FIFDH: The Authoritarian Turn in the United States

Arjun Talwar turns his camera toward Wilcza Street in Warsaw, filming neighbours and the textures of everyday life to probe his sense of belonging. Working with a quietly observant, intimate cinema, he assembles encounters and portraits that complicate simple narratives about contemporary Poland. The film unfolds as a patient, tactile study of otherness, community and political atmosphere—close-ups of faces and streetscapes that reveal nuance beneath stereotypes. Sparse, compassionate and perceptive, it listens to ordinary lives to rethink what home can mean.

Black Water follows Lokhi and her family as they flee a ravaged southern Bangladesh toward Dhaka. Framed with the pulsing rhythm of a thriller, the film moves from intimate domestic tension to the apocalyptic collapse of cities, observing exile, displacement and the human cost of climate change. Its cinematography favors textured close-ups and wide, drowning panoramas that trade familiarity for menace, creating a tense, elegiac atmosphere. The film’s strength lies in its restrained empathy and searing portrait of a world at the brink of submersion.

In Bengali orignal version with French subtitles.

Screening followed by a discussion with the protagonist and activist Shakila Islam.