This year’s Short Film International Competition organised by ZINEBI – International Festival of Documentary and Short Film of Bilbao presents a selection of 58 short films from 33 countries: 20 animations, 19 documentaries and 19 fictional films, to be screened across nine sessions.
The selection process, which culminates in this combination of perspectives from both emerging and established filmmakers, has involved an exhaustive collective viewing effort by the ZINEBI programming team, made up of eight people.
To those who have placed their trust in our festival and shared their films with us, even if they are not part of the final line-up, we extend our sincere gratitude for their generosity and confidence. We are aware that the prestige of the competition and the opportunities it offers — as a qualifying festival for the Oscars, the Goyas, the BAFTAs and the European Film Award for Best Short Film — contribute to ongoing growth of the quality and diversity of submissions each year.
These 58 short films, with a total running time of over fourteen and a half hours, compose a heterogeneous, vibrant and questioning panorama, in which cinematic language gives voice to the anxieties, tensions and desires that shape our turbulent present. They are films which stretch the limits of the short format, engaging with both the traditions and the ruptures defining contemporary cinema.
This new edition continues the history of a festival which, over sixty-six years, has accompanied the works of active and internationally renowned filmmakers such as Denis Villeneuve, Pernilla August, Bertrand Bonello, Mati Diop, Kamal Aljafari, Charlotte Wells, Marco Bellocchio, Estibaliz Urresola and Laida Lertxundi, among many others. A genealogy that continues to expand, and which once again finds in each of the selected films a singular way of seeing — and reinventing — the world.
Alaitz Arenzana Letamendi, Ramón Ganuza Álvarez, Víctor Iturregui García de Motiloa, Laura Lazcano Marina, Aitziber Olaskoaga Ajuria, Marcos Urquijo Yáñez, Cristina Ezquerra Campos and Rubén Corral Giménez
A deteriorated film, shot in 1982 in a Latin American country, presents a succession of everyday images, among which a few stand out that testify to the violent events that took place on May 9 of that year. Interspersed between the images, a man's voice presents the official version of the events. Beneath its apparent banality, the film raises suspicion that what really happened was covered up.
On April 30, 2021 Frontex carried out the first test flight of the Heron 1 – a military surveillance drone stationed on the Mediterranean island of Malta. The continued effort towards an autonomous and militarised European border is engulfed in mystery and lack of information. A failed endeavour to track the medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicle, relocates the filmmaker inside a digital glitch – somewhere between Frontex, the military industrial complex and a local plane spotter community.
After waking with excruciating neck pain, a woman descends into a surreal odyssey of fragmented memories, haunting dreams, and the relentless challenges of simply moving.
It's the last day of the month. Bowlers flock to the lanes of a bowling alley that has seen better days. Mira, the manager, decides to close early.
She's awaiting the arrival of a special visitor.
X is growing up in the 1990s, she makes prank calls as a child and gets her first job in telephone sales as a teenager. Office smells, heavy breathers, and meaningless greetings follow her from one workplace to another. Through archival material and amateur video footage, the narrative reflects X's actions as a faceless subject playing with her voice as a commercialised asset. Am I Calling You At A Bad Time is an experimental documentary with fictional elements based on recollections of true events.
Animal Eye follows scientists and philosophers studying animal vision, confronting the limits of science, film, and philosophy in grasping how others see. Using ultraviolet, polarized, high-speed, infrared imagery it creates a kaleidoscopic encounter with worlds beyond our own. Blending method and wonder, the film asks how we engage with the nonhuman, inviting us to see animal visions as forms of thought that resist full comprehension.
A couple’s arguments, taken from life, embodied by ghosts.
After being evicted by the local gangsters, an old carpenter goes on a futile search for his missing cat. As he meanders through the forgotten people and places, he is forced to confront the incurable decay of the town.
Why do Iranian security forces in Protest of 2022 target the eyes of protesters, and thus vision itself? A duo of Iranian filmmakers in exile in Berlin take this as a ground line, they reconstruct narratives of images taken from social media during the protests. The film presents this search in the montage process, in which the filmmakers combine their distanced, subjective narrative with the images of the protest to examine the power of the images of the protest as a political construct.
Marianne and Pétion live in Haiti and wait impatiently for a call from their son in the USA. As silence sets in, their fears and worries grow, revealing the fractures in their own lives. The promise of the American dream now seems to elude them, as the line between hope and reality becomes increasingly blurred.
Zosimus, the patriarch, is about to die, and Leonidas, the youngest monk in his community, sees it as an omen of their grim fate. Deeply shaken and forced to venture into the city, Leonidas discovers a brotherhood of an entirely different order than his own: the bodybuilders of the Boa Gym. Convinced that he is destined to save his congregation from their own weakness, Leonidas rediscovers the power of his physical body and begins a radical transformation.
When a bus seat is pushed too far back, the passenger behind finds her journey taking an unexpected turn. Moving through ever-expanding spaces, joined by growing crowds along the way, she begins to question the boundaries and meaning of the space we all inhabit.
