Currents Program 1: Below the Surface

Morning Circle / Morgenkreis
Basma al-Sharif, 2025, Canada/UAE, 21m
German, Armenian, and Arabic with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Morning Circle

Drifting through the streets of former East Berlin neighborhoods, Morning Circle traces the unsteady affective terrain of isolation and displacement, assimilation and oppression. In Basma al-Sharif’s (O, Persecuted, NYFF52) film, the bureaucratic condescension and violence of a residency interview sits alongside domestic scenes featuring a father and his young son. The film uncovers the loss and thrumming tensions of exilic life under Western Europe’s smooth gray surfaces.

Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain / Ya se ven los tigres en la lluvia
Oscar Ruiz Navia, 2025, Colombia/Canada, 15m
Spanish and English with English subtitles
World Premiere

Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain. Courtesy of Contravía Films.

Desolate interstitial spaces of a wintry, present-day Montreal—alleyways, bike paths, underpasses, skate parks—contrast with the livelier images of decades-old home videos in Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain. Drifting between moving-image formats and collaging local textures and bygone voices, Oscar Ruiz Navia’s film reflects on loss and mourning as experiences of temporal dislocation.

Dooni
Kevin Jerome Everson, Claudrena N. Harold, 2025, U.S., 8m
New York Premiere

Dooni. Courtesy of Picture Palace Pictures.

Shimmering, kinetic, blue-black images of dancers accompany an impassioned rereading of a eulogy for Sylvester, a.k.a. “Dooni” (1947–1988), the legendary “Queen of Disco.” Weaving mourning with movement, Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold’s (Black Bus Stop, NYFF57) film reanimates gospel singer and preacher Walter Hawkins’s words, which mark a small but pivotal moment in the history of HIV/AIDS, channeling their sense of grief and celebration into the present.

A Real Christmas
Justin Jinsoo Kim, 2025, U.S./South Korea, 12m
World Premiere

A Real Christmas

Collaging text and sound along with the grainy distortions of inkjet-printed imagery, Justin Jinsoo Kim’s (Personality Test, NYFF59) refractory archival dig pieces together the story of Lee Kyung Soo, an orphan of the Korean War adopted by a U.S. Naval officer in Westchester. With its careful manipulation of microhistorical fragments, A Real Christmas summons the neocolonial mythologies of the United States in the 1950s through its news media, uncovering traces of alternate voices and narrative lacunae.

Daria’s Night Flowers / گل‌های شب ِدریا
Maryam Tafakory, 2025, Iran/U.K./France, 16m
Farsi with English subtitles
New York Premiere

Daria’s Night Flowers. Courtesy of Square Eyes.

Excavating psychically charged moments and cryptic iconography of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, as well as the opulent illuminated manuscripts of the ancient Greek botanist Dioscorides, Daria’s Night Flowers is an herbarium of a woman’s illicit desire, embellished in voluptuous azure and gold. Deploying images of fire and the sea, blood and flowers, Maryam Tafakory’s (Razeh-del, NYFF62) film weaves a tale of thwarted longing and vengeance.