Chahine

When adulthood looms, naivety fades, and a whole new, strange world opens up. These four beguiling European stories, from acclaimed film festivals the world over, explore these years of youthful wonder with a deftness and artistry that lingers. The short films are: Ruins [Ruines] (2019); Aline (2019); Snake [Змија] (2020); The Touching [Dotýkání] (2020).

Paris, in the early 1990s: a group of young activists is desperately tied to finding the cure against an unknown lethal disease. They target the pharmaceutical labs that are retaining potential cures, and multiply direct actions, with the hope of saving their lives as well as the ones of future generations.

Whaling has been around for centuries. It seems to be the fruit of man’s violence, destroying himself by destroying nature. Accompanying the rise of capitalism, the practice survives today, reflecting humans’ eternal destructiveness of nature and the creatures unable to resist them.

A drama set at a Swiss ski resort and centered on a boy who supports his sister by stealing from wealthy guests.

Lucy, a 19-year old law student and intern at a Swiss television network in Geneva, comes across her double in archival footage about the woman’s liberation movement in the 70’s. Her family’s resistance to talk about this time convinces Lucy that a secret lurks behind this mysterious woman, named Geneviève.

In the middle of a performance at la Comédie-Française, an actor dies on stage, poisoned. Martin, member of the troupe and friend of the victim, becomes the center of everyone’s attention. Suspected by the police, he’s also chased by a mysterious organization, Le Parfum vert, that seems to have ordered the murder.

Progressing from movement workshops led by dancer Dimitri Chamblas, choreographer Mathilde Monnier and performer Yves-Noel Genod into a multi-layered story, the film follows a group of young artist-performers as they attempt to stage a revolutionary action.

A shadow in the woods, a sunny summer afternoon. Antoine and Philippe part without saying goodbye. That same day, a blond girl writes their names on a window of her house. Her mission is to heal other people’s wounds, help lost lovers to forget or disappear.

Alban lives in a ski resort with his mother. Each night, the teenager slips away to meet up with Julien – this boy who curiously has the same name as the hero of the novel Alban is devouring.

Andreas will soon be twenty. It’s a special moment in which the threads of his life become inextricably entwined into a knot. Entering the adult world and slipping back towards childhood. Studying, football matches with mates, and family life centred around his father’s workshop. A new relationship with a boy his own age and a long-time “friend” who works for his father becomes too much for him. A moment when Andreas has to choose, a knot he tries to unravel, overcome or flee.

Two young men are playing in a bathtub. Then a third and fourth slip in to join them. They are called Émile and they are looking for their “perfect mother” when a fifth man arrives, the Émile who reconciles them all.

All summer long, four teenagers gather illegally in a military zone to build a hut. But school will soon begin again and the golden days of cabin-building are coming to an end.

Carnival in a small town: Margaux, Louisa and Théo are getting ready for a night out. They put on their costumes, drink too much. Each one of them apprehends this evening in a different way. A night like so many others… But on the next morning, their lives will have changed forever.

A wealthy Japanese patron, enamored with Rousseau, offers an atypical and versatile filmmaker the opportunity to freely adapt Jean-Jacques Rousseau's epistolary novel into a film. The filmmaker brings together three young actors in a deserted palace above Clarens and begins shooting. Rousseau's tragedy then reverberates through the contemporary characters.

On Christmas Eve, a troupe re-enacts the classic French play Santa Claus is a Stinker. On stage and backstage, the actors reveal their wounds and memories, mixing satire and confidences. Moving back and forth between fiction and reality, the play denounces the hypocrisy of the festive season, and questions the meaning of solidarity, family and theater itself.

In his classroom a philosophy teacher opens the discussion on the place of religion in society. Out of his course he faces the realities of the street.