Sunday 1st November 2026
3.00pm and 4.30pm
(after the Irish Poetry Films at 1pm)
The 2026 shortlist represents 19 countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, Poland, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA.
Judges Colm Scully & Paul Casey, will select one winner to receive the Ó Bhéal International award for best poetry-film, designed by glass artist Michael Ray, plus a cash prize of 500 euros. The best Irish Poetry Film will also be chosen, with a cash prize of 250 euros. Winners will be announced directly after the shortlist screenings at the Cork Arts Theatre, and online on Monday 2nd November.
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Sunday 1st November @ 3:00pm Cork Arts Theatre |
Poem: Salt, Snow, Earth
Synopsis – ‘Salt, Snow, Earth’ is a defiant meditation on human violence. To Naomi Foyle’s terse recitation of her poem, director Wendy Pye delivers fast-paced splitscreen archival imagery of war, genocide, protest and environmental devastation, interspersed with footage of aggressive hand signs, including the title in British Sign Language. Deftly edited in jump cuts and superimpositions to the jittery rhythms of Razia Aziz’s percussive soundtrack and punctuating sighs, ‘Salt, Snow, Earth’ asks who ultimately benefits from humanity’s incessant carousel of global militarism, imperialism and ecocide.
Director: Wendy Pye (UK)
Wendy Pye is a visual artist based in Brighton, UK, whose poetic practice uses photography and moving image to explore themes rooted in human experience, often inviting reflection on the more complex and universal aspects of life. She holds an MA in Photographic Arts from London College of Communication, University of the Arts London and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and been featured in publications including The Guardian, Geo Magazine and British Journal of Photography..
In recent years, Wendy has focused on short films, projections and collaborative live performance, working with poets, musicians and writers. Alongside her individual practice, Wendy is co-developing Luna Arts, a creative organisation exploring the role of creativity in health and wellbeing.
(Cerulean Island) (8:05)
Poem: John 3550N, 2820E (Cerulean Island)
Synopsis – A poetry film about loss, displacement, commemoration and the futility of war. This is an autobiographical family history poem about a volunteer pilot in World War II who was killed in action in the Mediterranean.
Director: Mary McDonald (Canada)
Mary McDonald is a Canadian new media artist who works with immersive sound, word, image and movement. She was recently awarded the Andra McCartney Mentorship award through NAISA (New Adventures in Sound Art). McDonald’s poetry film and AR installation, On the Margin of History, was awarded first prize in new media, performative and digital work. Her most recent collaboration with Vancouver Poet Laureate, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Utility Pole, explores the fibres of connectivity in our natural and technologized world and received the judges Honourable Mention at REEL 2021. McDonald’s poetry films and AR installations have been exhibited widely in Canada and internationally.
Poem: I Am Growing
Synopsis – The family tradition of father and daughter, through a poem, passes from 1989 to the present day, telling the story of growing up.
Director: Tatyana Rybinets (Russian Federation)
Tatyana Rybinets a theater and film actress, aspiring director and acting teacher, with over 50 roles in film and television. She graduated from VGIK (acting, I.N. Yasulovich’s workshop) in 2006, trained at the Ivana Chubbuck Studio in Los Angeles in 2013, and graduated from the “Lestnitsa” film school (directing) in 2018. She also holds a degree in psychology-valeology (2009). She received the Golden Leaf Award for her role as Agafia Tikhonovna in the play Marriage, is a member of the program “Intellectual Resources of Russia,” and teaches acting at the Ivana Chubbuck School.
Poem: Deadeye
Synopsis – During 2025, large areas of South Australian coastal waters were devastated by a harmful algal bloom, leading to mass mortalities of uncountable numbers of fish, invertebrates and other marine life. The causes are complex but all arise from the unmitigated effects of anthropogenic climate change.
This video has been made from images of fish that have been killed by the bloom and washed up on beaches along the eastern side of Gulf St Vincent. The audio was created from samples taken from videos of living fish, crabs and squid recorded at Seacliff beach, South Australia, in January – February 2025, before the bloom hit. The text is what the fish might say to us, if only they could…
Director: Ian Gibbins (Australia)
Ian Gibbins is a poet, video artist and electronic musician living in South Australia. His poetry has been widely published in Australia and overseas, and includes four books. His award-winning poetry videos, video art and soundscapes have been exhibited to acclaim at festivals, installations, galleries and public art displays around the world. Until he retired in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia.
