INTERNATIONAL | 78 min | Partial Subtitles
Tickets: $15/PWYW
Co-presented by Guelph Civic Museum
Co-Presented by Ed Video
This international short film showcase looks at support, solidarity, and community in times of upheaval, war, and environmental or social change.
and the story remains
Darya Maljesi | CANADA | 6 min
*World Premiere*
After years of silence, a woman returns to a memory she was once forbidden to recall. As she develops forgotten images, the past surfaces in fragments of light, grain, and the slow emergence of a face. The film lingers between past and present, exploring whether enforced silence can wound more deeply than the trauma itself.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Darya Maljesi
I came to cinema through documentary, where my language began to take form in the encounter with the real. The movement between reality, imagination, and history mirrors how I experience the world as embodied, unstable, and deeply felt. Drawing from theatre and nonfiction practice, I work with memory, witnessing, and fragile images to explore how personal experience intersects with political and emotional landscapes.
Filmmaking, for me, is not just an art form but a way of staying alive to the world , a sensory and ethical practice of attention, intimacy, and becoming.
Eighteen Mill Street
Josh Weissbach | SWEDEN | 14 min
EIGHTEEN MILL STREET introduces Ukrainian artists Marianna Tarish and Nikita Gryshko soon after their relocation to Sweden because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The film explores Tarish and Gryshko’s relationships to intimate spaces and how they have been impacted due to their experiences at the start of the war while still living in the Ukrainian city of Kherson and as part of their journey to Sweden.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Josh Weissbach
Josh Weissbach is an experimental filmmaker. His films have been shown worldwide in such venues as Ann Arbor Film Festival, Light Field, Courtisane Festival, European Media Art Festival, 25 FPS Festival, First Look at Museum of the Moving Image, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Festival dei Popoli, and Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris. He has won jury prizes at Ithaca Experimental, Montreal Underground, Videoex, ICDOCS, Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, and Berlin Revolution Film Festival. He is the recipient of a 2021 Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, a 2020 Moving Image Fund Early Development Grant from the LEF Foundation, a 2018 LightPress Grant from the Interbay Cinema Society, a 2015 LEF Fellowship from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, a 2013 Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for Emerging Artists from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, and a 2008 Cary Grant Film Award from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA. A selection of Josh’s films is in distribution at Light Cone in Paris, France.
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Malakye Tsosie ⋅ USA ⋅ 16 min
There are fewer fluent speakers of Díne Bizaad (the Navajo Language) on the Navajo Nation.
Despite this, there is hope for the future, thanks to a local radio station that broadcasts in Navajo to thousands of listeners every day. Notably, the director embarks on a journey that highlights the language's resilience, encountering revitalization efforts on the reservation and finding hope for future generations to protect it.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Malakye Tsosie
Malakye Tsosie, who is from the Navajo Nation, aims to tell honest, unapologetic stories that reflect his cultural identity. He wants to join a group of storytellers who honor and connect with people's stories and truths.
AXOMAMA
Tracy Valcárcel | CANADA | 26 min
AXOMAMA follows the life of Alberto and his relatives, a family of potato custodians in the Peruvian Andes. The film weaves a parallel between the potato’s journey and the narrator’s complex tracing of her own origins, grappling with questions of identity and belonging. From a sacred tuber to one of the world’s most ubiquitous foods, the humble potato emerges as both metaphor and mirror of resistance in the face of survived displacement.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Tracy Valcárcel
AXOMAMA follows the life of Alberto and his relatives, a family of potato custodians in the Peruvian Andes. The film weaves a parallel between the potato’s journey and the narrator’s complex tracing of her own origins, grappling with questions of identity and belonging. From a sacred tuber to one of the world’s most ubiquitous foods, the humble potato emerges as both metaphor and mirror of resistance in the face of survived displacement.
Fragment on War
Nikolas Candido | BRAZIL | 15 min
Singer-songwriter Cassidy Waring has long used music to process trauma. Now, as she prepares to release If I Had Only Been Better, an album inspired by her past, she returns to Calgary to confront the family tragedy that shaped her life. Joined by her younger brother, she seeks answers from those who knew their family. Blending raw conversations, home videos, and music, Hearse Chasing explores grief, resilience, and the healing power of art.
DIRECTOR BIO:
Nikolas Candido
Nikolas Candido (born 1991, Brazil) is a filmmaker and writer who graduated from the International School of Cinema and Television in Cuba (EICTV). He studied comparative literature at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, where he taught Super 8 courses. In 2022, he completed a Masters 2 in documentary filmmaking at the École du Film Documentaire in partnership with the University of Grenoble.
He has collaborated with several filmmakers at the forefront of contemporary and experimental documentary cinema in Latin America, including Celina Escher, Rafael Ramírez Pupo, Jeissy Trompiz and Tetsuya Maruyama. His film Fragments à Céline had its world premiere at Jihlava 2021. In 2022, his portrait film Lumière, shot on Super 8, won the award for best artistic design at the São Paulo Cultural Centre’s Super OFF festival. The Sound of Time, a film in which he participated as a screenwriter, actor and co-producer, was awarded Best Experimental Documentary at Jihlava 2022 in the Fascinations section. His work Vive les fragments, co-directed with Tetsuya Maruyama, is one of 21 works selected for Mekas 100, a tribute to Jonas Mekas to mark his centenary, and was selected for the Ultra Cinéma Festival and the Film Diary NYC festival. He is currently developing his first feature-length documentary on the renowned Brazilian writer Silviano Santiago in partnership with Notte Americana.
