GIEFF received many impressive films which were very long.

The selection committee and the film festival directors decided to offer the filmmakers to make their selected films available online.

To be able to watch these films you have to have a festival ticket or an online ticket.

The films will be online between May 8 and May 12, 2024.

The Mbako Trial: Myth and Reality

Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2023, 90 min
Location: Belgium, the Democratic Republic of the Congo
A Film by: Jean-Michel Kibushi Ndjate Wooto

The Mbako Trial: Myth and Reality chronicles the 1933 case in Wamba, northeastern Belgian Congo, where a man and his clan are accused of murders linked to colonial occupation, described as leopard-like killings. To colonial authorities he is labeled a terrorist, while in Congolese memory he appears as a figure of resistance. The film follows the Anioto Leopard Men, a secret militia enforcing traditional sentences through claw-like weapons. Through reenactments, animation, and interviews, it explores the trial of Mbako, one of their leaders, who was ultimately executed, and raises questions about myth, violence, and cultural meaning.

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Maree's Backyard

Switzerland, 2024, 29 min
Location: Australia
A Film by: Amelie Marie Nadia Ward

Maree’s Backyard is a portrait of Boon Wurrung, Wemba Wemba, Yorta Yorta and Mutti Mutti artist Maree Clarke in Narrm/Melbourne, made in collaboration with the artist. While viewers may assume Aboriginal art is produced in northern desert regions or formal studios, the film offers another perspective: Maree creates work at home with family and friends. Reclamation and resistance are explored through her lens. It follows her practice of cultural and land reclamation, showing how Country persists within the urban landscape through making processes such as cloaks, necklaces, and other works, gathered across city and river environments.

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Spring in Kangiqsualujjuaq

Germany, 2025, 80 min
Location: Canada
A Film by: Marie Zrenner

Spring in Kangiqsualujjuaq is set in a remote Inuit village in the Canadian Arctic and follows three female protagonists, children and two stray dogs. The film gently observes daily life in a community shaped by colonial history while reclaiming identity and moving toward emancipation. Children interview each other at night about family, belonging, and faith, while the protagonists explore self-expression and become part of the filmmaking process. Filmed by Marie Zrenner, the project emerged from a prior collaboration with Kathy Snowball, and reflects an ongoing engagement with colonial trauma, cultural loss, and intergenerational experience.

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Wind Has No Tail

Russian Federation, 2024, 60 min
Location: Russia
A Film by: Ivan Vlasov, Nikita Stashkevich

Wind Has No Tail follows Nika, a young girl in a Yamal nomadic family in the Russian Arctic, who is due to be taken to a boarding school, separating her from her family and home. A nomadic teacher prepares her for departure. The film observes what a child experiences when torn away from their homeland, approaching this transition from an artistic rather than journalistic perspective. Set within Nenets nomadic life, it reflects on education policies introduced since the late 1950s, the ongoing system of boarding schools, and the lasting impact of forced separation on Indigenous families in the Arctic.

Trailer of Film: here

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Kotlovan

Russian Federation, 2025, 80 min
Location: Not Specified
A Film by: Nikolay Bem

Kotlovan is set in Mirny, Siberia, where a vast abandoned diamond quarry, a post-industrial chasm, inspires a Moscow architect’s vision of New Babylon, a self-contained ecosystem blending Soviet-era science with utopian ideals. In this extreme landscape the project seeks to transform collapse into renewal and ask whether a future can emerge from industrial ruin. The director Nikolay Bem reflects on the quarry as a contradiction and a generational inheritance, echoing Andrei Platonov’s Kotlovan. What should be done with the pit left by the previous generation, rebuild, reinterpret, or confront it as a sign of irreversible catastrophe.

Trailer of Film: here

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We Had Fun Yesterday

Belgium, 2024, 35 min
Location: Not Specified
A Film by: Marion Guillard

The film follows the filmmaker’s reflection on her relationship to her body and to images of “Nature.” Once drawn to idealised representations of landscapes and wildlife, she questions her fascination with image-making and her role as a wildlife filmmaker, visual artist, ornithologist, and woman. It explores how nature is constructed through representation and how this mirrors the pressure of being seen and defined. It asks why nature must be mediated through images to exist in perception, while also questioning how this logic intersects with growing up in a female body and the desire to avoid disappearance through visibility.

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Recording to Notice

Netherlands, 2025, 36 min
Location: Norway
A Film by: Nienke Winkel

The film is set in the Norwegian winter, when daylight is scarce and perception turns inward, gently redirecting attention outward. It follows archaeologist and ecologist Jurgen Wegter through the landscapes he inhabits, moving between human and more-than-human worlds. With observational footage and poetic montage, it becomes a conversation between perception, environment, and technology. It rethinks the camera as a participant rather than a witness, and is less about finding something specific than about being present in experience. It invites viewers into sensorial worlds beyond the everyday, opening space for attentiveness and wonder.

