Who were we, you and I?

In the organizer's words:

With Lisa Gertsch, Nida Mehboob, Marusya Syroechkovskaya and Melisa Liebenthal

The four films in this program deal with personal and political spaces of experience: friendship and desire, grief and transformation, the body as a repository of history and landscapes as projection surfaces for violence and hope. In very different cinematic forms - from documentary diaries to essayistic and poetic narratives to experimental image work - they open up intimate approaches to existential questions of our present.

What the works have in common is a persistent focus on the fragile: on relationships that come under pressure, on the self that is changing, on memories that cannot come to rest. The films refuse simple answers and instead rely on closeness, time and trust in the power of the cinematic image.

Film program

5 p.m.

Lisa Gertsch - Electric Fields

Feature film, CH 2024, 80 min, OmeU

In six poetically playful episodes, Lisa Gertsch expands a universe in which everyday life and the inexplicable flow into one another. With haunting black and white images, the film creates spaces in which lovers overcome time, a man sleeps through a season and a deceased man is resurrected by a radio - scenes in which normality is thrown out of joint and new paths of thought open up. In a tragic-comic, yearning atmosphere, Electric Fields deals with love, loneliness and the instability of human existence in a visual language that is as touching as it leaves questions unanswered.

Director, writer, editor: Lisa Gertsch
Production: Lisa Gertsch, Sabotage Filmkollektiv GmbH, ZHdK
Camera: Simon Bitterli
Sound design: Daniel Eaton, Martin Scheuter
Cast: Julia Jentsch, Michael Neuenschwander, Sophie Hutter, Ole Eisfeld and others

Nida Mehboob - A Night That Took Everything

Documentary, PK, FI 2025, 20 min, OmeU

Based on a single night, Nida Mehboob's film unfolds a haunting portrait of loss, shock and the cracks that a sudden experience makes in the lives of those affected. The young protagonist wrestles with the tragic death of her father, wrongly convicted under Pakistan's relentless blasphemy laws. As she deals with grief and injustice, she reflects on the harsh realities of a society that punishes the innocent. Mehboob works with fragments, memory images, silent moments and spaces in between to make visible an experience that defies any linear narrative. A Night That Took Everything approaches vulnerability, grief and the fragility of human relationships in a poetic, cinematically sensitive language.

Director: Nida Mehboob
Production: Kari Ahotupa
Camera: León Torres
Editing: Jette Keedus
Sound: François Yazbek
Production: ELO Film School Finland

7 pm

Marusya Syroechkovskaya - How To Save a Dead Friend

Documentary, DE, FR, NO, SE 2022, 103 min, OmeU

16-year-old Marusya lives in Moscow and is convinced that she will not live to see the end of 2005. Many of her friends are already dead - suicide seems like the last act of resistance among young people in Putin's Russia. Over the course of several years, director Marusya Syroechkovskaya accompanies herself and those around her with her camera through everyday life, friendships and intimate encounters. The result is a radically personal documentary that is at once a diary, a declaration of love and a testimony to a generation searching for stability, closeness and meaning.

Director, screenwriter: Marusya Syroechkovskaya
Production: Ksenia Gapchenko, Mario Adamson
Camera: Marusya Syroechkovskaya, Kimi Morev
Editing: Qutaiba Barhamji
Music: Felix Mikensky
Protagonists: Marusya Syroechkovskaya, Kimi Morev

9 pm

Melisa Liebenthal - El rostro de la medusa (The Face of the Jellyfish)

Feature film, AR 2022, 76 min, OmeU

With a precise look at bodies, gazes and power relations, Melisa Liebenthal examines the construction of femininity and desire. Marina wakes up one morning and doesn't recognize herself. When she meets her mother on the street, she perceives her as a stranger. The film accompanies Marina's search for identity: who is she - defined by parental genes, identity card, family photos, biometric data or the love of the people around her, including her Colombian boyfriend? Between analysis and intimacy, El rostro de la medusa develops a subtle, visually haunting language that deals with questions of self-perception, belonging and desire.

Director: Melisa Liebenthal
Screenplay: Agustín Godoy, Melisa Liebenthal
Production: Agustín Gagliardi, Eugenia Campos Guevara
Camera: Inés Duacastella
Editing: Florencia Gómez García
Cast: Rocío Stellato, Vladimir Durán, Camila Toker and others

Four YOUNG ACADEMY scholarship holders from the Film and Media Art section present films from their repertoire and talk about the themes and processes of their work in different social, political and artistic contexts.

Films:

Electric Fields
Feature film, CH 2024, 80 min, OmeU

A Night That Took Everything
Documentary film, PK, FI 2025, 20 min, OmeU

How To Save a Dead Friend
Documentary, DE, FR, NO, SE 2022, 103 min, OmeU

El rostro de la medusa (The Face of the Jellyfish)
Feature film, AR 2022, 76 min, OmeU