PRIFF 2026: Love, Memory & Return

Part of PRIFF 2026, now in its fifth year, this programme brings together a collection of films in which ordinary choices open the door to something far stranger, darker or more dangerous.

Across the block, characters find themselves confronting the consequences of desire, repression, power and identity. A seemingly simple engagement announcement becomes a brutal confrontation between father and son in an adaptation of Kafka’s The Judgement. In a surreal queer rom-com, a macho bouncer’s secret life is played out through a series of board games, until an unexpected connection forces him to reckon with the distance between who he is and who he allows himself to be.

Elsewhere, a young artist must justify his very existence before a government panel in a near-future Britain, while a 1969 housewives’ gathering takes an occult turn when a séance awakens something far more sinister. Espionage, romance and violence collide when an operative sent to clean up a failed mission discovers that the target is his own wife, and a struggling baker’s violent encounter awakens a new hunger for justice.

The programme also moves into folklore and inherited memory, as an inept nationalist comes face-to-face with a Churel, a mischievous South Asian spirit capable of derailing both his mission and his certainty, while The Chant of the Waterway returns to Réunion Island, where grief, memory and the wounds of slavery surface through a strange encounter with the landscape.

Together, these films explore the moments when familiar worlds begin to fracture, and when characters are forced to confront what they have buried, denied or failed to understand.

Info: Introduction by a member of the PRIFF team.

Info: Ondine returns to Réunion Island after a long absence as her grandfather approaches the end of his life. While preparing to say goodbye, a strange encounter in a waterway draws her into the memory of the island and the historical wounds left by slavery.

Directed by Réunion-born filmmaker Célia Marie Flavie Berby Maillot, the film forms part of her wider ambition to bring the stories, faces and histories of her island to the screen.

Info: In a not-too-distant future where all British citizens must defend their right to exist at the age of twenty-five, starving artist John Doe, having neglected to make an appointment with the Ministry of Existence, has just a single day to prepare his defence and argue his case before a government panel, or be permanently relegated to a second class citizen.

Info: Georg writes a letter to his distant friend to announce his engagement. This seemingly ordinary act triggers a harrowing confrontation with his domineering Father. The Judgement is an adaptation of 'Das Urteil' by Franz Kafka.

Info: In this surreal queer rom-com, macho bouncer Alexei secretly attends a cruising hotspot, where his sexual experiences are played out as rounds of board games. After multiple unfulfilling encounters, he finds himself connecting with Josh, which forces him to finally confront the way he keeps these worlds apart.

Info: A struggling baker’s life takes a turn after a violent confrontation awakens a hunger for justice.

Info: When an agent screws up and a mission goes wrong, another operative is tasked with cleaning up the mess, only to find out the hard way that love and bullets don't mix because the target is his own wife.

Info: It’s 1969, a housewives soiree, drinking cocktails, whilst summoning up an old dead friend. When a spiritual message prompts adolescent Lilith to respond, it alerts us to the demon that lies within.

Info: Q&A TBC

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