PRIFF 2026: What We Carry

This programme brings together six short films from across the world, united by an unflinching honesty about the human condition. From the quiet nostalgia of two Indian women sharing a meal in Paris, to a darkly comic meditation on a puppet grappling with existence, to the interwoven rhythms of daily life in a Japanese family navigating a new city, these films find the intimate within the universal.

The selection moves through grief and memory in an animated elegy built from a filmmaker's own digital notes during a mother's final days, drifts into the shadows of an eighteenth century music school where darkness never lifts, and closes with a young brother and sister on a journey toward hope, shadowed by a danger the boy did not foresee.

Together these films remind us that displacement, love, loss, and resilience have no single language, and no single form.

Info: Introduction by a member of the PRIFF team.

Info: One evening, Alia and Neena, two young Indian women, each come to dinner at Sulaimani, an Indian restaurant in Paris. The meal brings back sometimes buried emotions for them and “releases” certain memories which little by little reveal to us why they left their country. Alia could no longer stand the culture of traditional India and was in conflict with her family. Neena chose to leave to provide for her husband and children back in India. If their reasons are different, they are prey to the same nostalgia during this dinner which brings them a little closer to home.

Info: Life is hard. Puppets are soft. A feel-good movie about a puppet that kills himself.

Info: In Paris and its suburbs, a Japanese couple, a young single father, and his daughter move through the city, carried by the rhythm of daily life. As their paths cross, their stories reflect one another, gradually drawing closer.

Info: A Medical History is an animated visual elegy adapted from digital notes documented during the filmmaker’s mother’s final days in 2025–2026. Blending pixel art, nostalgic 1980s–90s recollections, and bold experimental colour palettes, the film serves as an intimate meditation on grief, bodily fragility, and maternal love.

Info: In the XVIII Century there's a music school where it's always dark...

Info: Arron has taken his younger sister Kika on a journey to a better life, but his youthful optimism may have overlooked one of the darkest possibilities on the planet.

Info: Q&A TBC

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The Castle Cinema, 64 - 66 Brooksby's Walk, London, United Kingdom

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