Poem: The Black Hours
Synopsis – Illusory Depth responds to the excavation of an Anglo-Saxon royal monastery on the Thames at Cookham, Berkshire, a site associated with Queen Cynethryth and hidden beneath the landscape for more than a thousand years. Working from thousands of photographs taken during the 2024 archaeological dig season, the film layers fragments of excavated objects and earth samples with historical texts, sound and contemporary poetry. The film reflects on material traces, simple human pleasures and the continuities between distant centuries, asking what can still be sensed in what remains.
Director: Jane Glennie (UK)
Jane Glennie is an award-winning filmmaker and artist whose research-led practice brings together photography, text, poetry, sound and moving image. Her films draw on archives, archaeology, manuscripts, historical collections and places marked by history, exploring material traces, memory and the ways stories are constructed and reimagined. Her poetry films have been screened internationally, and her work has received awards including Best Video Art at the VII Bienal Internacional Dona i Cinema – Women & Film and Best Free Verse at Reel Poetry Festival, Houston. She lives and works in the UK.
Poem: Bird on a Wire
Synopsis – “Bird on a Wire” is a surreal rumination on memory, imagination, love, and the state of the world. The audio portion of this project comes from the 2025 album “Down at the Polystereophonic Dive Bar.”
Director: Greg Roensch (USA)
Greg Roensch writes flash fiction and poetry, makes poetry-films, and writes and records original songs. His poetry-films and music videos have screened at festivals worldwide. You can learn more about Greg’s work at gregroensch.com.
Poem: The Clouds are not Inaccessible
Synopsis – An unknown 1932 text by avant-garde artist Lucia Joyce plunges us into a phantasmagoric world of surreal creativity. Evanna Lynch as Lucia Joyce leads a delightful and sometimes frightening odyssey from Lucia’s own exquisite hand-crafted “lettrines”, to a shamanic dance which launches her soul into a magical dimension where she demonstrates to her detractors exactly how to reach the clouds…
Director: Deirdre Mulrooney (Ireland)
Author of Irish Moves, an illustrated history of dance and physical theatre in Ireland (The Liffey Press), and Orientalism, Orientation, and The Nomadic Work of Pina Bausch, Deirdre is committed to re-inscribing the body into Irish cultural history, Deirdre’s influential BAI-funded feature radio documentary, short dance film ‘Lucia Joyce: Full Capacity’, and her Joyce Studies Annual essay ‘Fail Better: Lucia Joyce and the Abbey Theatre Ballets’, change the accepted ‘mad girl’ narrative, and invite consideration of Lucia Joyce as a significant artist in her own right.
Her play ‘Brancusi Bird’, was supported by an Arts Council Agility Award and ‘Burn Bright. On Bloomsday 2025 Deirdre presented an illustrated talk entitled “Lucia Joyce in Paris” at Dublin’s Alliance Française, inspired by her 2024 residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais. Continuing this reclamation project, Deirdre’s new short aerial dance film “The Clouds are not Inaccessible”, based on an unknown surrealist text by Lucia Joyce premiered at Dublin’s Irish Film Institute on Bloomsday 2026 as part of Bloomsday Film Festival.
Poem: The Blonde
(formally Rich Butnotfamous)
Synopsis – On a small corner in the big city, a chef packs down the café, dreaming of a love that can never be. On the cusp of spending another night alone, Robby is rescued by a beautiful woman who has been waiting for him all night. In this melancholy romance, we are taken on a poetic journey through his mind as he falls in love with ‘The Blonde’. But is this romance all it appears to be?
Director: Hannah Tobin (New Zealand / UK)
Bringing Passion, Focus, and Relentless Optimism to my work in the Animation Industry, I have the ability to bring life and tactility to 3D Characters! Specialising in both CG Animation, and Lighting/Compositing, I use these skills to help me connect with an audience and tell all sorts of fantastic stories. My graduate film, “The Blonde”, is a Noir style animated poem depicting a chef closing up at the end of the night, and dreaming of finding love. It is inspired by my experience in the hospitality industry when long nights, crying in walk-ins, and lonely pack downs can all get to be too much.
Poems: Invisible Bridges
Synopsis – Invisible Bridges is a 3-part poem/poetryfilm exploring change and belonging in our busy world. While technology has brought more connections than ever across the globe, loneliness and environmental damage have increased. As the narrator confronts her internal and external landscapes and weather, the two mirror, merge and mutate. But all is not lost; positive transformation is still possible.
