• Sat 08 02 2025 / 3 – 8 pm •
Day 2: Our Eyes Have Exhausted the Vocabulary of Death
Curated by VINCENT E., SARAH SAVALANPOUR and SHADI TABIBZADEH
Over the course of three days, a carefully curated film program, born from interdisciplinary collaboration - takes shape.
Weaving together the intersection of memory, dislocation, and radical solidarity, the program uses film to confront, as well as imagine beyond colonial violence and the ways it warps our sense of self, community, time and space. Complimenting the film program with alternative media forms such as food, music, an interactive drawing corner & a healing conversation circle, the cinema is transformed into a space for nurturing ancestral forms of belonging. It reflects on the essence of home—its presence, what it carries, and the void left in its absence. The showcased works examine the act of remembering, transforming archives into dynamic spaces for resistance, reclamation, and processes of un-learning.
Here you can find more information about DAY 1 and DAY 3.
DAY 2: Our Eyes Have Exhausted the Vocabulary of Death
Borrowing its title from Etel Adnan’s Jenin, this program brings together films that challenge the colonial and authoritarian use of visual media. By reframing archives as spaces of resistance and reclamation, these works highlight memory’s survival and vulnerability, offering insights into how storytelling can preserve histories, forge solidarity, and foster hope amidst loss. Organized into three sections—Two Rivers and a Wind, Resisting Oblivion, and Vocabulary of Absence—the program traverses landscapes of conflict and displacement, connecting stories across borders to expose shared struggles and resist erasure.
Program #1: Two Rivers and a Wind
Two Rivers and a Wind examines the role of visual media in occupation and dispossession. Spanning Taiwan, Palestine, and Buryatia, these films reveal the structures of occupation and preserve ancestral memory, reclaiming visual media as a tool for solidarity.
Short film program:
Water Sleep II Akaike River under Xizang Road (D: Su Yu Hsin; Taiwan 2019; 10'; English/Japanese/Traditional Chinese, English subtitles) Maps are controlled by nation-states: who creates them, what they will look like, how they will be read, and how they will be shared. water sleep II Akaike river under Xizang Road is an essay film which the artist guide us to find the lost river in historical maps.
We Have Always Known the Wind's Direction (D: Inas Halabi; Palestine 2019-2020; 11'; Arabic, English subtitles) Fragments of landscapes and voices cohere into a rich exploration of the unrepresentable in this film about the possible burial of nuclear waste in the South of the West Bank and the invisible networks of power that control the region.
The River I Grew Up With (D: Natalia Papaeva; The Netherlands 2022- 2023, 30'; Russian/Buryat, English subtitles)
The River I Grew Up With captures Orlik's landscape and family tales, blending Buryat and Russian through a bilingual mother-daughter duo. Papaeva uses red and green text to depict a family's view of a shifting culture.
Sat 08 02 2025 | 3 pm - 4.30 pm
Filmhaus
Maybachstraße 111, 50670 Köln
In english language
Tickets available here
Program #2: Resisting Oblivion
Resisting Oblivion uncovers hidden scars of history in Iran and the Afghan diaspora, revisiting narratives erased by authoritarian regimes or national exclusion. The chosen film explores identity and belonging amidst displacement, showing the power of memory to resist oblivion and reclaim lost histories.
Film program:
The Silhoettes (D: Afsaneh Salari; Iran/Philippines 2020; 79'; Persian (Farsi/Dari), English subtitles) At the height of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1982, 1.5 million Afghans took a long journey to the border of Iran to flee war. TAGHI, born after that generation, and unwilling to inherit the limitations of his parents’ refugee status, navigates outside the protective walls of his family to trace his identity and the doors to his future in the homeland he never knew. As war continues to rage in Afghanistan, what future awaits him in which land?
Sat 08 02 2025 | 4.30 pm – 6.30 pm
Filmhaus
Maybachstraße 111, 50670 Köln
In english languag
Tickets available here
Program #3: Vocabulary of Abscence + Music Performance
Vocabulary of Absence draws on family archives to reflect on the losses of migration—fractured homes, loved ones left behind, and disrupted social fabrics. By creatively engaging with archival gaps, these films transform absence into a fertile ground for reconstructing stories, enriching both personal and collective memory.
Music performance by Atena Eshtiaghi
Short film program:
I am trying to remember (D: Pegah Ahangarani; Iran/Czech Republic 2021; 15'; Persian, English subtitles) I asked: "Why have they erased you?" He said: "Maybe they are scared." I said: "Whoever is scared, should erase themselves." He said: "In that case, the faces of the living would all be gone and only the dead would remain."
3350 KM (D: Sara Kontar; France 2023; 13'; Arabic, English subtitles) Father and daughter have been separated by 3,350 kilometres for seven years. He lives in Syria, she lives in exile in Paris. All they have left is to talk on the internet. The daughter records the conversations.
x + x = + (D: Niyaz Saghari; Iran/UK 2020; 7'; Persian, English subtitles) +x+=+ is a meditation on the overwhelming process of grief and healing through the use of archive sound and image.
Random 13 minutes (D: Israa Issa Mahameed; 2024; 13'; Arabic, English subtitles) A Random 13 Minutes captures an intimate phone conversation between Israa Issa Mahameed, living in the peaceful Norway, and her mother in Nablus, one of the most tense areas in Palestine. The conversation was recorded on December 30, 2022, at 3 a.m.
Sat 08 02 2025 | 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Filmhaus
Maybachstraße 111, 50670 Köln
In english language
Tickets available here
The film festival is part of NEW CURATORS, a project by Filmhaus Köln and ADKDW. Funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science NRW and the Cultural Office of Cologne.
