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Video poetry + Short films selection 2026
Selection of projects based on poetry, spoken word, emotional awareness
Hair Trails
A great long braid becomes the guiding thread of this poetic short film. It begins on the edge of the world in Norway, where the mountains and the ocean awaken a voice hidden in the strands of hair. That voice leads the storyteller back to another edge of the world at home – the ancestral lands of South Estonia, a branch of roots only recently revealed.
When hair begins to speak, what will you dare to ask?
Director: Sirel Heinloo / Einar Lints
Writer: Sirel Heinloo
Producer: Eesti Lavaluule MTÜ
Key Cast: Sirel Heinloo
Music: Karl Petti
Where shall I go?
Oh you! Where are you? I chased. You played along. Wherever I went, you were already there. Are you me? Am I you?
To find answers, to find you . . . Where shall I go?
Director/Writer/Producer: Ishvar Krishnan
Some notes on oldgrowth specklebelly lichen (Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis)--transcription + portal, tree licker, sparkling arc
A film about lichen, symbiotic communities, old growth trees, and the Fairy Creek protests on Vancouver Island.
Director/Writer/Producer: Kim Trainor
Soundtrack: Hazel Fairbairn
Simplicity
Simplicity is 2 of 3 short visual that follows a brother and sister on their road in life narrated from the book “ You, Me & Us” by Kinaya Tatum.
Director: Brandon Tatum
Writer/Producer: Kinaya Tatum
Key cas: Kinaya Tatum / Daniel Bentley / Shanamay Jackson / Brandon Tatum
PETRYKIVKA
Petrykivka reconjures stories of heroism, everyday artifacts and spaces decorated with floral folk imagery, remediated viral video, and footage of acts of resistance and survival. Using object-based and hand-drawn animation, this DIY experimental poetry film/video-poem vicariously witnesses and testifies to the transformative possibilities of imagination.
Director / Writer / Producer / Editor / Animation / Music: Anne Ciecko
A Woman Like This
A gifted dancer's unchecked ego brings him nothing but pain until he falls for a woman whose transformative power turns his hands into brushes, his blood into paint, and he dances a magic carpet that offers the choice of transcendence.
Director/Writer/Producer: James E. Kenward
Producers: Leia Lorelai / Nick Trachte / Ben Reis
Key Cast: Lea Lorelai / James E. Kenward
Fear Not Fear Itself
Using musical poetry performed within typical American backdrops, “Fear Not Fear Itself” warns against the atypical rise of hate and authoritarianism in the United States.
Director/Writer/Producer / Key Cast: Dawn Westlake
Cinematographer - Editor - VFX: Pol Carrizo Vilarroig
Music: Jason Luckett
Animation: Marta Fabón Ortiga
The word that was lost
The word that was lost is a performative istallation by Paola Masi, an on-site creation that activates space through clay forms, movement, music and voice. Ceramics, performance and video converge into a unified language of visual and temporal poetry.
Writer: Paola Masi
Producer: Irene Vicente Sala
Músic: Matteo Campa
PETRYKIVKA
Whiteweight is a film about silence and unspoken truths. It explores the haunting guilt of withheld voices in the face of societal injustices. With symbolic scenes reflecting everyday life, we confront the barriers that silence those who yearn to speak out against oppression.
Director: Alkistis Kafetzi
Key Cast: Maria Salouvardou
Poet: Hlín Leifsdóttir
A Travel Checklist
In a creative collage, documented improvisational performances—poetry readings to random café patrons—blend with illustrated explorations. The city murmurs in fragments: poems, visions, fleeting acts, blurring the lines between memory and moment. The quiet rush of transition brings questions to the surface, lingering like an unfinished verse.
Director: Shaghayegh Yassemi
Documentary selection 2026
Special guest: Director Linda Freund
THE WINDOW ON DEATH ROW
Joaquín José Martínez, the first Spaniard exonerated from U.S. death row, transforms his wrongful conviction and time on death row into advocacy, confronting the ethics of capital punishment and the possibility of second chances.
The Window on Death Row [Spain, 2025]
Documentary Short, 38 minutes
(V.O. with Spanish subtitles)
AWARDS
• Grand Prize Audience Choice Award, Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival
• Immaculate Heart Community Filmmaker Award, LA Shorts International Film Festival
• Best Documentary, La Femme International Film Festival
PRESS
“Freund’s ability to turn a death row narrative into a meditation on dignity, grace, and human evolution makes it a compelling contender in a crowded field. Its fusion of geopolitical insight, spiritual inquiry, and emotional vulnerability sets it radically apart.”
– Renee Santos, Hollywood Times
