VDFF'18

Across walls, fences, and alleys, rats not only expose our boundaries of separation but make homes in them. This documentary uses the rat to explore the history of Baltimore.

A documentary essay about the relationships among Mediterranean men and their games. The film takes the form of a travelogue across Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and Turkey, and examines men, young and old, who come together like their ancestors did - to play games. During filming, however, the director suddenly faces a serious creative crisis and turns the camera on himself, turning the film into a playful homage to absurdity.

On the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean, hunters are searching for the tusks of extinct mammoths. There is a gold rush fever in the air. The price for white gold has never been so high. The thawing permafrost not only releases precious ivory. The tusk hunters find a surprisingly well-preserved mammoth carcass. Such finds are magnets for high-tech genetic scientists. They want to bring the extinct woolly mammoth back to life à la "Jurassic Park". Resurrecting the mammoth is a first manifestation of the next great technological revolution. Man becomes Creator. Genesis two point zero. A Film about the secrets and mysteries hidden within nature and the fundamental difference in view of creation and the role of man in it.

On the cassettes that have been collecting dust for 18 years, a mysterious film material is revealed. Woven with puzzling excerpts from the protagonist's diary, it is slowly revealed that the vintage footage of alien landscapes, enigmatic characters and perilous circumstances, is shot by the first Serbian to climb Mount Everest. Reaching the very limits of human capabilities and entering a state of aimlessness and deep loss, the man eventually brings back haunted memories that range from the absurd to the mystic. His dream of adventure didn't culminate in a victorious roar, reveals a quote from his journal, but ended in a scream of the defeated. In a journey to eternal glory, and back to the banality of everyday life, he changed in ways he never intended.

Chilly Gonzales is a Grammy-winning composer, virtuoso pianist and entertainer. Criss-crossing between rap, electro and solo piano music, he became the outrageous pop performer who invited himself to the ivory tower of classical music. The eccentric artist inspires and collaborates with the likes of Feist, Jarvis Cocker, Peaches, Daft Punk and Drake. Change seems to be the only constant in Gonzales' journey. Every time his audience thinks it has finally figured him out, he makes a radical move and breaks with its expectations. The cinematic documentary Shut Up And Play The Piano follows Gonzales from his native Canada to late 90's underground Berlin, and via Paris to the world's great philharmonic halls. It dives deep into the dichotomy of Gonzales' stage persona, where self-doubt and megalomania are just two sides of the same coin. The playfulness of his character is mirrored in the look of the film. Using Gonzales' extensive video archive in a rather unorthodox manner, Shut Up And Play The Piano explores his persona by interweaving newly shot interviews and concert scenes with fictional materials of totally different time periods. Reality and fiction blur together as we embark on a trip through Chilly Gonzales' world.

A western Cosplayer (costume player) of the popular cyber diva Hatsune Miku moves to Tokyo and gets to know the otaku community - obsessive manga fans. Her journey explores identity through cosplay and the fandom of the cyber diva Hatsune Miku, epitomizing collective fantasy as she is fan created. The film demonstrate the relevance of this behavior globally in terms of collective fantasy, with voice overs woven of lyrics fans wrote for Hatsune Miku.

My father is my mother's brother is a portrait of one family. It moves between the social bottom and the depths of bohemian life. The artist and singer Tolik, his sister Anya and his niece Katya are struggling through the daily life filled with love, soul searching, loneliness and illness.

THEATRE OF WAR is an innovative feature documentary that reveals the personal stories of both British and Argentinean former soldiers whose lives were deeply affected by the Falklands war. The stylized individual narratives, where real experience is turned into fiction by men re-enacting their own memories, reveals deeper emotional truths about the consequences of war. It is a unique collaboration between Argentinean and British timed for the 35th anniversary of the war. In a film set turned time machine, those who fought are transported into the past to reconstruct their war and aftermath memories in acclaimed Argentinian artist Lola Arias' latest work.