In the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, film director Ganna flees with her children and elderly mother from Russian gunfire near Kyiv. Amidst the chaos, they find shelter in Poland with Kaja, an artist, singer, and mother of five, who welcomes them as a family. Despite the language barrier, the Ukrainian and Polish mothers form a deep bond that helps Ganna confront trauma, loss, and the terrifying new reality of war. Ganna’s family is torn between those who left and those who stayed. Her father, Petro, refuses to abandon his land near Bucha, surviving the Russian occupation while stubbornly tending to his garden. Her young daughter Malva quickly adapts to life in Poland, while her teenage son Orest struggles with loneliness. Meanwhile, Malva’s father—a renowned folk musician—promises to reunite with them at a music festival in Poland, though wartime restrictions rarely allow Ukrainian men to leave the country. What will it take for this family, fractured by war, to come together again? Told through the lens of a refugee, the film captures the experiences of Ukrainian women and children in Poland during the early months of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
A Giant Secret
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Amelia, a young girl, is raised on a secluded rural property since infancy by two trolls, under the guise that she is in fact a troll herself. Amelia's world unravels as she learns the truth about her past and identity.
Vanishing: A Love Story
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Vanishing: A Love Story is a documentary about award-winning novelist Cai Emmons and her loving, open-hearted journey towards death. In 2021, at the age of 70, Cai was diagnosed with ALS. Taking place in 2022, during the last six-months Cai’s life, the film is, first and foremost, a story about the agency of expression —having a voice to create a legacy in the world. "Sandra Luckow’s 'Vanishing' offers an almost shockingly close-up view of a life well lived and arguably well ended. Focused raptly on the late author Cai Emmons, the film is documented from so deep within her home and intimate circle that at times it also seems to have been shot from inside her head. Emmons is the intellectual driver of Vanishing—but it’s Luckow’s principled humility before her subject, and before the inescapable realities of illness and death, that enable this film to begin in voicelessness and dissolution and end in eloquent affirmation.
Father Figures
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After a son makes a mistake in his relationship, a group of his father figures in Heaven compete over who should send him a sign to help fix it.
HOPE
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Love Conquers All. Maybe.
HANDMADE
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Using her hand as an example, Christiane Karajeva demonstrates the core feeling of piano playing, her approach to problems and discovering blockades over 14 scenes. All in order to move more freely and relaxed on the instrument. The film should inspire one to take a close look! However, the physical and psychological aspects do not only affect instrumentalists, they can be applied to everyone and to everyday life situations.
Believe
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The War Corporation presents that science and mathmatics can be just as entertaining as anything else - its all about what you believe in.
Three Phases of Misfortune
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Eddie believes his life is dictated by misfortune. He breaks down all of his misfortune into three phases.
True Horizon
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Rob's dedication to liberation and justice makes an impression on Charlie and some of her activist friends, though not all is what it seems in "True Horizon," an expressionistic meditation on how people decide what is true.
The Halfling Princess and The Fool
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A young, half human, half fairy princess, given away at birth, must choose to become fairy or human by her 25th birthday. Drawn by the greatest power of all, the power of love, she chooses to become human.
The Language of Wolves
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After being embedded with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, which ends in tragedy, a journalist heads to rural Maine to fully recover and finds herself on the frontlines of another battle, between a family of wolves and the ruthless land developer who wants them hunted down. After a comrade dies in a horrific incident on the frontlines in Afghanistan, a war correspondent, forced to take time off, travels to Maine, only to stumble upon a exotic-animal hunting resort that threatens the local wolf population. When two wolf pups come under her care, she risks everything to stop the corruption and return the wolves to their pack.
A Family's Business
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When a brilliant but introverted engineer must marry before turning thirty or lose his family’s bunker-building business, he and his carefree brother embark on a chaotic international search as passport bros for marriage partners—only to discover that success may lie closer to home.
Life Gave Me A Twist
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Life Gave Me a Twist is a powerful graphic documentary that traces one woman’s journey from childhood innocence to hard-won resilience. Through memory, illustrated storytelling, and personal reflection, the film explores love, betrayal, abuse, loss, and survival, revealing how generational trauma, intimate relationships, and unexpected tragedy shape identity. As the story unfolds, the filmmaker confronts painful truths, reclaims her voice, and transforms lived experience into purpose—offering an unflinching yet hopeful portrait of healing, strength, and self-definition in the face of life’s twists.
Tempest Pilot Script
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Two unsuspecting individuals discover they are part of a covert AI experiment that programs them to commit murder.
A POSTERIORI
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The film A POSTERIORI (2023), 3 min., colour, sound. A Posteriori (Latin, ‘from the later’) - knowledge derived from experience (Encyclopaedia Britannica/philosophy). The film delves into some complex themes: the mystery of creation; the line between God and man; the global crisis of values, faith and religion; power and hypocrisy; the church mired in scandals and contradictions. The above concepts are examined in this three minutes film. Diverse visual styles have been intertwined, separate shots are linked together not by their literal continuity in reality but by symbolic association - as metaphors. This provides an opportunity to not only show different conclusions on the screen, but to also create symbolic meanings and metaphors that go outside the context of the film. The playful representation of existential topics invites the viewer to draw from their own memory and emotional recognition, stimulating their intellectual reflexivity and perception. It allows for the process of co-creation by inviting the spectator’s imagination to build a unique interpretation.
Osaka Horizon International Film Festival info@osakahorizon-iff.com