Essay

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

As the city of Paris and the French people grow in consumer culture, a housewife living in a high-rise apartment with her husband and two children takes to prostitution to help pay the bills.

The film begins as a documentary about an author known for autofiction. By incorporating multiple making-of layers, it blends the process of making the documentary with the author’s narrative technique.

Jim, a slacker college student, decides to procrastinate on an essay worth 25% of his grade. Will he finish in time, or suffer the consequences?

A film-letter that tells the tale of an unlikely and recurring discussion about the perception of herons in the urban environment. (Un)intentionally, it raises questions about how we see ourselves as residents of "less affluent" areas of Rio de Janeiro.

An essay film about... things that don't make sense. Or maybe they do, I don't know. You tell me.

Partly a parody, partly a mockumentary, partly an essay film - and also an actual behind the scenes documentary of two short films.

An experimental study about Czech life, focusing on Prague's National Street, its businesses and the varied people who frequent it.

A video essay about a conversation the director had with a friend about a particular picture of a cat sitting in front of a plate of blins.

While Trevor and Sam are smoking pot, Trevor’s mom comes home. When she finds out, Trevor reveals his father’s adulterous ways and destroys his family.

Humankind has always dreamt of the night sky. Of the infinite freedom offered by the black void, and of the strong, shining beacon inviting us to ascend. This is a story, a history of the events that led up to our conquest of space, and the consequences throughout wider humanity. The film is a collage. Of genres, documentary and comedy. Of media, drawing from painting and film. Of films, cannibalising all film history. Of truth, both objective and subjective. Watch the small steps and let your mind take a giant leap.

The sarcastic account of the assassination of five Spanish politicians between 1870 and 1973 is mixed with the narration of five short stories by Edgar Allan Poe illustrated by five skillful pencil artists. A documentary, a video essay, a collage, a provocative experiment where various pop culture figures and icons perform unexpected cameos. The macabre joke of a jester. Never more.

Shot on 16mm celluloid across parts of New Zealand and Samoa, interdisciplinary artist Sam Hamilton’s ten-part experimental magnum opus makes thought-provoking connections between life on Earth and the cosmos, and, ultimately, art and science. Structured around the ten most significant celestial bodies of the Milky Way, Apple Pie’s inquiry begins with the furthest point in our solar system, Pluto, as a lens back towards our home planet and the ‘mechanisms by which certain aspects of scientific knowledge are digested, appropriated and subsequently manifest within the general human complex’. Christopher Francis Schiel’s dry, functional narration brings a network of ideas about our existence into focus, while Hamilton’s visual tableaux, as an extension of his multifaceted practice, veer imaginatively between psychedelic imagery and performance art.

A videographic fantasia on the films of Alfred Hitchcock that quickly veers into controlled insanity. Through fervor and mania, this unconventional cinematic homage re-imagines the influence of the master of suspense. A "murdergame" means to will a dream into existence, and fall victim to obsession.

In 2010, an obsessed gamer designed the perfect game of Sim City. Achieved through a repeating pattern of clustered high rises, “Magnasanti” exposes the hellish consequences of top-down civic design. In his new documentary, John Wilson explores how New York City is creeping closer and closer to realising this fictional metropolis.

Inspired by a tumultuous period in the director's relationship with her mother, the film draws a poignant analogy between the phases of their conflict and the ever-changing states of water along the coast of São Paulo, where the director grew up.

Venus

In addition to being a popular excursion destination, Äskhult's village outside Kungsbacka on the west coast of Sweden is a place where our past is kept alive while creating opportunities for a more sustainable future.

Documentary filmmaker Renton Hinderer takes a look back at his long relationship with one of his closest friends to understand the paths we choose in life, and how friendship is eternal through it all.

"At that time (late 1992), I made a film for British television, Channel 4, called Las Soledades, the name of a long poem by Góngora. It was made in Chile, using many poetic elements of the country. Chile is seen through the eyes of a Chinese painter—a painter who uses the traditional 18th-century concepts of Shih-Tao. Once again, I am doing something that, apparently, is not meant to go hand in hand. The landscape of my country, southern Chile, where I was born, initially provokes in me a feeling of fear. The landscape is madness. In these crazy landscapes, you can find very reasonable people, which makes the landscape seem even crazier."