Nekomba, a 21-year-old performance artist, attempts to recreate a childhood dance she once performed with her aunt, one believed to summon physical ancestors. She hopes this act will slowly reconnect her now westernised Owambo culture to its spiritual roots. Instead, she is transported to a precolonial village, where she encounters both the beauty and shock of a way of life vastly different from her own. There, she falls in love with Nuusiku, a young woman who embodies a sense of queer freedom within her culture. But this world holds contradictions: Nuusiku has been chosen to be sacrificed as a companion to a dying king. While Nuusiku accepts her fate, Nekomba struggles to save her, forcing her to confront the violence within a past she once romanticised.
Laudika ‘yaNdangii’ Hamutenya is a Namibian filmmaker from Ohangwena whose work explores identity, masculinity, and belonging in contemporary Africa. A graduate of ADFA Cape Town and a Talents Durban 2025 alumnus, he has directed several acclaimed short films. In 2021, he wrote and directed Lauf, a German-language psychological thriller on guilt and domestic abuse, winning three Best Student Film awards. In 2022, he co-wrote and assistant-directed Stray-Flower, which premiered at the Max Ophüls Prize Film Festival in Germany. His 2024 film Luna, a queer romance set in Namibia, premiered at the Trans Film Festival in Stockholm. In 2026, Emanya earned him Best Newcomer Director and a Best Short Film nomination at the Namibia Theatre and Film Awards. He is currently developing his debut feature, Nuusiku.
An alumnus of WEMW’s Investors’ Circle and EurodocMed, Jérémie Palanque holds a Master’s in Film Production from Montpellier, alongside Masters’ degrees in finance and management. After an initial career as CFO, he founded Woooz Pictures, dedicated to multicultural narratives and emerging voices. He has co-produced Praveen Morchhale’s Indian feature White Snow (Mostra of Sao Paolo, IFFI Goa among others) and Razka Robby Ertanto’s Indonesian feature A Tale of Rose (in post-production), while developing projects such as Amel Blidi’s Mimouna, Naishe Nyamubaya’s Chimbo cheBere (in pre-production). Across his slate, he works to position each project within major international labs, workshops and markets, including Cannes L’Atelier, Sheffield MeetMarket, Red Sea Souk, TCCF Pitching forum, MIDPOINT Institute, TIFF Filmmaker Lab and Torino Film Lab.
Nuusiku, meaning “within the night” or “born from the night” in Oshiwambo, is a deeply personal meditation on memory, longing, and the danger of romanticising the past. As a queer Oshiwambo filmmaker raised between tradition and modernity, I am drawn to the tension between reclaiming culture and questioning it. Through Nekomba’s journey, the film explores a precolonial world that is both beautiful and unsettling, where belonging and exclusion coexist. While she seeks spiritual truth, she is confronted with practices that challenge her ideals, including the sacrifice of the woman she loves. Nuusiku asks whether we would truly feel free in the past we glorify, and whether modern, often Western-influenced ideas, especially around queerness, have also created necessary space for us to exist. Ultimately, it is a reflection on culture as something evolving, not fixed.
Woooz Pictures
8A Avenue de Saint Maur, 34000, Montpellier, France
Email: [email protected]
Laudika yaNdangii Hamutenya | Director, Scriptwriter
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +264 81 714 6393
Jérémie Palanque | Producer
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +33 676 966 184
In Damascus, two men hide beneath their bed, not afraid to die but afraid to die apart.
After years of separation, Furat (37) now a writer exiled in Sweden travels to Córdoba to reunite with Pierre (27), the love of his life whom he left behind when fleeing the war in Syria. Furat hopes to revive the love they once shared. But Pierre arrives guarded, carrying a secret that will change everything.
During this tense and intimate weekend, memories of their relationship begin to resurface: their farewell, their shared home, a beloved dog, demonstrations for freedom and the night they first met at the dawn of the Arab Spring, when love and freedom still seemed possible. As past and present close in around them, they must face the truth: their love is still alive, but they are no longer the people who once dreamed of freedom together.
