16-05-2026 GIEFF-Films
Macula, Making Space, You In This City, This City Inside You, Shape of Absence, Death in Palermo, Only if the Baby Cries..., Make it Look Real, Ichi: Marks in Time, Oceanbone, Shiva Linga: A Visual Quest, Have You Seen My Gods?,
Macula
Mexico, 2025, 25 min
Location: Mexico
A Film by: Mariana X. Rivera
At the center of the eye, the macula fixes images onto the retina, a fragile point of vision that shapes how we see. As Sonia gradually loses her sight to macular degeneration, her daughter turns to film as a way to approach silences surrounding her own gestation and early life. Through this intimate journey, personal memory unfolds alongside what remains unspoken, revealing how individual histories are tied to collective experience. Moving between presence and absence, the film becomes a space of inquiry, affirming the right to emotional memory and the need to give voice to what has long been withheld.
Trailer of Film: here
Screening: 16.05.2026 09:00
Making Space
India, 2024, 13,5 min
Location: India
A Film by: Nikita Parikh
In a neighbourhood in Ahmedabad, cut off from the city by a landfill and a highway, Alsana lives with her family, who moved there after the 2002 riots in search of safety. In a place where space is scarce, she claims a small corner of her own, shaped by her own rules. Through her drawings and careful observations, she processes the world around her, reflecting on inequality and her own identity. Her stubbornness, or “dheet,” and refusal to be confined show strongly in her art. Moving between inner and outer worlds, the film traces how Alsana navigates her environment while holding onto her voice and imagination.
Screening: 16.05.2026 09:30
You In This City, This City Inside You
India, 2025, 28,5 min
Location: India
A Film by: Amartya Ray
Through a series of unanswered phone calls, an unnamed narrator guides us through glimpses of everyday life unfolding across Bombay in this intimate diary film. A young migrant man working as a hotel cook shares reflections on dreams, fears, and survival in a city shaped by constant change. When he loses his job, the threat of eviction deepens his uncertainty. The film becomes a lyrical portrait of migrant experience and urban life. As Amartya Ray states, this film is his letter to Bombay and its migrant residents, filled with soft observations, moments of lyricism, and a love for life.
Trailer of Film: here
Screening: 16.05.2026 09:45
Discussion after the last film.
Shape of Absence
China, 2025, 21,5 min
Location: China
A Film by: Yitong Lu
In this experimental documentary, the loss of loved ones leads the narrator to search for traces of her past existence. As her homeland undergoes rapid transformation, she experiences a growing detachment from memory, a condition echoed across many cities in China. Through poetic language and carefully composed imagery shaped by the filmmaker’s attention to texture and psychological feeling, the film creates a contemplative mental space beyond concrete reality. As Yitong Lu suggests, the work emerges through intuitive, image-driven and written expression, where form and memory unfold together.
Screening: 16.05.2026 11:00
Death in Palermo
Italy, 2024, 65 min
Location: Italy
A Film by: Caterina Pasqualino
In Morire a Palermo filmmaker and anthropologist Caterina Pasqualino reveals the tragic farce behind Palermo’s Rotoli cemetery and its treatment of the dead. More than fifteen hundred deceased have been waiting for years while their grief-stricken relatives are held hostage to bureaucracy, political neglect, and in some cases Mafiosi interference in their struggle for a final resting place. Pasqualino meets Palermitans who maintain complex relationships with their deceased loved ones and steps into their lives to explore the fragile border between life, death, and the poetic desire for remembrance and rebirth.
Trailer of Film: here
Screening: 16.05.2026 11:35
Only if the Baby Cries...
India, 2024, 15 min
Location: India
A Film by: Shadab Farooq
In the world’s only deaf-mute village, silence dominates as Misra Khatoon approaches childbirth. Villagers gather outside her home and beat drums seeking a response from the newborn. The film observes the anxieties and hopes of Misra Khatoon and Mohammad Iqbal while documenting the village’s culture shaped by deaf-mutism. By spending time with the community, it captures candid moments of daily life, showing how residents have adapted to their shared condition. Naturalistic visuals, static camera work, and amplified sounds immerse viewers in the village and highlight the resilience, ingenuity, and traditions of its people.
