BERLIN FILM WEEK 2026: SHORTS PROGRAMME

Jamais la nuit (16 min)
I Promise You Violence (9 min)
Normal (10 min) - World Premiere
Ball Lightning (12 min)
On Home and Otherness (16 min)
Where Were We? (4 min )

Detailed programme below:

Jamais la nuit
Italy, 2026, 16 min
Directed by Alberto Mangiapane, Chiara Napoleoni
Cast: Clément Roussier, Liah O’Prey
Synopsis: Within the walls of an apartment Gaspar & Jeanne share the last moments before their farewell. When Gaspar leaves the house, Jeanne faces a feeling of nostalgic regret, melancholy, and the knowledge that she is expecting a daughter. Aware that she can no longer hold that place, she tries to bring back a memory, a moment experienced or perhaps only imagined.

I Promise You Violence
Mexico, 2025, 9 min
Documentary, Animation
Directed by Juan Maria Leon
Synopsis: A romanticized childhood, teenage years clouded by confusion and violence, and an adulthood shaped by the need to make peace with the past. I Promise You Violence is a short film drawn from my personal memories of coming of age during the war on drugs in Michoacán, Mexico. Not as a story that has ended, but as one that persists, not as a chapter long closed, but as a presence that lingers, a wound we learn to live alongside.

Normal
France, 2026, 10 min, World Premiere
Directed by Lara Panah-Izadi
Cast: Benjamin Siksou, Thais Dumas
Synopsis: Normal, a hypersensitive man, literally lives through everything he feels. To survive the violence of his emotions, he decides to protect himself but risks missing out on what really moves him.

Ball Lightning
USA, 2025, 12 min
Documentary, Animation
Directed by Catriona Trina Baker
Synopisis: Ball Lightning is the true story of a refugee who fled the personal and social effects of Soviet run East Germany after the end of WWII and immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. The story is told through the eyes of the surrogate daughter that she raised after she was forced to give away her own infant daughter as the iron curtain rose. Gusta serves as an example of survival, kindness and the fortitude of human resilience. The film is dedicated to her lost daughter, Esther, a reminder that the children separated from families because of war are never forgotten by those who love them.

On Home and Otherness
Germany, 2025, 16 min
Documentary
Directed by Laura Russ
Cast: Guillem Camprodon Pujol, Helga Zeike, Eva Riccio, Mariana Palacio, Matteo Stefani
Synopsis: "On Home and Otherness" is a personal essay film about travel, belonging, and human connection. Moving through different countries and everyday gathering spaces, the filmmaker reflects on why some places invite openness while others resist it. The film explores “third places” (spaces beyond home and work where community quietly forms) through personal footage and intimate encounters with those who host and inhabit them. As the journey unfolds, a realization emerges: while traveling and recognizing oneself in others is a privilege, communities cannot survive on movement alone. Belonging requires presence, care, and the decision to stay.

Where Were We?
India, 2025, 4 min
Animation
Directed by Suresh Eriyat
Synopsis
What begins as an awkward encounter unfolds into a surreal micro-odyssey. Drifting through an ocean of objects, memories, and associations, the film transforms the everyday into something wondrous, dissolving the boundaries between the world around us and the worlds we carry within.