Samizdat 2026 Programme
Politics of the Imagination: Animations of the Eastern Bloc (1958–1992)
From post-apocalyptic visions and classic folk tales to surrealist dreamscapes and allegories of political paranoia, this programme offers an eclectic range of shorts showcasing the raw talent and creative ingenuity of animators from the Eastern Bloc.
I’m Not Everything I Want to Be / Ještě nejsem, kým chci být (Klára Tasovská, 2024)
After the Soviet invasion of Prague, a young female photographer strives to break free from the constraints of Czechoslovakian normalisation and embarks on a wild journey towards freedom, capturing her experiences through thousands of photographs.
Borscht Film presents: Rave (Lúkasz Ronduda & Dawid Nickel, 2024)
An exploration of the history of Polish techno and rave culture, weaving together the perspective of the 1990s with the experience of Gen Z.
Fragments of Ice / Фрагменти льоду (Maria Stoianova, 2024) + Self-Preserving Nudity / Я не зникаю (Nelly Shylova, 2026)
Glimpses of a utopian West in dialogue with the daily routines and private celebrations of a Ukrainian family in the years surrounding the collapse of the USSR and Ukraine regaining its independence.
The Beauty of the Donkey / Bukuria e Gomarit (Dea Gjinovci, 2025)
In 1968, Asllan, a 19-year-old Kosovar political activist, was forced into exile. More than 50 years later, his daughter Dea, visits the village and, as her father shares stories from his childhood, embarks on a quest to revive these memories of a suspended past.
Love Is Not an Orange + Conversation (Otilia Babara, 2022)
An intimate archival documentary on migration and motherhood in freshly-independent Moldova, assembled from home videos exchanged between women working abroad and the children they left behind.
Heat / Зной (Larisa Shepitko, 1963)
Larisa Shepitko's debut film follows a young graduate Kemel sent to a remote steppe during the Virgin Lands Campaign, where his idealism and progressivism clash with the rigid, hierarchical order of life in his new collective.
Grand Prize (Anja Koprivšek, 2024)
A joyous celebration of love and chosen family amongst the new generation of Croatian queer youth.
Samizdat Short Film Competition, Block 1
Our first block opens with piercingly honest, playful reflections on cinema, war, and displacement; moves through the finiteness of life via drama and comedy; and closes with an animation that has already acquired legendary status.
Samizdat Short Film Competition, Block 2
A dying lake's monologue against colonial crimes echoes through dreamlike landscapes. Feverish visions of diasporic Berlin are cut through by a quiet beach after a shipwreck. Ending on a note of unlikely solidarity, Block 2 is an attempt to craft hope from the depths of despair.
Werckmeister Harmonies / Werckmeister harmóniák (Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000)
Presented in rarely-seen 35mm, this adaptation of László Krasznahorkai’s masterpiece depicts the breakdown of social order in a small Hungarian town following the arrival of a mysterious travelling circus.
Between Revolutions / Între Revoluții (Vlad Petri, 2023)
Part love story, part political essay and part speculative archive, Between Revolutions follows Maria and Zahra, whose fictional correspondence spans the upheavals of Romania and Iran.
Goodbye, See You Tomorrow / Do widzenia, do jutra (Janusz Morgenstern, 1960)
Starring and written by the ‘Polish James Dean’ Zbigniew Cybulski, closely inspired by his own life as a theatre director in Poland, the film is a classic story of boy-meets-girl: but also one of the nervous post-war relationships between East and West.
After Dreaming / Երազելուց հետո (Christine Haroutounian, 2025) + Kafka / Կաֆկա (Vahan Khachatrian, 2026)
After Dreaming lives in a place where certainty keeps receding. The war is there and not there. A dream comes and goes, appearing just long enough to pull you into it before slipping away again. A landscape becomes a memory, a memory becomes a present, a body becomes a question. Nothing settles into one meaning for long.
And Then We Danced / და ჩვენ ვიცეკვეთ (Levan Akin, 2019)
The second feature film of Swedish-Georgian director Levan Akin, And Then We Danced is a stunning exploration of queer identity in modern-day Georgia, the intoxication of first love, and the fraught tensions between the responsibility to uphold tradition and the desire for freedom of expression.
LAK i (Marija Nemčenko, 2021)
LAK i forms apart of a larger project focusing on migratory bird routes from Lithuania via Palestine and Lebanon to Sudan, which emerged from a need to counter the rise of negative nationalism in Eastern Europe and foster broader non-Western solidarities through more-than-human actors.
Samizdat Glasgow 2026 Closing night: 5th Anniversary Shorts Collection
An exercise in collective retrospection and introspection: each of us chose a film that speaks to who we are, how and why we work, and how we relate to the glorious and unrelenting cinematic landscapes we roam.