Jerry Carlsson is a Swedish director and screenwriter with a BFA and MFA in Filmmaking from Valand Academy. His acclaimed short films, including The Night Train, Successful Thawing of Mr Moro and Shadow Animals, have competed in Venice, Locarno, Toronto, Tribeca, Aspen, Palm Springs and Clermont-Ferrand. His works have won both the Special Jury Prize and the Canal+ Award at Clermont-Ferrand ISFF, and Best Nordic Short at Nordisk Panorama twice. His films have been sold to Disney+, SVT, Canal+, France 3 and Criterion Channel. Jerry has participated in Berlinale Talents, Nordic Film Lab and EFP’s FUTURE FRAMES at KVIFF. He recently directed two episodes of Netflix’s Young Royals Season 3. In 2025, he won the Ingmar Bergman Script Award for his feature screenplay Invasion.
Frida Mårtensson is a Stockholm-based producer who has worked with Swedish independent film in various capacities since 2009. She works with filmmakers across genres and formats but has a particular focus on fiction projects with a strong artistic vision and distinctive voice. Frida runs Verket Produktion together with Jerry Carlsson and Anette Sidor. Her recent credits include Sidor's short Fuck Me (TIFF -24) and the co-production of Konstantina Kotzamani's mid-length film What Mary Didn't Know (Locarno -24).
She also produced Erika Wasserman's feature debut The Year I Started Masturbating and is currently in production with the feature Jönssonligan & Wall Enberg. Frida has produced Jerry Carlsson's award-winning shorts Shadow Animals, The Night Train and Successful Thawing of Mr Moro. She is a participant in EAVE Producers Workshop 2026.
Furat and Pierre exist between who they once were and who exile has turned them into. Furat lives in Sweden and Pierre in Canada, yet neither fully belongs to the lives they have built. They reunite in Spain, carrying different versions of the same loss. Córdoba holds this tension in its stones. Built by old Syrians, it is the closest living echo of a home that no longer exists as they knew it. The city mirrors displacement, beauty and loss, making it the only possible setting for this story.
The film unfolds across two timelines: a reunion in present-day Córdoba and a love story in Damascus told in reverse. The structure reflects how trauma works: we return obsessively to the last moment, then unravel what came before. As Córdoba moves toward goodbye, Damascus moves back toward the night they first met, when freedom and a future still felt possible. It is a love story told forward and backward, about what remains when love survives but the lovers do not.
Verket Produktion
Vikstensvägen 36, 12156, Johanneshov, Sweden
Email: [email protected]
Jerry Carlsson | Director
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +46 703 694 630
Khaled Alesmael | Screenwriter
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +44 7935 876861
Frida Mårtensson | Producer
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +46 73 583 0142
Davey (27), a charismatic go-go dancer, is caring for his sick roommate Joe. Joe (31) was an outspoken Gay activist but has been in and out of the hospital, suffering from several HIV complications including memory loss. After losing many friends to AIDS, Davey fears Joe is next. Seeking escape from this fate, Davey brings their chosen family together for one last weekend getaway to a remote lake cabin in the forest. The group arrives at the lake during mosquito season, triggering a buzz of paranoia amongst the local lake residents, fearing that Davey’s friends will expose them to contracting HIV from a mosquito bite. In the isolation of the cabin the group tries to find some peace,but when Joe goes missing in the woods, the group need to decide where they find help, testing what lengths they will have to go to for the ones they love.
Dylan Mitro (1995) is a queer independent filmmaker, based in London Ontario, Canada. He studied at Toronto Metropolitan University – Image Arts: Film Studies BFA (2018). Dylan’s previous directorial work includes: I’ve heard a Siren Calling (2025) supported by Canada Council for the Arts, awarded Special Mention for the LUCA Gender Inclusivity at Filmfest Dresden and screened at Queerwave Cyprus, Queer Shorts Vienna, InsideOut Film Festival, Xposed Berlin (2026). Ripples (2022) was awarded the Re:Focus Fund via Inside Out FF and screened at BFI Flare, Frameline FF, Out on Film FF. Dylan was a selected artist for the Martha Cooper scholarship at FRESH A.I.R Berlin (2025) and Spindle Film Foundation’s Director Mentorship Program (2024). Skeeter is currently being developed through MIDPOINT Institute's Focus Queer program (2026).
Taylor Nordick is a producer, writer and director from Alberta, Canada. His producing credits include: Shudder’s Shadow of God (Fantaspoa), Kurtis David Harder’s Influencers (Fantasia, Fright Fest), Avalon Fast’s Camp (Fantastic Fest, Sitges, TIFF). His films have won multiple awards, including the Gold Audience Award, Best Screenplay and Best Cinematography at the Brooklyn Horror FF, Best Feature in the Next Wave Competition at Fantastic Fest. With writer/director Jared Moshe (The Ballad of Lefty Brown), they are currently in post-production on a supernatural action film and in production on a new horror-comedy by Rob Grant (Harpoon).
