Directed by Michał Toczek • 2022 • Poland

Michał Toczek’s charming Polish short weaves warm-hearted romance out of the lonely tedium of gig work and big-budget filmmaking. Downtrodden Filip (Sebastian Stankiewicz) is a professional film extra who specialises in playing dead bodies. On the set of...

Directed by Oleksiy Radynski • 2023 • Ukraine

In the early days of the Russian invasion in 2022, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was used as a staging post on the road to Kyiv. Oleksiy Radynski’s Chornobyl 22 documents their brief, terrifying occupation of the site. Interviews with plant staff who w...

Directed by Kateryna Khramtsova • 2023 • Ukraine

Kateryna Khramtsova’s documentary short Qirim – the native Tatar name for Crimea – is a portrait of Antonina Romanova: a non-binary performance artist turned mortar technician in the Ukrainian army. Incorporating animation and split-screen techniq...

Directed by Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko • 2022 • Uzbekistan

The fate of the Aral Sea, which spans the Uzbek-Kazakh border, is one of the twentieth century’s greatest environmental disasters. Ravaged by Soviet industrial policy, this once abundant inland ocean has long since become the...

Directed by Assel Aushakimova • 2021 • Kazakhstan

Assel Aushakimova (Welcome to the USA) shows why she is one of the most acute observers of contemporary Kazakh society with this droll satirical short. When a local reporter from state television is sent to capture a PR stunt from the Kazakh poli...

Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1967 • Armenia/USSR

After completing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and before embarking on The Colour of Pomegranates, the great Sergei Parajanov produced this exquisite miniature about the work of Hakob Hovnatanyan, a nineteenth-century Armenian portraitist rever...

Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1968 • Hungary

Inspired by Carpathian folklore and based on the epic poem by Ferenc Juhász, this mesmerising animated short by the great Sándor Reisenbüchler imagines a world destroyed and then rebuilt. A fearsome, seven-headed dragon swallows the sun and moon,...

Directed by Aghanaghi Akhundov and Yalchin Efendiyev • 1969 • USSR/Azerbaijan

Produced at the start of the golden age of Azerbaijani animation, Akhundov and Efendiyev’s Jirtdan (meaning “small” or “dwarf”) is a magical little treat in which the titular tiny hero and his brothers must outwit the ...

Directed by Yuri Norstein • 1974 • USSR/Russia

The Heron and the Crane is a humorous little tale of amorous indecision and self-destruction from animator supreme Yuri Norstein. The titular animals are engaged in a dance of romantic attraction and rejection, whimsical but melancholy. A collaborat...

Directed by Yuri Norstein • 1976 • USSR/Russia

Directed by master artist Yuri Norstein, Hedgehog in the Fog is one of the world’s most beloved animated classics. The film follows a hedgehog as he sets off to look at the stars with his friend, the bear cub. But, distracted by a beautiful white ho...

Directed by Yuri Norstein and Ivan Ivanov-Vano • 1971 • USSR/Russia

This animated short is based on the Russian legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, which was reputed to have disappeared under the waters of Lake Svetloyar to escape an attack by the Mongols. This medieval folk tale was adapted...