As part of our partnership with FilmFestival Cottbus 2023, we present highlights from the festival’s short film competition. These three titles, all made by young female directors, explore eastern Europe’s troubled recent history. While Anastasiia Solonevych’s As It Was and Mara Tamkovich’s Live consider the ongoing trauma of the Ukraine war and political repression in Belarus respectively, Trëndelina Halili’s Pristina, 2002 follows two girls as they navigate adolescence in the aftermath of the Kosovo War.