For Skeeter, the story emerged from my investigative research in Canada’s 2SLGBTQIA+ archives, diving into real life accounts of what it was like to be a homosexual on the front lines of the AIDS crisis in the 1990s, and how the Gay community took care of each other and fought for survival, to still live life to the fullest. Between funerals, rallies, parties, and community organizing, I want their triumphs celebrated, and their struggles to be remembered. For Skeeter, I was drawn to exploring the classic horror trope structure of the 'Fate of death by a monster in the woods', to critique and flip on its head. The mosquito becomes a vessel to symbolize the connection between the buzzing of the characters’ internal fears about death, with their external fear of being viewed as a threatening monster.
Ghoul Nexus
20 Canna Bay, SW T2W 1P1, Calgary, Canada
Email: [email protected]
Dylan Mitro | Director, Screenwriter
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +1 2263 860 099
Taylor Nodrick | Producer
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +1 4038 800 954
Irene has spent her life saying yes to everyone. Until her father – the guy who left them ages ago to become a monk – drops off the map with her life savings. Irene’s solution? She shaves her head, buys a mustache and practices her deepest "blessings, brother." Her destination? Mount Athos: the only place on Earth where women – and female animals – have been banned for over a thousand years. Her boyfriend comes along because he is terrible at saying no. Her estranged sister and her girlfriend invite themselves for the chaos. This drag fellowship begins to wreak havoc in the secluded state that echoes medieval times. Inside the labyrinthine monasteries Irene finds not just a missing dad but the absurd rulebook of patriarchy itself. To get her money and her life back, this people-pleaser must finally become the woman they never saw coming.
Phaedra Vokali studied Economics and Architecture Theory in Athens and holds an MA in Film from University College London. Before directing, she was editor-in-chief in CINEMA Magazine, head of programming at Athens IFF and General Director of the Hellenic Film Academy (2021–2022). As Managing Director of Marni Films (2012-2019), she produced numerous award-winning films, including Suntan (2016) and Afterlov (2016) (Rotterdam, SXSW, Locarno, LUX Prize noms). She is an EAVE Producers Workshop and Torino Film Lab alumna. In 2022, she made her directorial debut with the queer young adult film Enomena at the Norwegian Short FF. In 2025, she co-created US: A Movie About Bloody Hawk (100,000+ tickets sold in Greece/Cyprus, now streaming on Netflix). She is currently developing her first feature, Unholy, with the support of the Greek Film Centre.
Hermione graduated from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she studied Journalism and Mass Media. She has worked as a consultant on film marketing and distribution on over 300 projects and films that participated in major international film festivals such as Cannes, Berlinale, Tribeca, Locarno, Karlovy Vary and IFFR. She has worked as a producer’s assistant for Dogwatch by Gregoris Rentis (Visions du Reel 2021), and as an associate producer for Tilos Weddings by Panagiotis Evangelidis (TiDF 2022). Hermione has been a consultant for the Agora Team for the Thessaloniki IFF, since 2023. She also serves as a tutor for SAE Film School. In 2025, she founded films out there, a production company and a consulting agency that connects stories with their audiences. Hermione is an EAVE, Locarno Industry Academy, Oxbelly, and MFI alumna.
Unholy uses a high concept to ask: what happens when a woman stops following the rules? Mount Athos, where women have been banned for a millennium, becomes the perfect setting for Irene's rebellion. Blending comedy, drama, and mystery, the film mirrors its protagonist's journey, refusing to sit still: It steals from heist movies, then wanders into a forest where time slows down. It borrows the rhythm of a screwball comedy, then stops for a quiet confession. It turns laughter into silence and then cracks open into something tender. This is not genre-bending for its own sake. It is the only way to tell a story about a woman who has never been allowed to be her whole self. My personal history with Orthodox Christianity informs every frame, as does my belief that liberation is funnier, messier, and more sacred than any sermon.
Foss Productions
10A Imathias Str. Gerakas, 1534, Athens, Greece
Email: [email protected]
Phaedra Vokali | Director, Screenswriter
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +306 936 714 601
Hermione Efstratiadou | Producer
Email: [email protected]
Mobile: +306 982 954 008
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