Circulo Roto presents: More Heat Than Light

SHORTS PRORGAM

Shared Airs – Lea Giordano
In this short film, the maker gives two performers the task of breathing the same air for the entire roll of film. The 16mm film develops condensation, creating the effect of breath overlaying the performance, as if the camera itself is breathing with them; the handheld movements echo this rhythm. Initially conceived as a political response to global challenges, the work reflects on air as a shared fundamental need. For the maker, the act of breathing the same air becomes a symbol of equality, underscoring our connection through this shared necessity.

I HEAR YOU ON MY SKIN – Melis Menkuer
Anna, a young call girl, is consumed by obsession after her regular client, Julien, disappears without a word. Trapped in the silence of her apartment, she spirals through memory and desire, replaying fragments of their past encounters. As she clings to sensations more imagined than real, the line between intimacy and illusion begins to blur. An exploration of erotic fixation and the void it leaves behind.

Not Gonna Get Us – Margarita Kosareva
This film juxtaposes a horseback journey across mountainous fields with the migratory journey of an “Ausländer” mother. The implicit pressures of this exchange are manifested through the vibration of a camera attached to a horse. In this essayistic work, the maker gives space to her mother’s testimony on life in the German diaspora. Not Gonna Get Us was initially planned as a German rap music video.

After a room – Naomi Pacifique
Nights are long inside Naomi and Ram’s room. Tonight, they’ve invited Marina over and their messy space is under scrutiny. Exploring intimacy as personal playground, skin as intimate map, Naomi’s docile body is coming loose amidst the tension inside a room she continues knowing and unknowing. The small expressive child inside her is itching to ring its giggle through the night, before day breaks.

A wellness nightmare – Hanneke Klaver
Set in a miniature sauna built from moving boxes, A Wellness Nightmare follows the perspective of a sauna worker whose voice remains trapped within their work environment. It reveals heat as a labour condition and questions the pressures placed on the working body. Based on the maker’s own experience of becoming an aufguss master, the work offers a personal glimpse into the strains of contemporary labour dynamics.

HOW TO DANCE – Aileen Ye
An eclectic vision of a body searching for catharsis. How to dance is a call to move and to sweat, a film that produces heat as a conductor for alternative resistances. The film pairs Jordan Achiano’s powerful dance performance with a testimony that surveys matters of societal control, life under capitalism and surveillance, constantly daring its viewers to imagine what the next revolution will look like.

Hors Saison – Riwa Phillips
On a summer afternoon, a man and a woman eat tangerines by the shore. Slowly, the moving tides consume their feet. Shot on a single cartridge of super 8mm film, with only in-camera edits and no post-production, this short work reflects a real progression of time and movement, heading towards inundation.