Nastia, who has lived abroad for many years, begins to teach her mother how to use Internet services. Different perceptions of technology become the starting point for exposing intergenerational conflicts and long-forgotten family threads. The complicated navigation of social media reflects a no less difficult path to communicate. While learning, the heroines learn a lot about each other, but will the intimacy regained by Zoom be defining for the further relationship between the two adult women?
In a cave within an incisor, a shaman works ambitiously on a massive mural. When she runs out of paint, she travels to the wisdom tooth at the back of the mouth to gather new supplies. Her journey is arduous, as toothpaste storms sweep through the oral cavity: the television presenter to whom the mouth belongs prepares to deliver the weather report with a brilliant white smile.
A southwest Chinese family tries to purge a mysterious entity from their queer heir, torn between love and tradition.
A unicorn that loses its horn will turn into a crow, but the starfish doesn't care about that until the barber falls in love with the fish. This is an animation inspired by Asian parent-child relationships.
Rin finds a roll of film left inside a used camera. Curious, she has it developed. As she moves through the quiet changes of her life, the people and things connected to the film start to cross her path in unexpected ways.
Inside my head, there's a cat, a dog, and a pile of rocks.
In a world that demands community participation, individual desires inevitably collide. A group of neighbours, each focused on their own goals, must learn to communicate and consider one another. But when small, everyday actions trigger unexpected consequences, they are forced into interactions that challenge their independence.
It's a serendipitous encounter - two Chinese high school girls track a certain adult woman living in New York City, eavesdropping on conversations between her and her former friend in the mundane of everyday life, attempting to understand the meaning of growing up.
A demon haunts Adela’s house, tormenting her and causing her harm. This drives her to visit a psychiatrist, where medication is presented as the ultimate cure for all her problems. But what she truly needs is for someone to listen to what is really happening to her. The only place where her reality seems to fit is within religion and folk rituals, leading her to visit a healer to whom she confides how and when it all began.
The image of a neighbourhood beside the motorway, with the city in the background, is followed by a theatrical canvas. On the outskirts of Córdoba, Spain, the final year pupils at Federico García Lorca primary school are looking for a film to make. What would you do or what would you like to see if we were to make a film about Roma culture or the Roma people?
In the aftermath of a mysterious disaster, the few humans left find themselves unable to reproduce the species. All hope lies in the hands of five women who have developed the technology to create human life outside the body. But the researchers cannot reach an agreement on how and if to release it. In the absence of consensus, they immerse themselves in the study of pleasure.
Starting with an excerpt from an Albanian feature film from the communist era in which a boy dreams of the construction of a modern city, EVERY EPOCH DREAMS THE NEXT reflects on how a cityscape changes as power structures shift and how these power structures can override the common good and the general public.
Four young flight attendants from the low-cost airline PanoramicAir find themselves in a hotel room the night before their flight. Two of them have never flown before, while the other two have. To ease their anxiety, they laugh and joke together, until a role-playing game disrupts the balance of the group, revealing a deep truth.
Following the death of his mother in 2011, the director embarks on an intimate journey through the personal belongings and memories she left behind. This short documentary delves into grief and illness, exploring their ties to dignity, caregiving, and legacy. It reclaims cinema as a powerful tool to unearth the past.
In nighttime Havana, the dim lights that light up its streets rely on an unstable electricity supply- the same one that supplies the sound systems at raves. A group of young people, witnesses to the complete lack of energy, drift through the city, lost in delirious conversations, conspiracies and apathy as the city grows darker.
Join us on the luggage rack of my bike for a sensory roller-coaster through a land full of cuddles.
Kusanagi, a delivery worker, gets a complaint about a damaged package. With his boss Sakurai, he visits Heihachi to apologize. The tiger figurine was made by Heihachi’s son Jun. Heihachi asks, “How will you compensate for this masterpiece? How much is it worth?” and tries to make them buy it. While Heihachi is out, Jun says, “I saw my father break it. He cried. Don’t hate him.” As Kusanagi leaves, he returns the figurine: “Jun is your greatest masterpiece.” Heihachi is stunned. On the way back, Kusanagi and Sakurai talk about their sons.
Immigrant workers built a shopping mall for the Munich Olympics 1972. In 2016 this same place becomes the site of a racist shooting.
“And now this hate“ , concludes a woman in a Sohrab Shahid Saless’ film “Addressee Unknown“ (1983).
The events of the movie unfold in modern Ukraine. A child is born into a poor family, the parents do everything possible to survive, but just when the crisis reaches its peak, a new danger flares up.
La Durmiente explores the story of the medieval Infanta Beatriz of Portugal through fabulation and children’s imagination. Entirely shot at the Monastery of Sancti Spiritus in Toro, a space once inhabited by Beatriz and where her tomb lies, these children stage and interpret fragments of the life of this character erased by history, yet preponderant in the Portuguese dynastic crisis of 1383.
As an aquatic malady threatens their forgotten coastal village, three young fishermen resort to illegal dynamite fishing.