Director: Sarah James/Leavesley (UK)
Filmmaker biography: Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer who also makes poetry-films. This includes several festival poetry-film screenings as well as poetry-film commissions. Website: https://sarah-james.co.uk.
Poem: Bird Shooting
Synopsis – Birdshooting is a Jamaican poetry film that reclaims the language of “shooting” through the lens of photography and conservation. Built around Britton Wright’s dub poem and performance, the film moves through the Jamaican landscape as the speaker confronts the cultural reality of bird hunting while presenting another relationship with wild birds: observing, photographing and allowing them to remain alive after the encounter. Original cinematography, wildlife imagery and drumming combine with the poem to create a concise audiovisual meditation on beauty, tradition, choice and conservation.
Director: Delbert Cespedes (Jamaica)
Delbert Cespedes is a Jamaican multidisciplinary creative, poet, graphic artist, creative strategist and filmmaker working across visual design, motion graphics, animation, drone cinematography and post-production. Through Xgzartz and Dragonfleye Drone Services, his practice brings together technical craft and visual storytelling. Cespedes served as Creative Director, Editor, Colourist and Drone Videographer for Birdshooting, shaping the film’s visual language and final screen presentation. He has also represented Jaiku Poetry and Jamaica as a performing poet, including at the 2026 CariCon Poetry Slam.
Poem: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Synopsis – An empty house, memories of three generations, one hundred years of Solitude.
Director: Huang Weipeng (China)
Huang Weipeng is a professional teacher of digital media and is keen on experimental animation and film research. His works have won the golden monkey award of China International Animation Festival, the best experimental short film award of Salto Independent Film Festival, the best artistic short film award of Iran imofis International Film Festival; He was shortlisted in more than 20 international film exhibitions, including montekatini International Short Film Festival, Kassel Dokfest, Athens International Film and Video Festival.
Poem: Where shall I go?
Synopsis – Oh you! Where are you? I chased. You played along. Wherever I went, you were already there. Are you me? Am I you?
To find answers, to find you . . . Where shall I go?
Director: Ishvar Krishnan (India)
Ishvar Krishnan is a contemporary Tamil performance poet and poetry filmmaker whose work deals with ideas of death, perception and existence.
Poem: Dealer of Memories
Synopsis – Self-Portrait no. 1 – Dealer of Memories is the first micro-short in a series exploring the foundations of reality through poetic riddles. This first instalment explores the relationship between reality, identity and memory through a collection of old photographs. Each film is told from the same perspective, while never revealing exactly what, or who, that perspective belongs to. Its nature is deliberately left open, allowing the viewer to form their own interpretation.
Director: Vera Aalbers (Netherlands)
Vera Aalbers is a self-taught filmmaker and photographer based in the Netherlands, working globally. In an ever-changing world where nothing is permanent, Vera’s films and photographs explore the silent background of it all. Through carefully composed imagery and color, her visual poems create distinct worlds which celebrate this infinite, silent potentiality. Touching on themes of time, space and identity, her work transcends aesthetics and invites viewers to question reality and their relation to it. Vera’s work has led to collaborations with global brands and has drawn a dedicated online audience.
Poem: The B Cells: A Chemotherapy Poem
Synopsis – A visual and poetic journey through the experience of chemotherapy for Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma. Created from original watercolor drawings made by William Doan. Dedicated to Bonita Doan, a two-time cancer survivor.
Director: William Doan (USA)
William Doan, Ph.D. is a past president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and a Fellow in the College of Fellows of The American Theatre. In addition to articles in scholarly journals, Doan has co-authored three books and several plays. He has created solo performance projects at a variety of venues across the U.S., and abroad. His current work includes a large, multi-media project titled The Anxiety Project. Work from this project includes multiple short graphic narratives published in the Annals of Internal Medicine/Graphic Medicine, Cleaver Magazine, Intima: The Journal of Narrative Medicine, and The AutoEthnographer, as well as several award winning animated short films. He is an emeritus professor in the College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University where he served as the Penn State Laureate for 2019-2020.
Poem: “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick” (and others)
Synopsis – In Tongue Twisters thirty people from around the world share tongue twisters in their native languages. The tongue twister is part game, part poetry, and part song, and Tongue Twisters playfully interweaves language, culture, and portraiture to constitute a “found” ethno-poetic poem. Tongue Twisters is an international Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, echoing Humpty Dumpty’s reply to Alice regarding the nature of linguistic meaning and how words can mean so many things. Highlighted by Ken Parkin, creator of the Anthology of British Tongue-Twisters.
