Director Jean LE PELTIER
Main Actors Jean LE PELTIER and Vincent LÉCUYER 
Duration 18 minutes

Belgian short film. Vincent, an actor more at ease declaiming on stage than declaring his love, tired of hanging around on dating applications and looking for love in vain, is marked by his exchanges with an old man who reminds him that neither his shyness nor his fear of looking ridiculous will disappear with time.

Director Reinis Pētersons
Animator Mārtiņš Dūmi 
Duration 10 minutes

Latvian animation film. A story about a bear who works as an acrobat-motorcyclist in a traveling circus during the day but yearns for wildlife and forest where his true happiness seems to dwell at night. One day, the bear decides to leave everything and takes off to the forest.

Director Reinis Pētersons is an artist. He uses charcoal drawings, a very well-known drawing technique in the world of fine art in Latvia, but was never before used in animation until the production of this film. Pētersons uses charcoal dust as well as sawdust to create vibrant and deep texture to the image. Ursus has participated in more than 70 international festivals and has gotten considerable recognition in Japan, Norway, USA, Estonia and many other places.

Director Jānis Cimmermanis
Producer Māris Putniņš
Duration 8:55 minutes

Next to a little, rustic house a Latvian youngster is siting, hair the color of straw and dressed in nettle clothing. He plucks the kokle and suddenly the whole of Latvia’s history unfolds and revolves around him and his little hut. He just barely manages to change the uniforms while hearing orders in many different tongues.

The animation film is a proof of the power that the Art of Cinema has. With skillful puppet animation and almost no dialogue, animators use sound effects as well as short fragments of historic music to tell the whole history of Latvia in 9 minutes…and they do it with good sense of humor as well as healthy dose of self-irony.

Director, Scriptwriter, Artist,  Composer, Montage, Producer Vladimirs Leščovs
Duration 8 minutes

Latvian animation film. Under the repair work next to a psychiatric hospital an accident accrues, an electrician falls and loses conciseness and ends up on the other side of the wall. It is a film about what happens when electricity goes out. An animation film for adults, Director Vladimirs Leščovs is an excellent animator and storyteller. His films have gained recognition at the Annecy Festival, Animafest and the International animation film festival in Stuttgart among many others.

Director Fatima Matousse 
Cast Aicha Saadouni, Fatima Ait Abdelmoumen, Hassna Zakir
Duration 15 minutes

Family in Exile is an intimate documentary, set in Morocco, about the conflicts within the filmmaker’s family. It is a daughter’s quest to understand her father’s refusal, over many years, to interact with her and her mother. Through a series of revealing conversations with family members, stories touching on gender tensions, religious beliefs, and parent/child relationships are evoked. It is a personal visual letter of resistance by a daughter to a dictatorial father. Fatima Matousse is a Moroccan independent filmmaker studying an MFA in Documentary Film at the City College of New York. After spending several years working as a program manager for several Non-Profit Organizations in Morocco, Fatima decided to become a visual storyteller. She obtained the Fulbright Scholarship to travel to New York to pursue her career. Over the past years, Fatima won several grants that allowed her to participate in various training in Turkey, Germany, and the U.S.A. Matousse holds an MA in Cultural and Media Studies from Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University in Fez which concluded with a thesis titled "Rewriting Her Story Through Documentary films: A Feminist and Postcolonial Approach to Ali Essafi and Dalila Ennadre's Documentaries" where she focused on the history of marginalized women in Morocco. Fatima won the award of Best Cinematography with her film debut "Family in Exile" which chronicles stories within her own family.

Director: Andrei Tache Codreanu
Producer: UNATC - The National University of Theater and Film I.L. Caragiale, Bucharest, Romania
Duration 13:38 minutes

Romanian short fiction comedy. Theodor’s parents, a wealthy and pretentious couple, arrange a festive lunch for celebrating their son’s birthday and meeting his girlfriend together with her parents. But “Le Déjeuner” would go in a different direction than Theodor’s parents could imagine and things will be going out of control.