The Edge of Tomorrow - Live Action Documentaries 1

Festival
PÖFF Shorts 2025
Programme

This programme explores art as the vessel of transformation. Weaving together stories of creativity, identity, and resilience across landscapes, these films take you along for a stroll from the coastal weavers, who silently craft in the fabric of time, to a buried album beneath Orkney’s soil set to challenge our perception of patience. Bringing tradition and vivid self-expression, a Liberian artist, seeking refuge from war, uses his distinct otherworldly art to channel the trauma of displacement, while another artist, a filmmaker, deals with loss, by reclaiming "Reindeer Queer" as a symbol of resistance, when navigating his grief and identity. Among these stories we are also invited to join an intimate exploration of three young men in their chase of an ambitious dream of becoming trap music stars.

Screenings

Screening101716 / Homse lävel - lühidokumentaalid 1
Q&A duration
Screening duration

Films

Modern History

Local title
Lähiajalugu
Original title
Modern History
Director
Oleksandr Hoisan, Valery Grysha, Oleksandr Kosiak
Country
Year
2025
Festival
PÖFF Shorts 2025
Programme

The first week of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Routines suddenly become irrelevant. An existential threat makes inaction unbearable. Three rear areas, at different distances from the frontlines, where three separate observations merge into one story that conveys the collective experience of a nation determined to resist. The clocks are turned to wartime: three o’clock, six o’clock, twelve o’clock. Perhaps the war will only last a week.

Director
Oleksandr Hoisan, Valery Grysha, Oleksandr Kosiak
Runtime
Subtitles

Bad Poles

Local title
Halvad poolakad
Original title
Bad Poles
Director
Kamila Ćwiklińśka
Country
Year
2024
Festival
PÖFF Shorts 2025
Programme

This documentary, hybrid in both content and form, tells the story of two young LGBTQ+ activists who, in their social and performative actions, fight disinformation, violence and hate speech, especially the formal and institutional ones.

Director
Kamila Ćwiklińśka
Runtime
Subtitles

Mexcala

Local title
Mexcala
Original title
Mexcala
Director
Walter A. Lagarda-Parra
Country
Year
2024
Festival
PÖFF Shorts 2025
Programme

In Mezcala de la Asunción, the last native population living along the shores of Mexico’s largest lake, a father and son navigate a dual struggle. They defend their ancestral land while also confronting chronic kidney disease, a condition that affects much of their community. Inspired by the philosophy of ethnofiction, this short film offers an intimate glimpse into their fight for survival and cultural identity.

Director
Walter A. Lagarda-Parra
Runtime
Language
Subtitles

Mother Company

Local title
Ema-ettevõte
Original title
Mother Company
Director
Alexander Raptotasios, Konstantinos Thomaidis
Country
Year
2025
Festival
PÖFF Shorts 2025
Programme

Blending verbatim performance and choral music, Mother Company follows a children’s choir amidst an abandoned power plant in Northern Greece, role-playing as generations of workers of this de-industrialised area. A chorus of young voices reflects on environmental catastrophe, public health and economic depravation while a ‘Green Future’ is promised to save them.

Director
Alexander Raptotasios, Konstantinos Thomaidis
Runtime
Language
Subtitles

How I Spent My Summer Holidays?

Local title
Mida ma suvevaheajal tegin?
Original title
How I Spent My Summer Holidays?
Director
Antonio Lukich
Country
Year
2024
Festival
PÖFF Shorts 2025
Programme

How teenagers in modern Ukraine spent their summer. Do teenagers from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Nemishayeve, Lviv, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia live differently, or alike? What connects and divides them?
We are used to hearing stories about 'vacations by the sea,' 'bike rides,' and 'sports victories.' But what will teenagers in modern Ukraine tell us? Will their lives look somehow different? Or is even the war unable to cancel their youth and passion for life, emotions, and adventures?

Director
Antonio Lukich
Runtime
Subtitles