Directors: Dan Boord & Luis Valdovino (USA)
Dan Boord and Luis Valdovino have been collaborating since 1990. Their video work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Museum at the University of California, Berkeley; and ZKM, Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany. They have been nominated twice for a Rockefeller Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship.
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Sunday 1st November @ 4.30pm |
Poem: You’re not a Fool Grandpa
Synopsis – A little girl, now a woman, writes to her grandfather, wounded by a mental disorder. She watches him as he seethes inwardly, pondering the place of childhood in suffering.
Director: Adrien Lhoste (France)
Adrien Lhoste is a French film director and a graduate of La Fémis. In 2019, he directed Visages, which was selected for the Molodist Film Festival in Kyiv. In 2020 and again in 2023, he created an exhibition for the Nobu private mansion owned by Robert De Niro and Nobu Matsuhisa in London. In 2024, he directed You’re Not a Fool, Grandpa, which received the Audience Award at the Arts Convergences Festival at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac in Paris, as well as the Best Short Film Award at the Cinescale Festival and the Young Jury Prize at the Regards Croisés Festival.
Poem: Story Time
Synopsis – Story Time is a visual and musical interpretation of a poem by Shannon Kuta Kelly from her debut collection The Tree is Missing. The poem is a haunting exploration of isolation and existential anxiety related in the context of the Eastern European folk tale of Koschei the Deathless. Performances were captured live on LED stage, bringing the power of poetry, music, theatre and virtual production together.
Directors: Michael O’Neill & Glenn Patterson (UK)
Michael O’Neill is an IFTA nominated producer and writer. In 2021 he produced Back in Five, a live action comedy/drama which won Best Northern Irish Film at the British Short Film Awards. In 2023 he directed the short film C’est Moi dans la Poubelle which premiered in 2024 at the Beckett Unbound festival in Liverpool and Paris. His most recent film Peggy was screened in September 2026 at Beckett: Lieben in Liverpool.
Glenn Patterson is an internationally recognised novelist and screenwriter. Alongside ten novels and three works of non-fiction he has written plays for Radio 3 and Radio 4, and co-wrote the screenplay of the 2013 film Good Vibrations about the music scene in Belfast during the late 1970s (based on the true story of Terri Hooley). He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing in the School of Arts, English and Literature and Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast.
Poem: when tomorrow comes
Synopsis – “when tomorrow comes” follows a child wondering what will be left on this planet after humanity has exhausted Mother Earth and disappeared. Will there still be animals and plants? Will there be evidence of life? After we have taken everything and convinced ourselves of our own importance, will the Earth still be spinning?
Director: Michaela Prendl (Austria)
Michaela Prendl is an Austrian poet and actress. After completing her studies in Vienna, she spent time in New York, where she further developed her acting skills. Since then, she has performed on stages in and around Vienna, as well as in short films and poetry films, working both as an actress and director. She has performed her own poetry at festivals, poetry evenings, and poetry slams across Austria and Germany. In May 2024, she premiered her solo poetry performance wetterleuchten, which she subsequently toured throughout Austria and Germany. She is currently developing her third theatre production, Elvi and Bingo and the Heart of the Forest, a play for children aged five and up, which she has also written herself.
Poem: I Depart as Air
Synopsis – “I Depart as Air” is a stop-motion exploration of Walt Whitman’s poetry. The film centers on a dancer rendered in pastel, her movements built from 250 hand-drawn frames traced directly from printed photographs. The chalky medium makes her feel both vibrant and unstable. At times, her form nearly dissolves into the background as she moves.
The film’s atmosphere is grounded by an original guitar score, recorded live. Over the music, the artist reads a found poem: a sequence of words pulled from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and reassembled through erasure poetry to find new meaning within Whitman’s original text. In the final moments, water begins to bead on the dancer’s body. As the drop falls, she fades away entirely, leaving a sense of empty space.
