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January 30, 2026
Displacement Film Fund review
Rotterdam film festivalA set of shorts by film-makers from Afghanistan, Iran, Ukraine, Syria and Somalia are shocking, funny and mysterious in equal measure
TL;DR
- Cate Blanchett produced and commissioned five short films on displacement for the Rotterdam festival.
- Mohammad Rasoulof's film "Sense of Water" depicts an exiled Iranian writer grappling with identity in Germany.
- Maryna Er Gorbach's "Rotation" shows a Ukrainian woman in a wheat field, reflecting on her combat experience.
- Shahrbanoo Sadat's "Super Afghan Gym" is a comedy about women exercising in a Kabul gym.
- Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi's "Allies in Exile" contrasts war horror in Syria with refugee life in London.
- Mo Harawe's "Whispers of a Burning Scent" follows a young keyboard player arrested for fraud in Mogadishu.
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