12 SEPT / 21:00 / GRĂDINA CU FILME – CINEMA & MORE
BIDFF’s third competitive section explores the boundary between inner worlds and shared realities, presenting seven cinematic works that seek to understand how identity, memory, and emotion are shaped by human connection. Speaking to what it means to be seen, heard, and understood despite the weight of difference, the films in the Identity Shakeoffs program remind us that identity is not merely fixed, but constantly shaped by loss, love, and the desire for togetherness.
¡SALSA!
14’, 2024, CO
D: Antonina Kerguelen Roman
Margarita seeks freedom in a place that judges those outside the norm when her path crosses with Liana’s, a deaf tourist, between the vibrations of congas and bongos.
DREAM'S DESCENT
10’14”, 2024, SA
D: Sara Gouveia, Inka Kendzia, Gregory Maqoma
C: Gregory Maqoma
Drawn into a shifting world where time dissolves and space contracts, a solitary dancer encounters fragmented versions of himself, each embodying a suppressed emotion, forgotten trauma or repressed aspiration. Through ritualistic choreography and symbolic confrontations, these encounters blur the line between self and shadow. As the dancer spirals deeper into the labyrinth of his subconscious, the movement becomes a language of reckoning. Dream’s Descent is not about conquering the self, but integrating it, emerging not whole, but awakened, transformed by the very fragmentation that once threatened to undo him and ready to face whatever comes next.
SAMMI, WHO CAN DETACH HIS BODY PARTS
19’13”, 2025, ID
D: Rein Maychaelson
He was born with the peculiar ability to move and remove his body parts. Throughout his life, he shares his body parts to people he loves. Until the day he died, all left from him is a torso with a faceless head. His mother is trying to recollect his body parts.
UMMA
5’56”, 2024, KR
D: Young-Ju Yoo
The mom and the daughter put a wall between each other and hurt one another without seeing one’s pain. UMMA is about the two different sides of a story they never shared.
SAMBA INFINITO
15’15”, 2025, BR
D: Leonardo Martinelli
During Rio's Carnival, a street cleaner struggles with the loss of his sister and his work obligations. Amid the celebrations, he finds a lost child and sets out to help him.
WINTERREISE
18’55”, 2025, CN
D: xiaoming & dameng (Xiao Shenming, Wang Yimeng)
his path ahead—
How much farther till it ends?
When you’ve walked the final stretch,
Will you dare to face your past?
Look back at the road you've taken,
Light now pierces through the dark.
The snow whispers in winter’s chill:
Go to spring,
Journey into spring and the unknown.
Step by step, you press the earth beneath,
Growth—a thunderous roar you cannot hear.
When at last you embrace the earth,
The final drop of blood melts into its skin.
Born of the earth,
In the end, you too return to it.
Where is spring?
Where is spring?
Where is spring?
Spring lies within the act of growing.