directed by Gus Alvarez

This short film opens with a series of distorted images that serve to reflect the morally blurred reality that Gus Alvarez has envisioned in his cautionary tale of corporate desire for power and control. Alongside the Chairman of a nameless company, the audience is given a sales-driven explanation of the ‘Captive Technique’ – a new and ‘groundbreaking’ recruitment method designed to separate the ‘weak’ from the ‘strong’. This divisionary process occurs on the edge of a knife, held literally to the throat of the ‘captive ’- a potential employee - whose determination to succeed is tested beyond ethical imagining. The dystopia Alvarez has created sits uncomfortably close to home when considering current world economics, rendering this film truly affecting. Cleverly depicting the zeitgeist, with reference to ‘international uncertainty’, Alvarez’s Captive asks extreme questions about human limits and who mediates what is acceptable in the most pressured of working environments. How much will people sacrifice in order to succeed and survive? How far can human nature be pushed before the concept of its very existence is destroyed? And is it a potential reality that ‘cut – throat’ work could take on an unthinkable new meaning?

directed by Markus Etter

Underground explores the harrowing delusions of a guilty conscience. We have all imagined what fellow commuters do and who they are, re-writing their lives out in our heads. However if we knew the truth we might not be in such a hurry to scratch beneath the surface. Opening on a platfom of the London Underground, we follow a group of passengers as they hurtle towards a disturbing realisation when one man’s simple act of petty crime leads to irrevocable damage. Combining a screeching metal soundtrack with lurid flourescent lighting, Underground creates a tension reflected in the bleached faces of the nervous passengers. Confrontred by undeniable evidence and united by the knowledge that a crime has taken place, the passengers are implicated through their inaction. Underground leads us to question at what point we as a society are responsible for the things we are witness to and how far we are willing to go to right the wrongs.

directed by Rory Bresnihan

Most people worry about getting locked out and staying on the outside. But what would happen if you got stuck on the inside? The Man Inside explores this theme through the character of Lisandro who is trapped inside his tenth floor apartmentment when his key breaks in the lock. Despite his efforts to find help, Lisandro is left to his own devices surrounded only by the insects that occupy his apartment. Through his unfortunate predicament, Lisandro is forced to slow down and appreciate the smaller things in life. Forgotten by the world he watches from his window, he invites nature in to be his companion and cultivates an enchanted existence from the little hope he has left. The Man Inside reminds us of the pervading force of nature when humankind is too caught up in daily routines to notice the beauty that surrounds us all.

directed by Sybil H. Mair Confined to the close quarters of a restaurant kitchen and a tiny office, we follow a head chef’s struggle to express his true feelings for one of his staff. Bound by both family and work responsibilities, Rob is a man torn between order and desire. Unable to confess his feelings head-on, he decides to write a letter. As he goes about his daily tasks Rob is consumed by anxiety, desire and jealousy when the intimacy and sexual tension of this kitchen threatens to boil over and ruin his plan. Will he have the courage to face up to the consquences of what he’s put down on paper?

directed by Matthew Walker

Operator is a short but sweet animation that mixes realism with the absurd. Sitting in his flat with only his cat and a phone directory for company, is a young man crunching on a toffee apple about to make a very interesting phone call. What better to do on a cloudy afternoon with the rain pelting down outside? Operator taps into that very modern phenomenon of filling the silence. Leave somebody waiting for you at the station and they’re sure to phone a friend on their mobile to while away those few minutes. Leave a guy at home all day with not much to do and the possibilities are endless.

directed by Caroline Sascha Cogez

Emmalou is stuck in many ways. Stuck on a ship she works on day in and day out.. Stuck in the past, desperately hanging on to the memory of her boyfriend Casper who has been missing for over a year after going mountaineering. Through the postcards he sent her, Emmalou clings on to the only thing he’s left behind, his words of love and gentle goodbyes.

