Pia Borg
Australia
2017 | 0:22:00

An unseen location scout explores an opal mining town in South Australia in Pia Borg’s sci-fi-laced essay film, which finds in this semi-deserted region both the traces of indigenous culture and remnants of cinema history.

Qu Youjia
China
2017 | 0:34:00

Nine-year-old Zhu Meijing always goes to the film sets alone. Through a tutor of the orchestra, she got a part in a child movie, to play a bit of the flute. The leading actress Hanhan somehow cried and screamed all day, for which the shooting could not proceed. The director had to change the actress, and Meijing was asked to play the Chinese traditional instrumental music “Fisherman’s Song at Sunset”. After a frustrating day, Meijing got home, feeling the air was even colder than her loneliness.

Zrinka Matijevic
Croatia
2016 | 0:41:42

This poetic documentary presents one woman’s journey towards finding self-confidence, inner peace, and harmony. The filmmaker returns to Croatia’s Lika region, where her family comes from. In the bosom of nature, she tries to come to terms with the losses she has suffered in her life, her illness, and her fear of the future. The film is structured into six parts (prologue, spring, summer, autumn, winter, epilogue), each linked to a different stage of human life. It is a very open and intimate confession, framed in a mosaic of memories and experiences, thoughts and feelings. The film is also therapeutic, helping the filmmaker find the strength to fight. The film received the Croatian Oktavijan Award for Best Documentary Film.

“Every fear comes with the reason. To cure my fears I merged secret patterns and knowledge of my family with the cycles of nature. Through this collision I revealed what is the human in beasts and the beastly in humans.” Katarina Zrinka Matijevic Velican