Director: Deirdre Faughey (USA)
Dr. Deirdre Faughey is a teacher, poet and artist. Her poetry has been published in various journals and she won the 2022, 2023 & 2024 Grand Champion Award for student poetry anthology issued by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association. She is the author of Restorative Literacy Practices: Cultivating Community in the Secondary ELA Classroom, published by Teachers College Press in 2023. She has been working in the field of education since 2005. Deirdre has been secondary English teacher in both urban and suburban schools. In 2021, Deirdre received the Paul and Kate Farmer English Journal Writing Award for her article, “‘I Got This!: Visual Methods as a Restorative Practice.” In 2025 “I Depart as Air” earned the Best in Show award at the Huntington Arts Council’s exhibit, and has screened at the Sea Cliff Film Festival and the Phoenicia Film Festival.
Poem: Suite Ponç-Brossa
Synopsis – In 2009, the Joan Brossa Archive uncovered a folder titled “Joan Ponç” containing eleven texts that reveal the relationship between two major Catalan artists of the 20th century. This animated film piece brings together Brossa’s texts and Ponç’s paintings, reflecting their collaboration in the years following the Spanish Civil War. SUITE PONÇ-BROSSA is a journey into the past, a work of found painting, a videopoem avant la lettre.
Director: Marc Capdevila (Spain)
Marc Capdevila creates films that blend genres such as videopoetry, animation, found footage, and documentary. His first work, the animated painting videopoem “A fora”, was selected by numerous international animation and videopoetry festivals, including Zebra in Berlin and Cinanima in Espinho, Portugal. It also won First Prize at the 6th Animasivo Festival in Mexico City and received the award at the first edition of the Reversed Poetry Film Festival in Amsterdam. His second piece, the medium-length documentary “El pes de la palla”, is based on conversations with a recently arrived Malian immigrant in Barcelona. Broadcast on Catalonia’s public television, it was selected for festivals such as Cinemigrante in Buenos Aires and the Lanzarote International Film Festival. With the “Suite Ponç-Brossa”, he began a series focused on the relationships between painting and writing. He is currently developing projects centered on Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. As an editor, he has worked on films and documentary series for platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Movistar+.
Poem: Fish Scales
Synopsis – “Fish scales” is a short video poem about the experience of a nostalgic and elusive memory that becomes lost in the thicket of everyday life. It emerged from the intimate friendship of three artists: Aga Borzym, Marta Jagniewska, and Sara Kałużna. Working on this project became the catalyst for founding the creative collective Kiss My Poem.
We are inspired by being at home, surrounded by animals, bills to pay, children to feed and hold close. We work on the borders, at points of contact and in the cracks. We create in the in-between moments, on the tip of a scalded tongue. We piece together fragments, searching for shades through which to express our emotionality, sensitivity, femininity, and motherhood. In Scales, we speak of a body longing, of pleasure locked away in memories.
Director: Aga Borzym (Poland)
Director and film editor, Aga Borzym graduated from the Development Lab (Studio Prób) feature programme at the Wajda School, studied Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań, and completed Multimedia Techniques at the Faculty of Mechatronics, Warsaw University of Technology. In 2023, her feature documentary debut, Girls’ Stories (Dziewczyńskie historie), had its international premiere at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam. The film won the Polish Filmmakers Association (SFP) Award at the Ale Kino! International Young Audience Film Festival in Poznań and the Teenage Prize at the PORTO/POST/DOC documentary film festival in Porto.
Poem: Mops
Synopsis – Three mop-headed figures navigate space and time, tracing labor, marginality, and visibility.
Director: Kate Donnelly (USA)
Kate Donnelly is an artist, educator, and collaborator whose work investigates memory, family, labor, and inheritance through video, sound, performance, and writing. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, theatres, and public spaces internationally, including Paadmaan Video Event in Tehran, Iran, and AIR’s 10th Biennial in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Donnelly is a co-founder of the artist collaborative SnakehouseVT, which fosters the exchange of ideas through innovative programming. Their annual video festival Single Channel brings artists and audiences together in dialogue around urgent issues affecting their community and the broader world.
Poem: Under Construction
Synopsis – Under Construction is an experimental poetry and dance film created with young people in Adamstown. Set against a landscape of building sites, open fields and new housing, the film uses movement, spoken word and visual metaphor to explore identity, belonging and what it means to grow up in a place that is still becoming. Under Construction is part of Crosscare’s Big Tree youth arts programme for Adamstown, Kishoge and Griffeen in Dublin west.
