International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

International Competition Award: FUCK THE POLIS by Rita Azevedo Gomes

Georges de Beauregard International Award: FRÍO METAL by Clemente Castor

Special mention of the International Competition Jury: COBRE by Nicolás Pereda

French Competition Award: BONNE JOURNÉE by Pauline Bastard

Georges de Beauregard National Award: HORS-CHAMP, LES OMBRES by Anna Dubosc, Gustavo de Mattos Jahn

Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Award: DES MILLÉNAIRES D’ABSENCE by Philippe Rouy

Special mention of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts) Jury: L’AMOUR SUR LE CHEMIN DES RONCETTES by Sophie Roger

First Film Award: FANTAISIE by Isabel Pagliai

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: LOS CRUCES by Julián Galay

Special mention of the First Film Competition Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

Claudia Cardinale Foundation Award: FERNLICHT by Johanna Schorn Kalinsky

Cine+ Distribution support Award in partnership with GNCR: MORTE E VIDA MADALENA by Guto Parente

Flash Competition Award: گل‌های شب ِدریا by Maryam Tafakory

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: A PRELUDE by Wendelien van Oldenborgh

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: CONTROL ANATOMY by Mahmoud Alhaj

Special mention of the Flash Competition Jury: LENGUA MUERTA by José Jiménez

Alice Guy Award: ABORTION PARTY by Julia Mellen

Renaud Victor Award: BULAKNA by Leonor Noivo

Special mention of the Renaud Victor Jury: SI NOUS HABITONS UN ÉCLAIR by Louise Chevillotte

High School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the High School Jury: MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT by Assaf Gruber

The Second Chance School Award: NEXT LIFE by Tenzin Phuntsog

Special mention of the Second Chance School Jury: JACOB’S HOUSE by Lucas Kane

Audience Award: LA JUVENTUD ES UNA ISLA by Louise Ernandez

“A knife in the heart of Europe”: that is how an American diplomat has described the Kaliningrad enclave, a splinter of Russia stuck between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea. This geopolitical oddity is where Artem Terent’ev grew up and where he directed the wonderful shots of his first feature film, in the spring of 2024. A ray of light casts the patterned shadows of a net curtain on the arm of a chair, then the camera starts moving around the family apartment, and words are written at the bottom of the frame: “Dear viewers, I am now editing this film.” Indeed, the director assembles the shots he has collected day after day, just to “fight melancholia and anxiety” with the pleasure and time it takes to compose them. Anxiety stems from the future, which seems less than appealing to him, based on the Russian propaganda broadcast on the television his grandmother watches. Melancholia looks to the past, to a childhood whose loss is felt more cruelly now that his grandfather has recently died. Powerless about the future, cinema is a wonderful device for recovering lost time. For the redemption of the past to restore the taste and radiance of the present, the young man leaves the family apartment and takes the path that used to lead him, as a child, to his grandfather’s dacha. Children run around the ruins of dilapidated buildings, adults fish in the river at night by headlamp, strangers stroll along the other side of the river: as he wanders around and meets new people, the young man uses his camera to create shots, each of which—hand-held or still, wide landscape, close-up of a face or just shimmering sunlight on the water—seems to give cinema its childhood back. Meanwhile, the editor writes on the image the memories and shots he has chosen not to keep in the final cut. A film without a model, a cinema without instructions, a beauty without words that only comes from a passion for reality and a rare gift for finding the right frame and light to configure it: Knife in the heart of Europe is a balm for the heart and wounds of each and every one of us.

Cyril Neyrat

Interview

Artem Terent’ev

Your film eludes definition: at once a study of the territory that gives it its title, the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, between Poland and Lithuania, a tribute to your grandfather, an evocation of your childhood… Can you trace its origins? What needs did it meet? What were your first impulses?

The origin was death. I returned to my childhood home, now emptied of my grandfather, in a state of mental exhaustion. My plans were collapsing, and the world around me was undergoing deep change. Filming became a kind of self-support—like keeping a diary in a moment of historical turbulence, a way to hold myself together. I began by simply observing the material traces of my grandfather’s world—a world I also recognized as the landscape of my childhood.

From the outset, the story reveals its dual temporality: that of reality filmed over the course of the shots, and that of the montage, the silent voice in the first person that you inscribe on the image. Can you comment on this approach?

The silent voice allows the act of representation to become visible. It shifts the focus to the process of the film becoming a film –a process that deeply fascinates me. For me, the substance of cinema is born at the border between method and reality, between what is shown and what is told, between image and imagination. The text, emerging within the temporal structure of the montage, is a way to enter into dialogue with the reality from which the film weaves itself—not mastering it, but listening to it. That’s why I avoided using voice over: instead, the commentary embedded the image itself, as part of its texture. I’m drawn to the idea that the filmmaker gives up their voice—becoming just one voice among others– all equalized through the shared space of subtitles. Moreover, the voice you hear reading the subtitles is your own.

The film is also torn between the contemporary context—the situation in Russia, the war in Ukraine, evoked in particular through the voice of television propaganda—and what looks like an attempt to escape it, through encounters that are like opportunities to return to childhood. But one encounter, towards the end, brings back the anguish of war. We sense a need to escape the present, and an attempt to produce a kind of timelessness, through beauty.