See filmmakers
Screening: 16.05.2026 14:00
Make it Look Real
Belgium, 2024, 67 min
Location: Pakistan
A Film by: Danial Shah
A local photo studio in Pakistan serves as a vibrant cultural hub where personal dreams and community connections are vividly brought to life through photography. The filmmaker, a displaced native, partners with Sakhi, a passionate photographer yearning for a life abroad, to explore the aesthetics and complex economics of image-making shaped by socio-political influences and social class. As customers enter with their unique fantasies and desires, each photograph emerges as a powerful representation of their aspirations, reflecting the intricate interplay between identity and longing.
Website: here
Screening: 16.05.2026 14:25
Ichi: Marks in Time
United Kingdom, 2023, 71 min
Location: Nigeria
A Film by: Paul Basu, Christopher Thomas Allen
Ichi: Marks in Time explores culture, colonialism, and memory through scarification in the Igbo-speaking Umudioka community in Nigeria. In 1911, Northcote Thomas photographed men whose faces were covered with scarification marks known as ‘ichi’. When these photographs are reintroduced to the Umudioka community in Neni, they provoke a cultural revival as history is retold and re-enacted. The Umudioka people, custodians of ichi, recall it as a sign of nobility and protection against enslavement before its suppression in the 1930s by missionaries. The film reflects on colonial legacies through collaborative storytelling with the community.
Screening: 16.05.2026 16:00
Oceanbone
United States, United States, 2025, 9,5 min
Location: United States
A Film by: Lani Cupchoy
Stolen ancestors lie in museum vaults, waiting to return home. Oceanbone is a poetic and community-driven documentary about the repatriation of Indigenous ancestors stolen, studied, and silenced through colonial theft. Across oceans and centuries, they remain displaced, prompting urgent calls for return. Anchored by an interview with Dr. Tarisi Vunidilo, the film brings together four Native Pacific Island storytellers who speak through loss, resistance, and homecoming. It traces museum spaces, ancestral practices, and the Pacific Ocean as a living presence, revealing the struggle to restore relationships, sovereignty, and memory.
Website: here
Screening: 16.05.2026 17:20
Shiva Linga: A Visual Quest
Germany, Nepal, 2025, 27 min
Location: Germany, Nepal
A Film by: Deepak Tolange
Shiva Linga: A Visual Quest is a visual-archival research project tracing a chaturmukha Shiva Linga kosh at Museum für Asiatische Kunst and reconnecting Shiva as cosmic principle. The kosh is inseparable from the divine after prāṇa pratiṣṭhā; its removal marks displacement and rupture in ritual continuity, raising questions of sacrality and display. Acquired in 1993, it was exhibited in Dahlem (2000–2015) and planned for Humboldt Forum (2021–22). Provenance concerns prompted renewed investigation. The film illuminates the disappearance of cultural heritage from Nepal and its reappearance in the global art market and museum collections.
Screening: 16.05.2026 17:35
Have You Seen My Gods?
Nepal, United States, United States, 2025, 60 min
Location: Nepal, United States
A Film by: Amitabh Joshi
Amitabh sets out to locate the stolen Gods of Kathmandu, fulfilling his grandmother’s final wish. Returning to the city, he searches for sacred objects taken from its shrines. When a Laxmi Narayan statue stolen in the 1980s resurfaces in a U.S. museum, its repatriation led by local activists becomes the focus of his journey. Moving through rituals, temples, and the Nepali diaspora, the film traces the absence left by stolen objects and the fragmentation of cultural memory. Combining archival footage and investigation, it documents efforts to return sacred heritage and restore connections between objects, place, and community.
Screening: 16.05.2026 18:05