Manchester Lift-Off Film Festival 2025
Network Round Features
Monday 7th April - Sunday 13th April
1. One Must Wash Eyes
Director/Writer/Producer: Sepideh Yadegar
Producer: Amanda Konkin
Country of Origin: Canada
Synopsis: One Must Wash Eyes is a drama about SAHAR. An aspiring international student from Iran who is naturally suited to academics. Her ambitions take her away from her home, culture, and most importantly, from her MAMAN. Although she has been studying in Vancouver for three and a half years, she has difficulty connecting with her peers after studying and working at her uncle's grocery store. She finds joy in relating to TNT, an eight-year-old kid whose expertise lies in spray-painting poorly drawn smiley faces around the neighbourhood.
2. The Deserter
Director/Producer: Christoph Baumann
Writer: Christiane Heckes
Producer: Julia Jückstock
Country of Origin: Germany
Synopsis: Tyrol, 1945, the last days of second world war. At a remote mountain hut, the severely injured, deserted SS soldier Anton and the Jewish woman Hannah meet. Initial mistrust turns into feelings between the two. But the danger is ever present. For both of them, the war is far from over.
The Deserter is a story about war and guilt, but also about compassion and humanity.
3. Show Up and Start - The Art and Life of Dorothy Ramsay
Director/Writer/Producer: Neil Emery
Producer: Gareth Xifaris
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Synopsis: "Show Up and Start" is a celebration of resilience, creativity, and the transformative power of art. This deeply personal film chronicles the remarkable journey of Dorothy Ramsay, an artist whose life has been as textured and vibrant as her work. From her postwar childhood in northeast England to her formative years at London’s Camberwell School of Art, and her reinvention as a weaver and therapist, Ramsay’s return to full-time artistry exemplifies her inspiring belief: show up and start, and the work will follow.
4. Out There
Director/Writer: Alessandro Leone
Producers: Massimo Donati, Christine Ruppert
Country of Origin: Italy
Synopsis: More than three years after the first lockdown, the author reassembles several video-calls and videos made in spring 2020 with makeshift equipment, remaining confined to his home. These are windows open onto the only worlds accessible to him: a small street children’s ashram in a slum area of Mumbai, his nephews, his students. The children's gaze on the health emergency, the anxieties feeded by the flow of information, alternate with the harsh reality of the few survivors looking for food in the unnaturally empty streets on the edge of the Mumbai stations, where there is no trace of hundreds of street children. Thousands of miles away, everyone seems to give a meaning to the word “repair”.
5. The Black Rock
Director. Andrew Games
Writer & Producer: Kyle Brookes
Country of Origin: United Kingdom
Synopsis: Summer, 1940. The Battle of Britain is lost and Operation Sea Lion is now in full effect. The Wehrmacht Blitzkrieg storms the coasts of Britain, pushing Allied troops deeper into the north of England. Amongst the chaos, two enemy soldiers find themselves trapped together in a personal struggle for survival and redemption.
