The Shaolin Boy (2021)

Polish animator Anna Błaszczyk’s humorous short—a collage of drawing, cut-out, and computer animation—was inspired by Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel Return from the Stars, a time-paradox tale of an astronaut who returns to Earth after many years away.

RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.

8mm work directed by Norihiko Morinaga.

Seven years ago, Zaid went to war against the Copenhagen underworld to avenge his dead brother. His identity as a respected doctor of cardiology and life as a family man is but a fading dream, and in prison Zaid suffers the loss of his son Noah, whom he barely knows. When a police agent approaches Zaid and offers him a deal to be released in exchange for infiltrating the Copenhagen underworld, he sees his chance to reclaim the remnants of the family life he left behind. But everything has a price, and Zaid realizes that he has now seriously endangered his son's life. After all, once you become part of the underworld, is there any way out?

Dissatisfied with the dishonesty they see in dating, strangers Naima and Sergio make a pact to spend 24 straight hours together in an attempt to fast forward their relationship.

Return is a methodical construction of the approach of an individual towards an unseen goal, which assumes metaphorical significance. Viola moves toward the camera/viewer, pausing every few steps to ring a bell, at which point he is momentarily thrust back to his starting place, and then advanced again. Finally reaching his destination, he is taken through all of the previous stages in a single instant and returned to the source of his journey.

A group of unwitting sorority sisters accidentally awaken the serial-killing Leprechaun after they build a sorority house on his hunting grounds.

After going on a killing spree in 1984, the legend of the Pumpkin Man returns once again to slay more victims 30 years later.

Static images of an old country house are combined with voices of the past to evocative effect. Haunting and nostalgic, 'Return' conveys the life that exists in old, abandoned places.

Sounds as witnesses. They blurr into memories, half-dreams, it is undecided if they are real or not. A fluctuation between imagination and reality.