Leiden Shorts: Love & Other Drugs
LEIDEN SHORTS: LOVE & OTHER DRUGS
16 May 2025
Love takes many forms – ritual and rupture, longing and play, memory and miscommunication. This preview programme traces the contours of intimacy through different cinematic lenses: from poetic fragments and surreal experiments to raw, emotional encounters. Whether love is whispered, imagined, or constructed from absence, these films expose its shifting textures – funny, fragile, strange, and deeply human.FILMS IN THIS PROGRAMME
Duty Free Director: Hilke Rönnfeldt Duration: 17 min 21 sec Countries: Germany, Sweden, Denmark Year: 2024 Languages: Swedish, Danish, German Subtitles: English
The manager of a docked duty-free warehouse container cuts the chains tethering it to the cold outside world and sets sail to preserve the realm of tenderness she and her crew have built together. In a rhythmically pulsating choreography, an alternative universe grounded in more beautiful values comes to life.
I want to know what love is
Director: Hanna Järgenstedt
Duration: 6 min 22 sec
Country: Sweden
Year: 2024
Languages: English, German
Subtitles: English
A road movie about Hanna, who’s totally got something going on with a hot DJ-guy in Berlin and is heading down to his gig, but misses the train, leading to an unwanted road trip. Will Hanna and dj___snorksenzation__000 become an official couple tonight? What’s cool and who’s not? Are all middle-aged men perverts?
A visually explorative film where papier-mâché characters meet the real world. Shot with GoPro and mixed with wildly clashing stock imagery.
looking she said I forget
Director: Naomi Pacifique
Duration: 24 min 58 sec
Countries: The Netherlands, Switzerland
Year: 2024
Languages: Dutch, English, French, Spanish
Subtitles: English
Having just moved to Amsterdam, Lou prepares her new apartment that she will share with her partner, Joel. For now though, Joel is on a trip with an intimate other. Confronted with the complexities of her non-monogamous relationship, Lou shifts her gaze to the rhythms of her new city.
Homunculus
Director: Bonheur Suprême|
Duration: 17 min 35 sec
Country: France
Year: 2025
Language: French
Subtitles: English
Homunculus explores the fetishization of the North African male body in digital gay meeting spaces, where desire and rejection mingle within the Western gaze. Using the video-game world of Skyrim and its heroic-fantasy aesthetic, the film draws parallels between the racialized, sexualized “Arab” figure and a golden-skinned elf avatar.
Part documentary, part essay, the film critically examines colonial myths, modern stereotypes, and the racist constructions embedded in virtual desire.
Washingtonia
Director: Konstantina Kotzamani
Duration: 25 min
Country: Greece
Year: 2014
Language: Greek
Subtitles: English
Washingtonia is the only palm tree whose heart isn’t devoured by the red beetle—because it’s small and dry, and no one likes small and dry hearts.
