From a psychedelic beach fever dream to the current housing landscape in Montreal, the films in this program play with form and pacing, creating new worlds to delve into the old human struggles to connect.

Directors Swaroop Elamon, Mindslip and Bruna Arbex, Introduction both use humour in flipped ways to scratch on underlying tensions for people living on the margins. The seen and unseen is explored in Solara Thanh-Bình Đặng’s poetic formalistic work, Lệ
similar to how phantom city zoning creates real demarcation for communities in Eli Jean Tahchi’s Neighbors in my backyard. Futuristic worlds are used as a story engine to understand human isolation for Charter directors Asif Limbada & Alireza Shojaei, and The Future Above Us director Vanessa Magic. In Cloud Striker, the western thriller is given a new lease with A.W. Hopkins’ depiction of an Indigenous father’s quest to find his son lost in the residential school system.

Connecting all these projects are deeply curious filmmakers using all the filmic language at their disposal for audiences to experience worlds outside of their purview, and possibly shift their perspective. - Safia Abdigir