Short Films. Block 1: Before You Grow Up

Film is a collective portrait of Ukrainians in wartime. After a few months, people start going back to their regular lives despite the intangible danger of missile strikes hanging over cities, as the need for normality begins to overpower the fear of death. All the characters are connected by their close relationships with the director. Through candid conversations with her friends and family, the director seeks an understanding of how to navigate the new reality, where war becomes a routine without an end in sight. She goes on a journey of celebrating life despite war.

Early in the summer, a week before they left school and went their separate ways, the band Dream Diver invites a film crew in to document their first – and last – live performance. The band consists of six boys who have known each other for 10 years at a school in Rødovre for children with special needs. Guided by their teachers Andreas Bengtsen and Rune Hviid, the boys have found their own universe filled with synthetic bird whistles and dreamy lyrics.

Over the course of a hot summer evening, teenagers in a remote, provincial Swedish town meet in parking lots to hang out in their cars. We recognize the mythical scene from ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ and the thread to 1950s hotrod and rockabilly culture. But in Sweden’s enduring ‘raggar’ culture, people drive Volvos, and preferably ones they’ve built themselves into rolling discos in areas where youth clubs are far apart.

Artist Max Göran revisits the culture in a documentary video work that starts as a piece of gonzo-anthropology and mutates into magical realism. The cars are tuned down to tractor speeds of 20 mph in case the police show up, but with the push of a secret button, the young drivers of ages down to 16 can transform their vehicles into real cars – an object with its own contradictory, symbolic and subcultural history from James Dean to the present day.

For years now, Wayne, father of 12-year-old JayDee, has been into banger racing, a rough style of racing in self-built cars. Now that JayDee is nearly 13, his debut race is finally in view. Wayne helps his son fix up the car in the garage, teaches him steering techniques and prepares him mentally. JayDee, meanwhile, is feeling increasing pressure to make his father proud. This cinematic coming-of-age documentary explores a deep family connection, through which a shared passion becomes the catalyst for parental lessons.