Samizdat 2024 programme
Festival at a glance
1-5 October (CCA, GFT — Glasgow)
19 October (Summerhall — Edinburgh)
3-24 October (Klassiki — Online)
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Samizdat 2024 has 18 in-person screenings taking place across Glasgow and Edinburgh. These include the general programme of features, documentaries, and retrospectives (including several Scottish and UK premieres), our annual Ukrainian strand, the animation showcase, and a new Night Terrors strand!
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Samizdat 2024 has two headliner screenings: a showcase of animations from the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997) (1.10, GFT) and a screening of The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) (4.10, GFT).
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After the opening screening of animations (GFT, 1.10), we will be hosting an opening party to celebrate the beginning of Samizdat 2024! The party will take place at the CCA bar, The Third Eye, and will feature a DJ set by Kernius Linkevicius and Samizdat-themed drinks. The party is free and unticketed.
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In 2024, we have received 1,100+ films in our Short Film Competition, out of which 17 have been shortlisted. The shortlisted films will be screened at the CCA on 3.10, where they will compete for the Audience Award.
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Our partner, the streaming platform Klassiki, is hosting Samizdat’s online programme, featuring several screenings between 3-24 October.
Key Information
Brochures
Digital brochures can be downloaded here. Free paper brochures were available at the CCA, Glasgow Film Theatre, and Summerhall during the festival.
Merch
Attendees of our CCA-based events were able to purchase Samizdat-themed tote bags with elements of our poster designed by Sasha Staicu.
tickets
Tickets for Samizdat could be purchased from the websites of Glasgow Film Theatre, CCA Glasgow, and Summerhall Edinburgh. Online events were accessible between 3-24 October through the streaming platform Klassiki. Tickets for main events (except screenings outside the CCA) were priced on a pay-what-you-can sliding scale.
accessibility
Learn about our accessibility measures, including financial support for attendees, pricing, Closed Captions, content and access notes, venue accessibility, and more, here. Those who found the price of our events unaffordable could apply for the hassle-free Audience Access Fund. The Fund subsidized the cost of tickets, commuting, and/or childcare for people receiving benefits and/or people with a refugee status.
Night Terrors:
A Special Screening Event of the Eerie, the Surreal, and the Sinister
The Hourglass Sanatorium
(1973)
The Cremator
(1969)
Be My Cat: For ANne
(2015)
Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel
(1979)
Full programme
ICA Rerun: Animations of the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997)
Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival 2024 begins with the second instalment of bizarre, eerie, and unique animated films from the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997). A surgery is performed on a bust of Joseph Stalin, a yeti living in the mountains of Kazakhstan gets to listen to The B-52s, and a man pawns his face to buy a lottery ticket...
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Summerhall Special: Dead Mountaineer's Hotel/Hukkunud Alpinisti hotell (Grigori Kromanov, 1979)
In this hypnotising sci-fi noir, inspector Glebsky arrives at a remote hotel in response to a call out: except there is nothing to investigate, yet. As he meets its strange guests, the hotel is cut off from civilization by an avalanche – and bizarre events start to unfold.
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Summerhall Rerun: Short film competition
Samizdat is continuing and expanding its Short Film Competition. This year, 17 titles — from Estonia to Kyrgyzstan — will compete for the main prize, awarded based on audience voting.
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Summerhall Rerun: Animations of the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997)
The second instalment of bizarre, eerie, and unique animated films from the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997). A surgery is performed on a bust of Joseph Stalin, a yeti living in the mountains of Kazakhstan gets to listen to The B-52s, and a man pawns his face to buy a lottery ticket...
Book tickets →
The Cremator/Spalovač mrtvol (Juraj Herz, 1969)
Set in 1930s Prague, Juraj Herz’s masterwork of Czechoslovak New Wave follows Karel Kopfrkingl, a seemingly mild-mannered crematorium worker who becomes increasingly obsessed with the notion of death and cremation as a means of purification.
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Be My Cat: For Anne (Adrian Tofei, 2015)
A hidden gem of found-footage horror, Adrian Țofei’s directorial debut centres on an aspiring Romanian filmmaker whose obsession with Anne Hathaway manifests itself as a twisted desire to convince her to move to Romania and star in his projects. As he documents his endeavour, his obsession escalates, leading to terrifying and violent consequences for those caught in his orbit.
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Intercepted/Мирні люди (Oksana Karpovych, 2024)
Oksana Karpovych’s documentary offers a chilling exploration of the russian invasion of Ukraine by juxtaposing everyday scenes of Ukrainian resilience with intercepted phone calls from russian soldiers on the frontlines. These recorded conversations, made public by the Ukrainian Secret Service, expose the deeply unsettling banality of evil, as soldiers recount their experiences of war.
