Shadows of the Living

Here, human and more‑than‑human lives intermingle in peculiar ways. Each film uncovers untamed stories where power, survival and transformation twist into unanticipated forms.

Screening dates and booking

Check which tickets are still available across the festival – and find out about extra ticket releases and standby queues.

Credits

  • Total running time

    82min

  • Programmed by

    Hyun Jin Cho, Qila Gill, Erik Martinson

  • Content warning

    This short film programme contains scenes of graphic violence or injury.

Primate Visions; Macaque Macabre

  • Director-screenwriter

    Natasha Tontey

  • Indonesia-Switzerland 2024. 32min

  • Languages

    English, Tontemboan, Indonesian
    With English subtitles

Through the perspectives of the indigenous Minahasan peoples of Indonesia, shifting bonds between humans and monkeys unfold, merging myth and ecology to question power.

Hedgehog Cakes: Sweet Weapon of Terror

  • Director

    Zhenia Stepanenko

  • Screenwriters

    Mykhailo Bondariev, Vitalii Nemchenko, Zhenia Stepanenko

  • Ukraine 2025. 20min

  • Languages

    Ukrainian, Russian
    With English subtitles

  • Content warning

    Contains scenes of graphic violence or injury.

A hedgehog lands itself in a darkly comic mockumentary exploring Stalin’s secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov’s purges, twisting 21st-century true‑crime tropes that expose distorted histories.

Fragments for Venus

  • Director-screenwriter

    Alice Diop

  • Italy-France 2025. 21min

  • Language

    French
    With English subtitles

Through fragments, paintings, portraits, people, murals and pictures are staring back. A conversation emerges as they look at each other.

Resurrect Me As a Parasite

  • Directors-screenwriters

    Gabi Dao, Lou Lou Sainsbury

  • UK-Netherlands-Canada 2025. 9min

  • Language

    English
    With English subtitles

  • Content warning

    Contains scenes of graphic violence or injury.

A vampiric trio move through sacred ruins, where bodies blur, relics stir, and both life and death appear in shadow.

How to book

Tickets start from £10 for all screenings and events in London, with concessions available for many screenings. Booking information and ticket prices.

If you’re aged 16 to 25, sign up for free to BFI 25 and Under for a chance to get £6 tickets to all screenings and events (subject to availability).

Missed out?

More tickets may become available for these screenings before and during the festival. Find out about extra ticket releases and standby queues.

Our programmers recommend...

In the Clouds Flecks of Memories Pass By

These films embody memories: some personal, others inherited or found. At times they’re mesmerising, yet fissures can appear in the depicted recollections. Subjectivity comes into focus. Established narratives are destabilised.

Read more about In the Clouds Flecks of Memories Pass By

Anatomy of Place, Sites of Becoming

Films in this programme consider how spaces hold the weight of what came before and the traces of what may emerge, moving through landscapes where memory, body and terrain shifts and transforms against time.

Read more about Anatomy of Place, Sites of Becoming

Afterlives

Media artist, filmmaker and critic Kevin B. Lee presents an unflinchingly complex and thought-provoking tapestry that interrogates the many faces of violence confronting our lives.

Read more about Afterlives