Yes, at the heart of the film lies a rupture between the desire to touch what is sensitive and painful, and the escapism imposed by both reality and an inner state—and the film exists around it. The film was also a way to reflect personal experience that are difficult to articulate: guilt, identity, memory, grief. I believe some things can’t be expressed in conventional ways. Sometimes, avoiding direct representation helps protect against the risk of being unethical or manipulative when approaching someone else’s pain. Sometimes, personal trauma shows itself through what we choose not to say. For example, in a sincere refusal to speak about war except through a quiet undercurrent of anxiety. Cinema is full of things that emerge beyond the director’s control, which is why I never feel entirely certain about my own intentions. I just try to stay honest with myself.

As for beauty—you’re right. Life is very short, and I don’t see much reason to make films from anything other than love: love for beauty, for the world, for different states of being, for different ages, for time shared with others or time spent alone, for mystery. For me, filmmaking is the act of expressing that love—without which, much of life loses its meaning.

A date, only one, is mentioned at the beginning: 1 May 2024. What is its significance?

On that day, my grandfather would have turned 87. It’s also the only holiday that holds real meaning for me—International Workers’ Day, a celebration of global solidarity. That day, I realized which image should open the film, and the editing process began.

At the end of the film, you reveal a little about your shooting method: “fragments” collected day by day—we can guess that there was no real writing or shooting plan. But the text still reveals a journey: from the family flat where you grew up, to your grandfather’s dacha. You also mention everything you chose not to keep. Can you comment on this fragmentary dimension, and the way in which you have nevertheless constructed a narrative?

It’s like writing a poem—guided by a feeling, a direction that’s hard to articulate, and an inner state. At some point, I decided that the story would follow a kind of topography: by a route through familiar places, which became the film’s structure. But it’s not a story in the usual sense—more a sequence of pauses, moments of stillness, landscapes seen, spontaneous encounters with people who became characters, visual rhymes discovered like ready-mades. The film is a living process—an unpredictable and sometimes painful one, but also an adventure, where every meeting may create something new. Even if a script exists, the story is always reimagined during the making. Sometimes cinema is not just a way to tell a story, but a way to shift its direction—to uncover something alive at its core. For me, the more uncertain, risky, and fragmentary the process, the more exciting it is to assemble the pieces—to search for meaning or accept its absence. I think this impulse comes from my post-Soviet childhood and a game I invented as a kid called “Ragamuffins”: collecting fragments of the world—discarded objects, scraps—and endlessly recombining them into new constellations. I have a short text about this game, which could serve as a kind of personal filmmaker’s statement. [https://wildlakes.tilda.ws/Texts#rec268712852]

The image alternates between very wide, fixed shots of the landscape—the buildings, the river, the small human silhouettes in the background—and a highly mobile hand-held camera, often tightly focused on motifs, to the point of abstraction. What did you try to capture in your shots, day after day?

Each frame—its tone, its distance from the world and from the people in it—finds its own rules every time. It’s a tool of cinema, yes, but one that feels very natural to me. There’s a wide landscape shot of the Queen Louise Bridge at the edge of Russia and Europe, with boys far in the distance. And then the next shot brings us close to them—intimate, handheld, involved. Between those two moments, something changed. We had gotten to know each other. They asked what I was doing, and I invited them to keep spending time as they were, but only now with the camera watching. That shift in connection shaped how the image looks—how it feels. I’m interested in these delicate vibrations in the mood of the world, and the camera helps me to translate them. The film is documentary, but it’s not neutral or detached. There’s no conventional storyline or characters, but there is an experience of presence, of encounter, of subjectivity that I want to share with the viewer.

The image constantly seems to be affected by a kind of veil, which puts reality at a distance. Low definition plays an essential role in the work on the image and the light. What equipment did you use? Can you tell us about your work with light and your research into the texture of the image?

I’ve been exploring lo-fi digital imagery for quite a while and it’s the foundation of all my short films. I’m particularly drawn to using Nokia phone cameras or vintage digital devices pushed to their limits, especially in low light. Their limitations open up more space for imagination than precision ever could. They often reveal more about our time than polished digital or analogue equipment ever could. This time, I was aiming to evoke both the sensuality of poor eyesight and the hazy texture of memories tied to familiar places, while keeping the soundscape extremely physical and grounded. I used two cameras: the original Blackmagic Pocket and the legendary DV camcorder Panasonic AG-DVX100B. For the Blackmagic, I assembled a DIY lens—by cutting and merging a Soviet Industar 50mm with a zoom optic block from an old Soviet movie camera. This charming zoom lens, which covered all the focal lengths I needed, cost me just ten euros.

Interview by Cyril Neyrat

Technical sheet

  • Subtitles:
    English, French
  • Script:
    Artem Terent’ev
  • Photography:
    Artem Terent’ev
  • Editing:
    Artem Terent’ev
  • Sound:
    Sergey Ivanov
  • Production:
    Hans Broich (SUPERZOOM Film), Felix Leitner (SUPERZOOM Film)
  • Contact:
    Shellac