This Is Not a Fiction 2026 Shorts Program

ABOUT THE FILMS:

“Mukuña Aprendiz de Pajé,” 2024, Dir. Rodrigo Sena, 25 Mins, Brazil

L.A. Premiere

In Portuguese with English subtitles.

Mukunã is preparing to become the shaman of the Potiguara Katu Brasil village. Powerful plants, older than humans, act as his teachers in caring for the environment. The film denounces deforestation in the territory, which poses a direct threat to the lives of the indigenous people.

FORMAT: DCP

“Now That We Are Sending You to the End,” 2025, Dir. Blake Knecht, 13 Mins, USA

​​A young girl prophesies the end of time as the American Southwest drifts between myth and disappearance. Tactile filmmaking becomes a handmade record of ecological loss. Applying water, soil, and salt from the desert directly onto film emulsion, the work renders the human imprint on a fragile landscape. Through gestures of time, material experimentation, and quiet exchange, we ask what it means to approach The End.

FORMAT: DCP

“Noon in the Cemetery,” 2020, Dir. Benjamin Poumey, 8 Mins, Switzerland

West Coast Premiere

In French with English subtitles.

A luncheon on the grass among the tombs. While the living are living, the voices of the dead are floating in the air. When lunch-time comes, the “Cimetière des Rois” (“Cemetery of Kings”), downtown Geneva, fills up with residents, workers, employees, students of the neighborhood. People come alone, in pairs, with friends or colleagues, to have a snack on the grass or to take a break on a bench. The living and the dead share a same space-time. Mixing contemporary Super 8 footage of people in the cemetery and sound archives of personalities buried there, “Noon in the Cemetery” is a short essay film, a kind of experimental documentary. If it was a painting, it could be a Vanitas, “a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death.”

FORMAT: DCP

“Repertoire of Death,” 2025, Guadalupe Arellanes, 5 Mins, USA

“A lucid dream leads to a dance with Death. Photographed on 16mm, Repertoire of Death blends found sounds with rarely heard music from the personal archives of Yma Sumac “Queen of Exotica” in order to blur the boundaries between past/present, dead/alive, and dream/waking.”

FORMAT: DCP

“Notes On the Death of a Cinema,” 2024, Dir. Iñaki Oñate, 21 Mins, Argentina

L.A. Premiere

The imminent closure of a small cinema in the Constitución neighborhood in Buenos Aires, Argentina, will be the propitious element to reflect on the mystique of the cinemas of yesteryear and on the figure of the film projectionist. A personal tribute to the liturgy of cinema, to its ghosts and its dreams.

FORMAT: DCP