Luminous: from observation to experimentation

Across both feature-length and short films, the titles grapple with big questions of life through deeply personal, lived experiences. Among the selection of 21 films, 19 titles are world or international premieres, including nine debut feature films.

In the immersive and poetic Where the Sun is Born by Laura Bermúdez and Jorge García, a dancer leaves the city in Honduras to travel back to the Afro-Caribbean Garifuna community of his youth—in search of his roots and a sense of community. The IDFA Bertha Fund-supported She Was Not Alone by Hussein Al-asadi closely follows Zaira, an elderly woman living in close communion with nature in the marshlands of southern Iraq—meditatively illuminating an idyllic place, increasingly under threat. 

In the IDFA Project Space NL alumni Raluca Lupaşcu’s A Modern Roma Fairytale, ten-year-old Nicoleta, granddaughter of a Roma king, grows up dreaming of a life in a marble palace—while watching the women around her navigate the restrictions of the patriarchal traditions that will shape her future. In Every Death Diminishes Me, Sergii Bazhenov trains as a medic to join the front lines, documenting his colleagues as they treat the wounded and confront the human cost of war.