How can art help us revisit and remake traumatic memories? These four deeply intimate short films use virtual reality, performance, animation and archive to explore how childhood trauma shapes the body, home and identity.
Profound and unflinching, they confront painful histories while opening up possibilities for understanding, transformation and hope.
Includes a post-screening discussion with Timothée Engasser and Mia Oustry (Home is Where the Heart Is), Maria Tórgarð (Mother Creature) and Andrea Luka Zimmerman (While the Gods Were Busy With Another Child).
About the Programme
Home Is Where the Heart Is
dir. Timothée Engasser (France, 2025) 24m
UK Premiere
Using virtual reality, Mia reconstructs her childhood home and revisits the trauma held within its walls. As she creates and dismantles this haunting architecture of violence, her testimony becomes a powerful reflection on abuse, belonging, identity, memory and the transformative possibilities of art.
Strong themes of childhood sexual abuse.
Mother Creature
dir. Maria Tórgarð (Sweden, Faroe Islands, 2026) 29m
UK Premiere
Filmmaker Maria Tórgarð attempts to pull the monster of her childhood out from under the bed in an original, deeply personal and creative film about her mother’s mental illness. Through intimate conversations, theatrical performance and her mother’s insightful writing, this tender documentary explores the experience of living with catatonic schizophrenia with humanity and hope.
Themes of war.
While the Gods Were Busy with Another Child
dir. Andrea Luka Zimmerman (UK, 2025) 25m
Drawing on an eclectic personal and public archive, this autobiographical film by Andrea Luka Zimmerman combines photographs, film, interviews and diary entries as it revisits their traumatic childhood and adolescence, and explores the possibility of living life on their own terms.
Includes themes of childhood abuse, domestic abuse, violence, drug use and nudity.
I Am the Bad House
dir. Hannah ‘Hunter’ Hull (United Kingdom, 2025) 6m
Scottish Premiere
A layered artist film exploring how childhood trauma becomes embedded in the body and our sense of home. Artist and filmmaker Hannah ‘Hunter’ Hull brings this metaphor to life through striking performance, beautifully lit imagery and playful sound, blending realism with monochrome animation.
Themes of childhood trauma and nudity.