In autumn 2024, in the field and in the forest. Shining blades. A mediation on an object and its purpose in human hands and in the eternity and repetition of time and space.
Lita has feared lizards since she was a child. Every summer, she returns to Lagartera, where her family’s traditions run deep. During the Corpus Christi celebration, as her grandmother dresses her, Lita uncovers the roots of her fear.
A twisted utopia unfolds, as singing cherubs melt to the sound of decay. Crafted by a sentient machine from the future, it unveils its own version of paradise.
A group of mirror factory workers publish a book of reflections.
Based on a real mirror catalog from the USSR, the film reimagines the roles of the uncredited models within it as active producers of their own images.
A woman travels from Paris to Galicia in search of the person who took care of her when she was a child.
During a hot summer day, a group of teenagers enjoys an illicit stay at a luxurious villa while the mysterious owner is away. But when Lisa, a CCTV camera operator, calls ready to inform the police she discovers that Mr. Ogre has something else in mind to spoil the party…
A day in the life of a woman who is busy taking care of her obese dog. Her lovely show of affection towards the animal is interrupted by the arrival of her partner, who, in need of the woman's attention, affects the cozy atmosphere of the house.
A middle-aged man reflects back on his tumultuous adolescent phase while sitting in his childhood bedroom. Through intricate and deeply personal musings somehow all tied to his hair - hair growing or hair receding - we, over time accumulate meaning into the larger journey of his life.
After a computer crash, a girl struggles with the loss of her long-time virtual pet, Bubba.
An emotional journey through home recordings made by a thirteen-year-old girl, as the author revisits her own preadolescence and loss of innocence.
In Slet 1988, the dancer Sonja Vukićević (74) moves through the utopian architecture of socialist modernism—her aging body is an archive of the last mass performance in Yugoslavia. Her gestures echo past rhythms and present realities, intertwining with a teenage girl’s diary from 1988 and exposing the shift from socialist collectivism to rising individualism while a new national collective body was creeping in, soon to shape the future of the country.
Parallel lines sometimes intersect.
In the early 18th century, in the blue mountains of Jamaica, enslaved Africans who had escaped from plantations founded autonomous communities of Maroons. Queen Nanny, their supreme leader, led their struggle for freedom. She is one of the most celebrated figures from Jamaica, and embodies the victorious fight against slavery and colonialism, as well as the resistance of the island’s women. Her spirit remains very much alive.
Emilia and Caterina write letters to each other revisiting their adolescent memories and earliest experiences at a boarding school in the 1950s.
Did they choose the lives they truly wanted, or only those that they dared to imagine?
When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender essay film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and land.
We live in a time of great ambiguity and confusion. Events keep happening that seem unreal and out of control. Hyper-flexible humanoid robots are getting ready to cook our eggs. Tesla cars are exploding everywhere. LLMs are unleashed on social media to generate synthetic data and consensus. Tech overlords are going all in on AGI, using war as their open-air R&D studio. All around them, the world is burning.
Composed of online archival footage, and part of a trilogy, the film is inspired by Adam Curtis and was dubbed with his synthetic voice.
Otoño de 2024, entre el campo y el bosque. Cuchillas refulgentes. Una meditación sobre un objeto y su propósito en manos humanas y en la eternidad y repetición del tiempo y el espacio.
Deep underground, embedded in old muddy rock, the oracle is waiting. A big bright square tells the story of our present on repeat. Slowly it descends over small motionless people stuck in the middle of a world consuming itself. How do you want to be forgotten?
A rock of cobalt channels a chorus of voices as it undertakes a trans-continental journey beginning in a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This hybrid documentary uses generative artificial intelligence to visualize territories of extraction in spaces that are usually understood as ‘resource-peripheries’.
A cheeky dismantling of spy tropes and a love letter to Cambodia, THE SENTRY follows a suave Western agent who thinks he's about to make another routine kill. But some stories refuse to be footnotes - and this particular guard isn't finished talking. A genre-bending tale about the extraordinary lives we're trained to overlook.
At 18, a young man commits to 17 years in the military. Inside the system, he witnesses things he hadn’t thought possible. Many of his comrades consistently make mistakes or lack the physical and mental endurance. The military is well prepared and quietly removes the deviants from the countless formations they have to perform. The young man holds up well, but Frank, his roommate and friend, has a problem. His repeated failures have caught up with him.
In a discotheque stuck in the 80s, four lives intertwine as each search for connection and meaning amidst the pulsating beats and timeless allure of an era that refuses to fade.
Zazu, a teenager in the midst of discovering their identity, must choose whether to take part in their village’s traditional celebration by assuming a predetermined role, or stay true to what they feel.
While dealing with a strange being that lives inside her, a woman seeks to reconcile with her sister over an incident from their adolescence. By exploring the experiences they share through their bodies, she manages to confront the nature of what inhabits her.
Mia has spent her whole life freediving, fishing and gliding through seaweed and rocks. Time has passed, tracing its lines on her body, and shaping the landscapes around her. Loved ones have vanished. Tonight, Mia remembers.
