13-05-2026 GIEFF-Films
Student Film Festival
The Fishers of Mainmahla, Intertidal, Ea - Home on Givær, Milking, Layers of Confidence, Caution Colonialism, Dragging Chains, As I Witness, Then...Now...Forever, My Lens, My Land, A Happy Place, We Might Be Alike, Unveiling Voices, Almost in Russia, Dating in the Dark,
The Fishers of Mainmahla
2024, 45 min
On Meinmahla Island, a community of fisher families navigates mangrove creeks where ancient rituals, unpredictable tides, and salt-water crocodiles shape each day. Following a couple who leave their daughters behind while they journey deep into the wetlands, “The Fishers of Mainmahla” opens a window onto a floating world sustained by skill, courage, and quiet faith. As the fishers work, struggle, and remember, a portrait emerges of people bound to a landscape where every tide carries both danger and devotion, revealing their relationship to both the spiritual and natural worlds in this beautiful, watery landscape.
Screening: 13.05.2026 13:00
Intertidal
United Kingdom, 2024, 20 min
Location: United Kingdom
A Film by: Marina Espinach, Olivia Hird
On the southeast coast of England, the unstable shoreline gives rise to fleeting, mystical encounters between people and the more-than-human world. Over a single tidal cycle, fishermen, bait pumpers, machine cranes, and a meteorologist appear and disappear with the shifting waterline, while lugworms and molluscs surface and sink in their own steady rhythms. Like the sea itself, the enduring connector of the local and the global, this restless edge becomes a meeting ground where local lives, labor, and activities brush up against wider natural and human forces, creating a space of temporary, delicate connection.
Screening: 13.05.2026 13:55
Ea - Home on Givær
Norway, 2025, 36 min
Location: Norway
A Film by: Ursula Möll
On the windswept island of Givær in northern Norway, Olaug Olsen tends sheep and cares for the eider ducks that return each year to nest along the shore. Continuing a centuries-old practice of mutual care between humans and seabirds, she prepares shelters and nesting places while wondering how many birds will return this season and whether her favourite will be among them. This character-driven documentary follows her dedicated stewardship of all the animals she and her family are building a home for on Givær. As eider populations decline, Olaug reflects on shared belonging and sustaining the exchange between humans and animals.
Screening: 13.05.2026 14:25
Milking
Norway, 2025, 30 min
Location: Denmark
A Film by: Albert Osbæck Adelkilde
On a Danish dairy farm shaped by automation and data, cows move through feeding systems and milking robots that register, clean, and extract milk without human touch. Milking follows the rhythms of a herd within a technological environment where animals, machines, and humans continuously shape each other. There is no voiceover, no interviews and no explanatory text. Instead, the film stays with the rhythm of the milking robot, the noise of the herd and a cleaning cycle starting up in the background. The barn is never quiet, something is always produced, even at night, as bodies are tracked, measured and optimised within the system.
Screening: 13.05.2026 15:10
Layers of Confidence
The Netherlands, 2025, 28 min
Location: New Zealand
A Film by: Lou Boshart
Across Wellington, New Zealand, an extensive network of traps, cameras, and digital sensors monitors the city’s rat population. Introduced by humans, rats now place heavy pressure on native birdlife and fragile ecosystems. The monitoring system turns their movements into streams of data, mapping activity across the city. As rats come to be known mainly through data points and traces on screens, they are framed as killable targets within a campaign of eradication. In this uneasy space between conservation and control, questions emerge about knowledge, responsibility, and the ways humans learn to see the animals who share their world.
Screening: 13.05.2026 15:50
Caution Colonialism
Germany, 2025, 29 min
Location: Germany
A Film by: Elisa Erpenbeck, Mara Müller
Ningiree Kauvee, a young OvaHerero activist, travels from Otjiwarongo in Namibia to Göttingen, a German city whose colonial past has an impact on the present. As she prepares a performative city tour, she searches for the hidden traces of this history. Her path leads through university collections that hold human remains from Namibia and to places once tied to colonial education and power. At memorials and graves where colonial profiteers are honoured while their victims remain unnamed, Ningiree confronts the imbalance of remembrance and turns her tour into an act of self empowerment.
Screening: 13.05.2026 16:45
Dragging Chains
Norway, 2024, 30 min
Location: Grenada
A Film by: Emil Victor Hvidtfeldt
Dragging Chains moves between observation and conversation to explore Grenada’s Jab Jab tradition. Filmed during the 2023 carnival season, the work immerses viewers in a field rich in symbolism, defined by engine oil, chains, horned helmets, and thunderous beats. The film foregrounds spectacle, drawing attention to the visual and auditory intensity that shapes perceptions of Jab Jab as wild and confrontational. Moving between spectacle and testimony, immersion and reflection, it invites viewers to look beyond the exotic and engage with the deeper social, historical, and cultural forces shaping this contemporary display of resistance.
