Seventy years after the death of one of history’s most feared dictators, the town of Gori in Georgia remains inextricably linked with its most famous son. For Nasi, a resident of the town, keeping that association alive and promoting an image of Stalin as a benevolent leader is central to her identity. Her beliefs bring her into conflict with her adoptive granddaughter Zhana, an activist fighting for a more open reckoning with his dark legacy. As the two women attempt to reconcile their differences, of unresolved Soviet-era legacies on present-day culture wars.
Nemo is the name of the famous captain in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, named by Jules Verne after the latin word meaning "no one, nobody". On the shores of Chittagong, Bangladesh, the cargo ship NEMO 1 is beached amongst hundreds of others. A journey towards steel giants being recycled by minuscule men.
Inside a shelter, participants in a talking circle share their experiences of intimate partner violence as a way to regain their dignity and strength to act. Powerfully empathetic, “Afterwards” creates a space of sisterhood and solidarity—a chorus of voices breaking down the walls of silence
During the conflict in Northern Ireland, a bizarre practice developed that saw actors hired to dub those associated with the IRA. Via unseen archive footage and present-day interviews with key figures such as Gerry Adams and Stephen Rea, “The Ban” looks at the British government’s use of the threat of ‘terrorism’ to justify censorship, reflecting on the central role of the voice to draw inevitable comparisons with the present.
Nastia, who has lived abroad for many years, begins to teach her mother how to use Internet services. Different perceptions of technology become the starting point for exposing intergenerational conflicts and long-forgotten family threads. The complicated navigation of social media reflects a no less difficult path to communicate. While learning, the heroines learn a lot about each other, but will the intimacy regained via Zoom be defining for the further relationship between the two adult women?