Concorto Daily – August 22, 2026

Barazioak – Lur Olaizola Lizarralde

As seen by Anna Vullo

In a bookbinding workshop, Alicia, Maite, Unai and Merchen cut, saw and glue pages together to give books a new lease on life. As they work, they chat about life and loss. Bach’s Goldberg variations play on the radio, echoing their own experiences, alike in some ways,  yet each different and deeply personal.

Taxi Moto – Gaël Kamilindi
As seen by Anna Vullo

A director is denied the opportunity to shoot a film in his home country. Forced to relocate production, he finds a new actor with whom he begins exploring new creative approaches, in a space suspended  between reality and fiction. In Gaël Kamilindi’s short film, cinema emerges as a medium of resistance and freedom. 

Dëmm – Aïda Captijn
As seen by Vanessa Mangiavacca

Shot in the streets of Dakar, Dëmm is a highly visual work of fiction that moves between everyday life and mystical tension. The focus is on Mati, a young woman who has recently lost her mother. In an attempt to navigate the void left by her absence and find answers in a deeper, unexplored part of herself, Mati ventures into a territory where grief gradually becomes a rite of passage.

Her journey leads her to a group of women, the so-called “soul-eaters” – dëmm in Wolof – enigmatic yet salvific figures, who accompany Mati towards the water, a place of stillness, transformation and potential rebirth.

With a sparse narration, built around gestures and apparitions, the short film by Aïda Captijn, a Swiss director of Senegalese origins, shows elements  of Senegal’s cinematic tradition, reinterpreting them through a contemporary lens. and  The director follows in the footsteps of a new generation of women filmmakers – first and foremost, Mati Diop – that are resorting to their inheritance to question it from a contemporary perspective, bringing imaginaries, myths and memories back to the surface through a deeply feminine gaze.

Another Day Shall Come – Aida Kaadan
As seen by Laura Savoini

A voice traces the landscapes of Mount Carmel, reflecting on the pain that has accompanied the Palestinian people since 1948. Another, this time through the streets of Haifa, wonders what the city would look like had it not been occupied. The shots of Tel Aviv reveal a metropolis that rivals the major cities of the world in terms of modernity and comfort, were it not for the Israeli soldiers, civilians walking around with submachine guns, and yet another voice describing what it means to be Palestinian in a world custom-built to erase your identity. These are some of the stories told in Aida Kaadan’s short film, which, through a handful of anonymous testimonies, conveys the emotions, exhaustion, and struggle of the Palestinian people to survive not only genocide, but total extinction.

Dernier printemps – Mathilde Bédouet
As seen by Vanessa Mangiavacca

Following the success of Été 96 – winner of the 2024 César for Best Animated Short Film – Mathilde Bédouet’s mastery of rotoscoping returns to explore the geography of emotion in a new season, both of the year and of life. Premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and making its Italian debut at Concorto Film Festival, Dernier printemps is an animated summer novella. It carries the fragrance of Mediterranean maquis and echoes like those love songs sung at the top of your voice – or blasted into your ears through an MP3 player – on a beach, wrapped in nothing but the wild sensation of falling in love that overpowers every sense. It vibrates like the imperfect, textured strokes of a wax crayon, which feel so real precisely because of those flaws.

Set roughly in the first decade of the 2000s, we join Marion, a teenager on holiday on a small island alongside her best friend and a group of boys. As in her previous short, Bédouet observes her characters during a fragile, unrepeatable moment of inner transformation: often all it takes is a single night, a fleeting stretch of time, and almost always the closeness of water, for what seemed fixed to suddenly take on a new shape. Navigating friendship, desire, silences, and solitude, through warm, delicate storytelling and a constellation of glances, hesitations, and subtle gestures, Dernier printemps captures an intimate portrait of that uncertain age when you are still a teenager, yet already – almost without realising it – starting to leave that world behind.

Myggor & Salta Pinnar – Ville Gobi
As seen by Francesca Marchesini

Forget Ari Aster and his bloody rituals: during a real Swedish Midsommar, the only things sacrificed are litres upon litres of Schnapps. Ville Gobi’s short film is joyful, chaotic, and a little mad—just as only family celebrations can be. Between one toast and the next, whispers circulate that a well-known name in European music has arrived in town… could it be true? But that’s not what matters. What truly counts are the laughs, the dancing, the camera moving swiftly from one face to another, and the bravery of little Alba.