Flower in a Cocoon
Zhang Zitao
China. 2026. 67 min

This is a story about the intersecting fates of marginalized individuals in society. Huang Sheng, a naive young man, always holds onto his dreams and maintains a kind heart. However, he repeatedly suffers setbacks due to external forces, including the education system, his original family, and societal views on love.
He reunites with an old friend, Ding Laogou, a down-and-out writer who is touched by Huang Sheng’s experiences and decides to document them. Meanwhile, Huang Sheng develops a complicated bond with Xiaofang, a masseuse with a tragic fate, blending sympathy and romance — yet this connection ultimately succumbs to the cruel reality.
In the end, Huang Sheng marches toward self-destruction amidst societal coldness and misunderstanding, leaving behind only a written eulogy by Ding Laogou.

The Temperature of the Universe
Viktor Sharimov
Russia. 2025. 93 min

Set in a remote picturesque Astronomy village, where scientists investigate the cosmos undisturbed by the hustle and bustle of the city, the story navigates the characters through a breakup to an unlikely romance. The film is a story of separation and reunion that unfolds in a remote astronomers’ village in the Caucasus (filmed in Nizhny Arkhyz, home to real-world observatories). The isolated, quiet setting allows the characters to reflect on life without the noise of the city, exploring themes on the boundary between science, human relationships, and the vastness of the cosmos.

The Unopened Letter
Byambasuren Batdelger
Mongolia. 2026. 111 min

Genden loved his son as a piece of his own flesh and blood, yet he had no choice but to send him off to war. He lived only for the hope that his only child on this earth would return alive and well. Upon hearing the news that his son had become a war hero, Genden was overjoyed and spoke proudly of it to everyone he met.
Soon after, a tragic letter arrived stating that his son had been killed on the front lines. The locals, afraid to deliver the bitter news, avoided the old man. Searching for someone to read the letter aloud, Genden finally had a neighbor’s little girl read it, bringing him face-to-face with the heartbreaking news. However, Genden refused to believe that he had lost the only child he had raised so preciously. Amidst this, he summons a man named Galsan to court to demand justice for his biological son’s life. Having just been struck by the harsh blow of separation, he thus finds himself entangled in a matter of life and death.
But soon, a rumor spreads that one of the soldiers thought to be dead has survived and is returning home. Hearing this, Genden hurriedly sets off for the brigade center. Will the hope deep within his soul be extinguished, or will it blaze anew?

Ungrateful Beings
Olmo Omerzu
Chequia, Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia, France. 2025. 110 min

David takes his two children on holiday to the Adriatic Sea, hoping to hold their fractured bilingual family together. His 17-year-old daughter, Klara, struggling with an eating disorder, falls in love with a local boy, Denis. When he is accused of murder, David rushes the children back home. Klára’s condition spirals, landing her in hospital. The only thing uniting her parents is their need to save her. And desperate times call for desperate measures.

Porshi
Chandrasish Ray
India. 2025. 100 min

Like any other metropolitan city, Kolkata is a mix of diverse people. Bappa works as a supervisor in a movers-and-packers company owned by Ratan, his boss, who is almost torment personified. Bappa’s girlfriend, Monika, is running around the city in pursuit of a government job she has already cleared but has not yet received the offer letter for. Choto, a 22-year-old truck driver working under Bappa, is a village boy struggling to discover his own sense of right and wrong amid the bustle of this grey city. Siuli is a homemaker, raising two children and dealing with a drunken husband, never having imagined that her life would be trapped within the claustrophobia of four walls.
We are all neighbours – Porshi (in Bengali) – to one another in some way or the other. We never know when we cross paths with a neighbour whose face we may not even recognize. Porshi (Neighbours, in english) is a palette of independent colours who never realized that, together, they could form a rainbow.

The Muralist
Sengedorj Janchivdorj
Mongolia. 2025. 116 min

Baya, a weather-worn muralist who spent his glory years in Europe, has drifted back to Ulaanbaatar with nothing but a rickety rooftop tent, a box of fading paints and Dolingor, the stray that shadows his every step. Each dawn he rappels down an abandoned Soviet-era factory wall, splashing mythic Mongolian landscapes across the crumbling concrete while a sardonic red balloon—equal parts conscience and comic Greek chorus—floats overhead.
When city officials announce the site will be bulldozed for a turkey farm, Baya digs in, certain this mural will be his life’s summa. His only allies are Tömö, a curious herder boy who’s never owned a crayon, and Kazu, a Japanese photo-journalist whose lens turns Baya’s anonymity into sudden global intrigue. Their fragile coalition clashes with bureaucrats and developers, but the deeper fight is inside Baya: a decades-old guilt over the wife and daughter he abandoned for art.
Drawing on surreal realism and long, breathing takes that keep us at the artist’s elbow, director J. Sengedorj weaves Mongolia’s gritty urban present with its shamanic inner world. The Muralist becomes a hymn to imagination’s stubborn survival—whether in spray-painted saints, a boy’s first charcoal line, or the quiet forgiveness that can still bloom on a ruined wall.