MEDIA MAKERS FILM FESTIVAL

15 June 2025

The third edition of the Media Makers Film Festival, themed “Space is the Place,” encapsulates the idea of (re)making and (re)imagining spaces in and through cinema. It explores how we navigate and negotiate our identity at the threshold of borders–between public and private spheres, through virtual and more-than-human worlds, and in the cracks of urban landscapes. It is through these in-between sites of struggle that questions of matter, movement, and visibility start to converge and collide.

The selected short films in this year’s program make an attempt at dealing with these questions, by imagining alternate possibilities for making spaces livable for all, while remaining deeply grounded in the difficult realities of commodified and alienated (urban) life.

Our four sub-programs will explore the ways in which we move through the city and move through the interiors of our minds, contemplating the feeling of one’s belongingness and as memories bear on space. We’ll transverse from whacky and extraordinary universes to the harsh realities of our contemporary world, where the movement of certain bodies is sharply limited by political forces. Beside the aforementioned sub-programs, we will also have a special screening of Hotel Mokum (2024) directed by Yannesh Meijman, followed by a roundtable discussion on the history of squatting in Amsterdam with the director and two squatters from the local scene—all in the midst of further gentrification and an ongoing housing crisis.

Film block 1: In The City | 14:00-15:00

Film block 2: On the Borderline | 15:30-16:45

Filmblock 3: Side Event: Amsterdam Kraakt | 17:00-18:30

Filmblock 4: Between the Spaces | 20:00-21:00

Film block 5: Across the Second Dimension | 21:30-22:30