If you can’t make the rest of the fest, come to the Best of The Fest! Watch the highlights of this year’s festival with this shortlist of films in the running for our Best of The Fest Award.

PROGRAMME

THE CHILDREN OF ORPHEUS
Dir. Derkan Dogan | 7 mins | UK
An experimental short film exploring the chaotic and unifying synthesis of music, sound, and dance within London’s busy and maddening cityscape.

MANASCHI
Dir. Peter Davies | 14 mins | UK
In the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, one of the world’s oldest oral storytelling traditions endures – the Epic of Manas. Legends and myths of Manas – the traditional founder of Kyrgyzstan – are carried from village to village by prophet-like figures called Manaschis. But as modernity encroaches, the tradition is threatened. We follow Omurbek – a respected Manaschi – as he grapples with the changes faced with this ancient tradition.

HOLY HEAVÊNESS
Dir. Farnoosh Abedi, Negah Khezre Fardyardad, Mohammad Ghaffari | 10 mins | Iran
The unbearable lightness of the death of loved ones. There are wounds in life that eat away at you like leprosy. The weight of the death of loved ones sometimes becomes so overwhelming that to get rid of this weight another birth is inevitable.

A FROG SITS IN WATER
Dir. Dylan Friese-Greene | 5 mins | UK
Set during an all-consuming heatwave, the film follows a lone figure spiralling into psychosis as the world boils and rots around him. Surrounded by spinning fans, he blocks out the sunlight and plays his saxophone in a desperate attempt to to drown out reality and retreat inward.

CAMERAMAN
Dir. Arsalan Motavali | 15 mins | UK
In the late 90s, a newly immigrated Iranian cameraman finds himself adrift in London. Struggling to adapt, he must decide whether to risk his family’s limited savings on a stranger’s offer‚ one that promises a way back to the identity he once knew.

THE VIEWING
Dir. Nick Blake | 19 mins | UK
A house viewing spirals into a surreal nightmare for a young woman with a troubled past.

ROCK POOL
Dir. Dan McKay | 17 mins | UK
Rock Pool invites the viewer into a space of quiet encounters, one that asks for attention, rewards stillness, and hopefully awakens a sense of awe for the hidden rhythms of the life all around us.

Venue: Auditorium, Exeter Phoenix

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