Amir Kobessov is an acclaimed art cinema director and an unfaithful, lying husband who finds out about his mother’s illness and drives to visit her in rural Kazakhstan. On the long road, he daydreams about his failures, fears, and longings encountering a set of surreal characters in the blurry space between dream and reality.

After completing his military service, Marat returns to Kazakhstan and starts working as a chauffeur for a famous scientist. One day, he accidentally crashes into a Mercedes belonging to a local gangster, who demands an immediate payment. To pay back the damages, Marat borrows money from a local oligarch, triggering a never-ending chain of loans and tragic events.

Samizdat presents a collection of short films directed by Central Asian women, featuring works from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, including an animation, a comedy sketch, a queer romance, an ethnographic documentary, and an artwork composed of archival propaganda footage.

Identical twin brothers born deaf due to a rare genetic disease discover that they will soon start to go blind.

Khrystyna Bunii travels solo across remote south-west Ukraine in pursuit of her anthropological research. As she encounters people and digitises their family photo archives, conversations and interconnections emerge. Conducting visual research into the transnational region of Hutsulshchyna, Bunii pursues a political practice of self-narration from the margins of representation.

A double-bill of new experimental mixed-media short films about Mariupol evacuations and lootings by Sashko Protyah, a Ukrainian filmmaker, activist, and a volunteer for the IDP and the Ukrainian army.

Samizdat and Manipulate Festival (Puppet Animation Scotland) present a unique collection of Eastern European surrealist animation from 1965 to 2022, showcasing an eclectic mix of animation styles, techniques, and themes — the weird, the eerie, the bizarre, and the unbelievable.

Sofiko is a Georgian journalist who travels around the country interviewing victims of patriarchy and corruption. After she refuses her husband's and editor's wishes for her to take a promotion that would limit her work, her husband cheats on her, yet Sofiko continues reporting.

In the small town of Uzhhorod in western Ukraine, which became a place of refuge for many escaping the Russian invasion, a theatre director is working on an adaptation of King Lear. In this documentary, the Shakespeare play is reflected through the lens of non-professional actors living in displacement, which turns it into an observational and analytical tool that helps to look for love and hope against the background of war.

A new restoration of a neglected silent classic by Hamo Benazarian, the founding father of Armenian cinema, this historical melodrama recounts the brutal suppression of an oil workers’ strike in pre-revolutionary Baku.

Documentary following a transgender teen Tobi through the process of his transition in a small Hungarian town.

The true story of how a fourteen-year-old girl escaped the slaughter of the Armenian genocide and embarked upon an odyssey that took her to the heights of Hollywood stardom.

Blindsided by his brother Damir’s unexpected suicide attempt, Bruno and his mother rush to care for their loved one in a Zagreb hospital. However, Bruno soon finds that Damir doesn’t just need protected from his self but also from a callous, uncaring system that appears indifferent to his survival.