HFF2026 // COMPETITION SHORTS 4

DRIVING LESSONS
Dir. Anastasiya Gruba | Ukraine | 17'48"

Wartime Kyiv, Ukraine. A father helps his daughter to practice driving. They are the only relatives to each other and have a strong connection, but many disagreements in their opinions. The driving lesson ceases to be ordinary when the father is issued a summons at a checkpoint.

IN RETROSPECT
Dirs. Mila Zhlutenko & Daniel Asadi Faezi | Germany | 14'

Immigrant workers build a shopping mall for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich.
In 2016 nine people with migrant backgrounds are killed in a racist attack at this same mall.
„Why such hatred?“
 asks a woman in a Sohrab Shahid Saless’ film „Addressee Unknown“, shot in the 1980s.

Trailer: youtu.be/BJnrcwaj4Eo

SIXTY-SEVEN MILLISECONDS
Dir. Fleuryfontaine | France | 15'

In search of a bullet whose trail has been captured on surveillance camera footage, the film follows its trajectory and those of its main protagonists. Blending the early cinema technique of chronophotography with CGI, Sixty-seven Milliseconds questions the legitimacy of policing in France and warns of its excesses.

Trailer: youtu.be/0ffy8cd_-HM

EXIT THROUGH THE CUCKOO'S NEST
Dir. Nikola Ilić | Switzerland | 19'

As a teenager in 1990s Belgrade, life felt as if in some limbo in a country ruled by incompetent fools and crippled by sanctions and wars. When the blue envelope arrived, ordering me to war in Kosovo, the only thing I knew was that I would never ever shoot. However, I had to get on the train to become a soldier I never wanted to be.
In the platoon around me were young people like me in their early twenties: provincials, mechanics, young fathers, failed students, unemployed hairdressers, and others with unfulfilled lives. 'Here's the rifle. Now go and kill!' they were told.
Many of my comrades died, some of them taking their own lives afterwards. I was lucky to have always refused to shoot, but I ended up in military prison. After becoming a translator, I had a breakdown and purposely acted mentally ill to be sent to a psychiatric hospital. After months of pretending, I was finally released and able to return home on the exact day when NATO began bombing my entire country.

Trailer: youtu.be/LVjaeZrNWaA