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International Short Films Programme 3: Wings of Silence
Our short programmes at DFF 2025 champion new and established voices in equal measure. Curated with care, each selection offers bold craft, fresh perspectives and the pleasures of discovery, from Qatar to the wider region and beyond. Short in length, expansive in thought.
International Short Film Competition

An elderly Beirut resident scans the day’s obituaries and attends strangers’ funerals, an intimate ritual that slowly unveils grief for a loved one, a home and a city in flux.
Each morning, an old Beirut resident checks the obituaries, then slips into yet another funeral, with its names, flowers, and hymns, until the ritual reveals its true purpose. What appears to be a morbid habit is a private cartography of mourning: for a beloved, a neighbourhood, a city repeatedly remade by loss. Crafted in tactile stop-motion and free of dialogue, the film allows gesture, light, and rhythm to carry meaning, inviting us to witness how grief settles into routine and, slowly, becomes acceptance.

Credits

Director
Fadi Syriani
Screenwriter
Fadi Syriani
Producer
Jana Wehbe, Georg Neubert, Maryam Al Khulaifi
Cinematographer
Pierre Mouarkech, Markus Ilschner
Editor
Carine Doumit, Fadi Syriani
Sound
Lama Sawaya
Music
Sound Design: Lama Sawaya (Db Studios) / Music: Arvo Pärt

About the Director

Fadi Syriani
Fadi Syriani is a Lebanese animator, writer, director and architect. His debut short ‘All This Death’ received a DFI Cinema Grant and multiple Animarkt awards, followed by residencies and support from OIF and AFAC; the film world-premiered at Annecy 2025. He co-founded Beirut’s Animation Collective and established the Youth Animation Platform, delivering workshops in collaboration with partners su