As if on autopilot Emmalou goes through the motions of each day barely speaking or smiling. Her only friend is Erik, a fellow colleague who writes songs for her, trying to get her out of her shell. It is only when Emmalou meets a young boy named Casper that she starts to confront her grief and say goodbye to her past life and loves. Beautifully shot, Emmalou portrays the delicacy of grief and the hope in moving on.

Heralding the alienating experience in store for the viewer, the opening scenes of “Zunar-J5/9-Dorc-48” wisp the audience through a largely deserted Berlin subway station. Filmed in black and white, this monolithic, quasi-futuristic environment seems to be looming at every turn. Suddenly the protagonist, identifiable only by his neon glowing skin, which contrasts his colorless surroundings, appears. Hastily boarding a standing train, he pauses to cast a mysterious backward glance. Already “Zunar-J5/9-Dorc-48” begins to bombard the viewer with relentless uncertainty, but for those seeking definite answers, they best look elsewhere than this masterfully-crafted experimental short from Germany’s Neue Massen Produktions.

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Because America has come to know, in recent years, names like Eric Harris, Daniel Klebold, and Seung-Hui Cho, the image with which Tracy Brown's Poptart opens – a teenage boy in a pilled blue ski mask, in an empty San Francisco parking lot, donning chains and guns and playing with explosives – will evoke for many a sense of sharp distress. Brown exploits this tension unrelentingly, building the film's narrative in a documentary style that lends disturbing credulity to the pervasive threat of terror, but also adds surprising sensitivity and depth to the protagonist. Ernie, who speaks crudely and aggressively, listens to rap, and lives in a trash-strewn ghetto, at first repels our sympathies, but when a young filmmaker and would-be mentor named Marion extracts from him his story, his character becomes more difficult to dismiss. Ernie's mother, we learn, has recently died of cancer, which she contracted from carcinogens emitted at her workplace: a factory of a corporation called Chintec. In the warehouse where Ernie keeps his weapons, a pair of his mother's high heels rests on a mantle, as a madeleine of a more peaceful time. When asked if he misses his mother, the answer, for Ernie, is painfully obvious: "I think that goes without saying," he mumbles, looking away from the camera. Seeking vengeance, Ernie turns not to high-school hallways, but rather to the factory where his mother worked, and to those, particularly, who seemed to bear a indirect hand in her death: a target, surely, still shocking, but not as cold-blooded as it otherwise might have been.

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Watching My Home Your War, a documentary that follows a middle-class Sunni family for three years during the coalition attack on Iraq, one wishes that the film were fiction. Boldly giving voice to those otherwise ignored in Western media, Australian Kylie Grey introduces us to 40-year old Layla Hassan, her husband Yassir, sister Shaima, and son Amro, each of whom recount their experiences living in war-torn Baghdad, and their frustrations with the hardships that have become their daily realities. Layla, who works as a university lecturer, is an accomplished linguist, and as such has been summoned by Saddam’s regime to serve, against her will, as a translator; she is a committed mother, and yearns for a better, democratic future for her son. Yassir, with whom Layla was matched through an arranged marriage, is kind but less ambitious, and runs a small pharmacy. Shaima and Amro, 24 and 15, both struggle with the contradictions of their ever-changing world, and cling to the shattered pieces of their old lives. The family’s willingness to risk corresponding with Grey in the throws of such conflict is remarkable, and their varied reactions to the war that consumes them are at once engaging and heartbreaking.

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”Janey Mary” follows the scurrying footsteps of the film’s title character through the destitute urban landscape of post-World War II Dublin. Adapting James Plunkett’s original short-story to film, director Paul Brady felt a profound connection to both the antiquated setting and humanitarian themes of Plunkett’s touching tale. Pathetically clad in an ill-fitting jacket, a 5-year-old Janey Mary must assume disproportionate burdens conferred upon her by her widowed mother. As she waits at the church for free bred, the mass desperation of the poverty-ravished city dramatically culminates in a powerful statement about the power of human compassion.

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