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Sunrise - At the Frontiers of Feasibility

Germany, 2024, 94 min
Location: Germany, Sweden
A Film by: Johannes Kohout, Janek Sam Totaro

The film follows an international consortium led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research preparing the solar observatory Sunrise III, a stratospheric balloon mission from Sweden to Canada. Free from atmospheric disturbance, it will observe the solar surface with high precision during a five-day flight, producing data expected to shape astrophysics for decades. The film documents the final sixteen months before launch as instruments from Japan, Spain, and the USA are on their way to the Esrange Space Center in the Arctic Circle, focusing on the people behind the mission and the unpredictable conditions shaping scientific work.

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What about the F-Word?

Germany, 2024, 67 min
Location: Germany, Italy
A Film by: Nora Diekmann

What about the F-Word? follows a group of German students from Bremen who travel to Italy to meet The F-Word, a Turin-based research group studying fascism among young people in Europe. Along the way they visit Milan, explore Italy’s fascist history, and meet activists and professors. The journey culminates in a gathering in the mountains at a former partisan hideout, where both groups meet for an anti-fascism congress. The film traces how the students confront rising right-wing politics in Europe, questioning what fascism is today, how it operates within society, how to respond collectively, and what if we fail.

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Mantènnere - Holding the Sacred Sound

Italy, 2025, 52 min
Location: Italy
A Film by: Diego Pani

Mantènnere – Holding the Sacred Sound explores traditional multipart singing in Santu Lussurgiu, Sardinia, focusing on the transmission of ritual practice between two generations of singers. It follows the Cuncordu ’e su Rosariu, active since the 1970s, and the younger Sos Zovanos de Su Rosariu as they navigate their roles in Holy Week rituals. Set against the mediatization of traditional music and decades of research in the village, the film reflects on how ritual, music, and community are interwoven, and how these practices continue to shift through generational change and external observation.

Trailer of Film: here

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God in a Military Uniform

Japan, 2025, 107 min
Location: Japan, Taiwan
A Film by: Kano Endo

The film follows filmmaker Kano Endo and cultural anthropologist Yohei Fujino as they investigate Japanese spirits in Taiwan, where ghosts of former Japanese colonial subjects have become local gods worshiped at around fifty sites. They trace why these souls are venerated and how they emerged as objects of belief. In recent years, Japanese have begun to come to Taiwan to mourn those ghosts. Taiwanese are visiting the home of the Japanese gods. The film depicts a mysterious phenomenon that lies between Taiwan and Japan while reflecting the forgotten history of these two countries. It portrays five Japanese gods across nine chapters.

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Ökul Näs - Around us

Italy, 2025, 38 min
Location: Italy
A Film by: Enrico Micelli

Can a tradition embody the identity of an entire community? Ökul Näs aims to recount the tradition of Pust through the eyes of a young man, bringing old anecdotes and forgotten aspects of village life back. At the same time, it seeks to raise questions about contemporary society and the future of the valley. The project stems from the intertwining of several elements: the desire to pass on a tradition, the revival of social life after the pandemic, the loss of a person who had dedicated himself to the cultural growth of the valley, and the future of a small mountain community, together with the cultural responsibility that young people carry.

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60 Years of Singing Ballads in Hakka : Hsu Mu-chen

Taiwan, 2023, 54 min
Location: Not Specified
A Film by: Shao-chi Ku

Hakka ballad is a traditional form of storytelling and emotional expression in Hakka culture, known for vocal improvisation. Born blind in Qionglin, Taiwan, Hsu Mu-chen showed early talent for singing, playing erxian, and performing with elders. His improvisations were humorous and allegorical, and he later became a Hakka ballad master after releasing albums, though he earned his living as a fortune teller. With the decline of the Hakka language and the transformation of the tradition into staged performance, improvisation has faded. The film documents the life and legacy of Hsu, who passed away in 2020.

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Once Upon a Time in Dongmen

China, 2024, 61 min
Location: China
A Film by: Yu Pei, Xuelai Ni

The film observes the emergence of Dongmen street in Shenzhen as a live-streaming hub where online influencers perform, attract audiences, and turn the public square into a stage of constant visibility. Their exaggerated performances gain both popularity and controversy, while shifting regulations and spatial interventions create growing uncertainty. Some anchors move through daily life while broadcasting continuously, blurring the line between public and private. Over five months, the filmmakers document a fleeting moment in China’s live-streaming culture, which gradually dissolves under policy changes and relocation of digital attention.

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