Subway Crush examines the ethics of social media through a seemingly innocent encounter between an influencer and an unsuspecting subway passenger. The film is an entirely auteur-driven project by Oriana Ng, who served as director, writer, producer and cinematographer. It was made on an estimated budget of just $20, demonstrating how contemporary digital filmmaking can achieve striking results with minimal resources. The cast includes Bella Kouds and Mehdi Hadim, known for his performance in Athena.

Fredrik, a nerdy pop singer, has found a perfect substitute for his lack of love and human connection: he now tours the Swedish countryside as a medium, and receives the admiration of a desperate audience overwhelmed by mourning. But during a particularly crowded divinatory reading, Fredrik invites on stage a woman whose grief turns out to be a little too raw. He is then forced to face the consequences of his actions, and to contemplate the reasons why he acts as he does.

A sparrow is exposed to images of ostriches every day: On posters, in advertising, on his smartphone. The long neck, the perfect look and the muscular legs of the ostriches are what he likes – he wants to be like them too. Through hard leg muscle training, visits to the neck stretching studio and make-up tutorials, he comes very close to his goal. One day, however, when a real ostrich comes to town and the sparrow meets his idol in person, he realises one thing: sparrows are not ostriches.

Sound of the Somme recounts the true story of Private James Cleland Richardson, the 20-year-old Canadian bagpiper who defied orders to play for his comrades during the Battle of the Somme, an act that earned him the Victoria Cross, the British Commonwealth's highest military honour. Richardson's bagpipes were believed lost for almost ninety years before being rediscovered in Scotland in 2002 and returned to Canada, where they are now preserved by the British Columbia Regiment Museum. Director Michaël Vermaercke combines meticulous historical research with immersive sound design to bring one of the First World War's most remarkable stories of courage to the screen.

An orphan in the slum scrapes by collecting plastic waste. Inside his shabby hut, he drifts into a hallucination: plastic bags morph into an elephant (symbolizing ideals), a cat (embodying maternal warmth and comfort), and a dog (standing for paternal loyalty and courage). They carry him flying over cities, playgrounds and forests, letting him encounter endless warmth and beauty. As the fantasy fades with the sunset, a thin plastic sheet settles gently over his body in cold reality. This imaginary flight is the last tenderness bestowed upon him by suffering.

A Friend of Ours playfully explores the unpredictable nature of filmmaking, reminding us that reality often has better ideas than even the most carefully prepared script. Directors François Rabes and Félicie Dutertre continue a creative partnership spanning more than three decades, following earlier award-winning shorts including Arthur and Good Luck Mr. Grosky, which received numerous international festival prizes. Produced by Twinkie Films and shot in Paris, the film stars acclaimed French actor Gilles Cohen and has already screened at the Golden State Film Festival and the Paris In Love Film Festival.

What begins as a nostalgic Super-8 home movie reconstruction slowly drifts into something surreal, as memories become animated, altered, and increasingly unreliable. Blurring the line between truth and invention, the film explores how AI can and will reshape not only our future, but the way we remember our past. When memories can be generated, what does it mean to remember?