tarantino crime genre.

Quando Ele Deitou Pela Penúltima Vez(pt)

Bed & Breakfast(en)

After a feverish dream, a paralysed dreamer finds themselves trapped within a purgatory of their sleep, as they begin to fuse with their bed. The purgatory begins to refract the dreamers mind, as they are confronted with multiple incarnations of themselves struggling to awake. Bed & Breakfast is inspired by the neurodivergent experience of procrastination, and inertia. Questioning the nature of memory, identity, and the fabric of reality, by plunging you into the psyche of a paralysed dreamer where reality is far repressed.

Foreign Surface(en)

An experimental reinterpretation of 1950s science fiction B movies.

Leda + Swans(en)

“Leda + Swans” depicts an infernal, mythic birth of cinema, dredging the violence and horror from Wallace McCutcheon’s comic short film “Photographing a Female Crook” (1904). Leda, who may or may not be a falsely accused young woman, is brought in for a mugshot by two officers. She first attempts to avoid the camera’s gaze, and, when overpowered and manhandled, contorts her face to ruin the photograph. However, her small rebellion proves futile; she was already being recorded, objectified, mapped, and co-opted by the Godhead of the director. As her body and image are repurposed and transmuted ad infinitum, the filmic universe also explodes into a supernova. What is born out of this suffering and manipulation is another example of our sublime medium and modern muse. She will not be last the Leda, and she may not even be the first. Who is the guilty party here? Is beauty a chimera in traditional cinema? Has the ephemeral cinema of the attractions and distractions era gone anywhere?

Untitled Fall '95(en)

Untitled Fall '95 takes the form of a wryly humorous video diary of an art school student (sharply played by Bag) in the midst of “finding herself” in New York City. We can see the diarist physically and emotionally evolving throughout her eight semesters in the Big Apple. Such onscreen “confessionals” stem from the first major example of reality TV, The Real World. Interspersed throughout are commercial-like vignettes that further critique what it’s like to live in the world today. In Untitled Fall '95, Bag displays a profound self-awareness that evokes empathy on behalf of the viewer, despite her work’s glaring artificiality.

Empty Memories of Broken Hearts(en)

An atmospheric look into loneliness and heartbreak, all through a highly experimental lens.