Screening: 13.05.2026 17:25
As I Witness
USA, Venezuela, Bolivaria, 2024, 8,5 min
Location: USA
A Film by: Pamela Andrea Martinez Barrera
As I Witness explores the act of writing as a way to collapse past and present while confronting the experience of witnessing ongoing colonial violence against Palestinian bodies and land. As images of violence circulate and desensitize viewers, the film searches for ways to continue witnessing without losing emotional response. Through writing on skin as ritual, it honors the dead and asserts the right to name martyrs, transforming the body into a surface of memory. Interweaving testimonies, archival sounds, and political discourse, the film holds grief, care, and resistance in tension while insisting on witnessing as an act against erasure.
Trailer of Film: here
Screening: 13.05.2026 18:05
Then ... Now ... Forever
India, 2025, 15 min
Location: India
A Film by: Hemant Kumar
In Haridwar, Hindu priests have kept genealogical registers for centuries, recording family lineages in carefully preserved books. These archives carry deep cultural and emotional significance, holding names, relationships, and histories within their pages. Through quiet observation of this practice, the film reflects on how memory, identity, and belonging are shaped through written lineage, while offering a meditative glimpse into this space. Hemant Kumar hopes, through his film, to hold space for such fragile inheritances while finding a voice between tradition and contemporary storytelling.
See filmmakers
Screening: 13.05.2026 18:20
My Lens, My Land
USA, 2024, 23,5 min
Location: China
A Film by: Ke Chen
On the high grasslands of Amdo in Tibet, 4,300 meters above sea level, the Tibetan nomad Daze documents life on the plateau. The film follows Daze and his family, whose daily life is closely attuned to the rhythms of nature and Buddhist belief. Through scenes of herding, conversations, and reflection, his films observe traditions intertwined with the land. As grassland degradation intensifies, Daze records the fragile balance between people, animals, and place. Rather than offering resolution, My Lens, My Land observes Daze negotiating uncertainty between land, livelihood, and the generations to come.
Website: here
Trailer of Film: here
Screening: 13.05.2026 18:45
A Happy Place
Belgium, 2025, 22 min
Location: Belgium, Hungary, India, Portugal
A Film by: Siddhant Sarin
Happy, an undocumented Indian immigrant, spends his days working in a small corner shop in Brussels where his life unfolds within its narrow walls. Each morning begins with quiet determination as he maintains the routines that sustain him. At night, phone calls reveal the harsher realities of illegal migration and the pressure of supporting a family far away. Fear of deportation lingers as he dreams of reuniting with his wife and child. Drawing on shared experiences of migration and isolation, Siddhant Sarin offers an intimate portrait of longing, endurance, and the silent weight carried by many South Asian men living abroad.
Trailer of Film: here
Screening: 13.05.2026 20:00
We Might Be Alike
Germany, 2025, 17,5 min
Location: Germany, Iran
A Film by: Monirsadat Jazaeri
In a patriarchal society where women’s voices are silenced, Roya chose freedom over the custody of her young son and left Iran for Germany. More than twenty years later, she turns the camera on her past, confronting the lasting consequences of exile, absence, and maternal loss. Through an intimate exchange of letters with her son Mani, now an adult, they navigate memories of separation, longing, and love while searching for a way to reconnect. Moving between past and present, the film explores motherhood shaped by distance, time, and the fragile hope of rebuilding a bond once broken.
Screening: 13.05.2026 20:25
Unveiling Voices
United Kingdom, 2025, 37 min
Location: United Kingdom
A Film by: Smriti Singh
Unveiling Voices is a participatory documentary created with four Indian women living in the United Kingdom who film their own lives over ten weeks. Without voiceover or external mediation, the film unfolds through everyday moments, building a portrait of identity, migration, and belonging. Through routines, phone calls, solitude, and creative expression, it reflects on memory, distance, and the experience of living between cultures. Constructed from self-shot footage and collaborative editing, the film foregrounds agency and authorship, allowing each voice to shape its own narrative and challenge simplified representations of migrant women.
Screening: 13.05.2026 20:45
Discussion
Almost in Russia
Norway, 2023, 33 min
Location: Norway
A Film by: Sanni Marjaana Naukkarinen
In the far northeast of Norway, a border town has long defined itself through its proximity to Russia, even turning it into a tourist attraction for Western visitors. In 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, cross-border contact is suspended and the town is left in uncertainty. Visitors still arrive to gaze across the border and seek a sense of tension reminiscent of the Cold War. In an observational style, the film follows these tours and the locals who live alongside the border, exploring how ideas of place, distance, and conflict are shaped through storytelling, perception, and imagination.
Screening: 13.05.2026 22:15
Dating in the Dark
Germany, 2025, 51 min
In a remote village, where there is still no electricity, young Pa-O men walk along dark mountain paths each evening to visit the homes of women they hope to court. By firelight, conversations unfold after long days in the fields, filled with shy declarations, teasing questions, and bursts of laughter. The centuries old ritual offers a rare glimpse into a courtship tradition shaped by community and patience. Remembering an early encounter with this custom, the filmmaker returned years later to document the practice before it fades in a rapidly changing country.
Screening: 13.05.2026 23:00