Director: Dagogo Hart (Ireland)
Dagogo Hart is a Nigerian-Irish filmmaker, writer and director based in Ireland. His work explores masculinity, identity, migration, grief and belonging, often blending poetic storytelling with grounded, character-led narratives. Through Belema Art House, the multidisciplinary production company he co-founded, Dagogo develops and produces work across film, theatre and live performance. His recent screen projects include GNIB, A Walk Home and Heaven. Coming from a background in poetry and theatre, his filmmaking is driven by a strong interest in visual language, performance and emotionally intimate storytelling.
Poem: Petres
Synopsis – This performative piece unfolds as a poetic negotiation with trauma, memory, and the eco-material substratum of our world — through the embodied performativity of voice, body, and the stone itself as a poetic and existential anchor.
Director: Vassia Pappa (Greece)
Vasia Pappa is an Athens-based audiovisual artist and musician. She is a final-year student in the Department of Photography and Audiovisual Arts at the University of West Attica, and her work focuses on artistic and experimental photography, collage, and video. She has participated in exhibitions and festivals in Greece, such as *UN-LIMITED SKY* at Athens International Airport and the International Performance Poetry Symposium-Festival. She is interested in practices that combine poetry, the body, and experimentation with the medium, seeking new forms of personal and collective expression.
Poem: Nothing is lost
Synopsis – Things we make are made to fade, but somehow nothing is lost. This film asks what happens to a poem, and to the love put into it, once both the writer and the reader are gone.
Director: J.M. Tan (Singapore)
Jia Min Tan is following a lifelong love of writing and art into poetry and filmmaking. Based in Singapore, she brings the tools of her former life as a Data Scientist to her creative work, using technology to produce new ways of expression. Her work explores what it means to be human, how we experience life, and what we create and leave behind. Nothing is lost is her first poetry-film.
Poem: Solace
Synopsis – Solace is a Poetic Short Film exploring a Highland Settler’s memories of her struggles to co-exist with the natives and the resulting trauma she experienced. As she strives to hold the heart of the Highlands within her, their stoic pressure battles with her inner desires.
Director: Glenna Morrison (UK)
Glenna Morrison has worked professionally in Theatre, film and T.V for 30 years. Her multiple roles in theatre include Sting the Hurtyman (Aberdeen, Lemontree), The Brontes, playing Charlotte Bronte (Pascal Theatre Co.,Uk & Irish tour), Romeo and Juliet playing Juliet (Oval Theatre London) Miss Julie , playing Miss Julie (Jacksons Lane Theatre, London), And Bjork of Course playing Bjork ( Royal Court Theatre, London), The Crucible, When We Were Married and Playboy of the Western World (Leicester Haymarket Theatre) Art and Guff (Soho Theatre London and Theatre Clywd), Trainspotting playing Alison ( No.1 tour U.K and Australia G & J Productions).
Her work in TV includes Buddha_’s Legs, The Bill, Dangerfield, 20 Degrees North, Taggart, Wavelength and The Ties that Bind, Case Histories and the Comic Strip (Sex Actually) along with numerous roles in BBC productions. Her lead role in Hearing Things co-starring Felicity Jones won them a Best Film Award at the Moondance Film Festival.
Poems: Soulmate, Qingming & River Snow
Du Mu (803-c.852)
and Liu Zongyuan (773-819 AD)
Synopsis – The Three Stages of Loneliness is based on 3 different poems of ancient China. This poetry film interweaves these 3 classical Chinese poems to convey the director’s meditation on “Loneliness”.
Director: Luojia Gan (China)
Luojia Gan is an associate research professor of CUC (Communication University of China). Together with his daughter (Dingdang), he created the AIGC animated short‑film series “Follow Dingdang to Learn Chinese Poems”, which promotes fine traditional Chinese culture. These animated shorts have earned nominations and awards at various film festivals across dozens of countries on six continents worldwide, and racked up millions of views online. Available anywhere around the globe, the shorts may be used free of charge for any educational, cultural‑exchange and non‑commercial purposes. The exquisite ancient poems are the shared treasure of all humanity, and we hope more friends around the world who love Chinese culture will get to enjoy them. You are welcome to subscribe to his YouTube channel, where brand‑new animated shorts will be uploaded every month: www.youtube.com/@gan1981
Poem: Berlin Blue or Paris Blue?
Synopsis – This poetry film is based on the music video “Odeon” by Oskar Schuster, which he created almost entirely on a 35-year-old Commodore Amiga computer, using early-1990s image-processing software and a custom video editor he programmed himself. Combining stop-motion footage with various forms of digital animation generated on the Amiga, the project embraces the limitations of vintage hardware to build a distinct visual world. A modern computer was used only for assembling the final edit and adding a few subtle effects.