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The Hourglass Sanatorium/ Sanatorium pod klepsydrą (Wojciech Has, 1973)
A sublimely surreal Alice-in-Wonderland tale by renowned Polish director Wojciech Jerzy Has. A young Jewish man named Joseph visits his father in a sanatorium, only to find the place strangely abandoned. As he explores further through its labyrinthine rooms, he starts to lose all grip on time and reality.
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The Lighthouse/Mayak (Maria Saakyan, 2006)
A young woman returns to her childhood village from Moscow in the hopes of persuading her grandparents to leave the war-torn Caucasus. But escape proves elusive. The first feature filmed in Armenia to be directed by an Armenian woman, The Lighthouse is a languorous rumination on local connections, memory and loss.
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The Touch/Прикосновение (Amanzhol Aituarov, 1989)
In the Kazakh steppe of the long-gone past, a nomadic blind girl with prophetic abilities crosses paths with a fugitive slave. Shot in mixed colour/black-and-white cinematography, this mythical story of tragic love is a hidden gem of the Kazakh New Wave.
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Have You Seen This Woman?/Da li ste videli ovu ženu? (Matija Gluščević, Dušan Zorić, 2022)
In their disturbing and surreal feature debut, directors Matija Gluščević and Dušan Zorić offer a striking and occasionally cruel narrative about the three parallel existences of a middle-aged mother named Draginja, each lived out by an alternative version of herself.
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Short film competition, vol. 2
Samizdat is continuing and expanding its Short Film Competition. This year, 17 titles — from Estonia to Kyrgyzstan — will compete for the main prize, awarded based on audience voting.
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The Balcony Movie/Film balkonowy (Pawel Lozinski, 2021)
Can anyone be a movie character? Can the world be captured in a single frame? Paweł Łoziński films passers-by from the balcony of his Warsaw flat and asks them strange, moving, and provoking questions about their lives. Featuring an online Q&A with director Paweł Łoziński.
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Short film competition, vol. 1
Samizdat is continuing and expanding its Short Film Competition. This year, 17 titles — from Estonia to Kyrgyzstan — will compete for the main prize, awarded based on audience voting.
Book tickets →
A Picture to Remember/Фото на пам'ять (Olga Chernykh, 2023) + Short (In The Noise of the Downpour)
In this deeply personal documentary that delves into the devastation of war through the intimate lenses of family ties, memory, and survival, the war is narrated through the voices of three generations of women: a grandmother living in occupied Donbas, a mother studying parasites one floor above a morgue in Kyiv, and a daughter trying to make sense of reality through a camera lens.
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The Devil’s Bride/Velnio nuotaka (Arunas Zebriunas, 1974)
In a Lithuanian cult-classic musical rich with traditional folklore imagery, imp Pinčiukas is expelled from heaven and lands himself in a lake by a windmill. He and the miller, Baltaragis, make a pact, but when the little devil tries to claim what was promised, Baltaragis attempts to trick him, and chaos ensues.
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Uzhmuri/უჟმური (Nutsa Gogoberidze, 1934) + Short (We Are (At) Home)
Banned by the Soviet authorities, the first Caucasus feature directed by a woman documents a mystical world on the verge of extinction. The film was commissioned to celebrate the Communists’ drive to drain the Mingrelian swamps, which were, according to local belies, inhabited by the treacherous spirits of Uzhmuri.
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Do You Love Me?/Ти мене любиш? (Tonia Noyabrova, 2023)
Tonya Noyabrova’s Do You Love Me? explores the turbulent era of the early 1990s through the intimate coming-of-age story of Kira, a 16-year-old girl navigating young adulthood during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Set in Kyiv between 1990 and 1991, the film reflects the disintegration of Kira’s privileged, intellectual family in parallel with the dissolution of the USSR.
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Samizdat 2024 Opening Party
Celebrate the beginning of Samizdat 2024 with joining us at the Third Eye Bar! The opening party will feature a DJ set by Kernius Linkevičius and Samizdat-themed cocktails. Kernius will bring a mix of deep cuts, classics, and cult favorites from across the east of Europe. Expect an eclectic mix of genres, as Kernius takes you on a musical sightseeing tour of Eastern plains, with a boogie along the way.
Free and unticketed
Opening event: Animations of the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997)
Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival 2024 begins with the second instalment of bizarre, eerie, and unique animated films from the late Eastern Bloc (1980-1997). A surgery is performed on a bust of Joseph Stalin, a yeti living in the mountains of Kazakhstan gets to listen to The B-52s, and a man pawns his face to buy a lottery ticket...
Book tickets →
