Shaheen Ahmed

Lynch Nation chronicles India’s descent into terror, as mob lynchings targeting Muslims and Dalits have surged since Narendra Modi’s rise to power in 2014. The film, shot between 2017 and 2019, listens to the testimonies of survivors left shattered by violence unleashed by state sanctioned Hindu militias.

While studying in Bruxelles, Daryna Mamaisur is caught up in the conflict tearing through her country. She questions the way in which to speak about it, at a distance, while cinema seems the “least appropriate” means.

There are things that are indescribable and unspeakable when the disasters that affect our lives are beyond comprehension. Certain fundamental experiences seem irreducible to any form of expression. So how do we convey their intensity? How do we put them into words? Here, we’re talking about the war inflicted on the Ukrainians for over a year. Daryna Mamaisur is Ukrainian and currently lives in Portugal. O Fumo do Fogo, somewhere between a film diary and an essay, sketches with admirable reserve a path towards the possibility of communicating.

A sunset on Philopappou Hill in Athens becomes a portal to the outskirts of Delhi, opening onto the night across Omonia Square and its surrounding streets. Naz̤ar, a diary is a record of encounters with South Asian Muslim migrants in Athens — traces of exchanges in neighborhood cafés, makeshift mosques, Ramadan evenings, and half-sung songs.

Guada and Evy, a young couple from Brazil spend their days in Budapest working on long shifts and impossible hours. As the city falls into deep winter, their scattered week leads up to a long night of togetherness.

From his home in Lisbon, Lebanese-Palestinian writer Saleem Haddad reflects on memory, his family and the strangeness of the sea. He chases his grandmother’s fast-fading recollections of Palestine, where she lived many decades ago, and thinks about writing the homeland from a distance.