Labo section brings fresh and innovatie approaches to cinematic language.

This year’s Labo competition section, which presents fresh and innovative approaches to cinematic language and narrative forms, consists of seven films.

Chilean director Valerie Hofmann’s AliEN0089, which won the “Short Film Special Jury Award: International, Directing” at the Sundance Film Festival, explores the rampant bullying that exists on the threshold between the real and virtual worlds.

Two other films are set in the virtual world as well: Kinderfilm by the art collective Total Refusal, takes place inside the Grand Theft Auto computer game, and the protagonists of Arno Coenen’s Let’s Be Friends are actors created by artificial intelligence.

The Veiled City, a sci-fi symphony inspired by the Great Smog that shrouded London in 1952, combines fiction and reality in an attempt at presenting this event within the context of the current climate crisis.

Czech cinema is represented by Adéla Babanová’s The Law of Time, which looks at our unconscious mind and our fears and dreams about the future.

The Labo section concludes with Hideous, a surreal musical full of love, shame, and blood, and the short documentary Been There about the soulless nature of mass tourism.

The jury members of the Labo section are musician Monika Omerzu Midriaková, writer Petr Šesták and designer Iveta Kocmanová.