The video features Angie Siveria and her poem, which leads the viewer into a dream-like world filled with turning and ticking clocks, ballerinas drifting through space, lion-girls dancing through time, and a mysterious golden fish. The blend of stop-motion elements, retro digital techniques, and a deliberately imperfect analogue look creates an atmosphere that feels both nostalgic and otherworldly, as if stemming from an old VHS tape from a parallel past.
Directors: Oskar Schuster and Angie Siveria (Germany)
Angie Siveria is a Ukrainian illustrator, filmmaker and poet. She was born in Donetsk, grew up in Mykolaiv, lived in Kyiv and currently lives in Berlin. Angie participated and won prizes at the following international film and video festivals: CYCLOP (2012-2015), ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival (Berlin, Germany, 2013, 2016, 2022), MOLODIST (Kyiv, Ukraine, 2015), the Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition (Cork, Ireland, 2015, 2022), International poetry festival «Liberated Words» (Bath Spa University, Bath, United Kingdom, 2015), X International festival of amateur, student and non-professional film “KINOKIMMERIYA 2015” (1st and 3rd place, Kherson, Ukraine, 2015), Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival (New England, USA, 2016), along with many, many more.
Oskar Schuster is a German composer and artist, living in Berlin. His songs without words evoke a fairytale-world, strange and surreal. A world full of blurry images of the past; of childhood memories and characters from children’s books; of clicking and ticking clocks and ever-looping music boxes, of far-away-lands, far-away-seas, far-away-skies, far-away-everythings. At times reminiscent of Yann Tiersen’s Amélie, his music is still very distinct, arising from a mixture of various influences including experimental electronic music (Aphex Twin, Pogo), the minimalist folk-pop of Beirut, the ethereal and mystical sounds of Sigur Rós as well as classical piano music by Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin.
Poem: Ashes My Ashes
Synopsis – What began as a raw stream of consciousness unexpectedly unlocked a ghost: a grandfather who died before the poet was born. Ashes My Ashes explores the heavy, unspoken inheritance of the British middle-class “stiff upper lip”—the silent family dynamics of repression that ripple down through generations. Moving between the inherited weight of the past and the physical act of creation, the poem stands as a testament to art not just as expression, but as a grounded tool for healing, unravelling, and finally laying old burdens to rest.
Director: Liam Baker (UK)
Born into a lineage of film makers — Liam Baker’s paternal grandfather the legendary actor and director Stanley Baker, and parents who ran an independent rock documentary company — filmmaking has always been part of his landscape. Since 2018, his work in filmpoems has centred on a singular pursuit: translating the interior world of a poem into living, breathing cinema. Drawing on theatrical techniques like staging, voicing, performance, lighting, and immersive soundscapes, Baker brings poetic spaces to life. his past work includes Build Me a Nest (nominated for the Prisma Independent Film Award) and Albion Place (screened at Custom House for The Leith Festival).
Poem: The Cold Case of The Three White Horses
Synopsis – A visual illustration of the poem, based on a true story.
Director: Salwa Abuljadayel (Saudi Arabia)
Salwa Abuljadayel is an artist and equestrian born in Saudi Arabia. She graduated in 2018 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre from Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. After graduation, she pursued operational roles in Events Production with Live Nation Entertainment. In 2023, the artist graduated with a Master’s of Art in History of Art and Archeology from SOAS, University of London. During her Master’s studies in the UK, she began her journey as a professional Fencer in Épée, and has competed nationally for three seasons.
Abuljadayel is currently lecturing in theatre and performing arts at the world’s largest female university, Princess Nourah University. She is also supervising International Racing with the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia (JCSA). She has worked with the JCSA since the inception of The Saudi Cup in 2020, the most valuable horse race in the world. She is a second-generation horse owner, carrying the racing legacy of her late Father, Saeed Abuljadayel.
Abuljadayel is also a creative advisor at Suraya Productions. Her role began with a short animated film produced and directed by Suraya Al Shehry and Nabila Abuljadayel ‘Prostate and Draw Near’. The short film was screened on Animation Day during the 77th Cannes Film Festival, the Venice Production Bridge during the 81st Venice Film Festival, and was selected in the Academy Awards (Oscars) Qualifying Long List of 2025, and included in the Academy Archives in May, 2026.
