Screenings on Inclusion - Borders of exclusion

This year, the Cercle Cité continues its series of screenings of short films and artists' films, which will address different aspects of inclusion, accessibility, integration and discrimination in a philosophical and original way.

These topics are highly debatable in a society that on the one hand is becoming more and more aware of the subject of identity and diversity, but which nevertheless faces difficulties in adapting to this new awareness. Migration and feminism, the search for (artistic) identity, the rights of people with special needs, the rights of people belonging to the LGBTQIA+ group and the challenges of parenthood: the themes linked to these debates are multifaceted and affect many of us.

Cercle Cité has given CinEast festival (Central and Eastern European Film Festival in Luxembourg) carte blanche to present a special screening as part of its 17th edition. The festival will present two short films on the theme of “Borders of exclusion”, by having a closer look at two different figures of the excluded one: those excluded within our societies (due to being deemed as ‘different’) and those excluded at their borders (‘the invisible ones’). By juxtaposing these two facets of exclusion, CinEast intends to throw a light on those who have been put into our society’s shadows and challenge us into breaking the physical and immaterial barriers that oppose inclusion.

Tadeusz Łysiak, The Dress, 2020: Julia (Ania Dzieduszycka) works at a roadside motel and is overwhelmed by the ubiquitous sense of rejection and loneliness. She is different and the society has made it very clear to her many times. But Julia refuses to be reduced to what makes her stand out. Like everyone else, she just dreams of some sense of belonging and a bit of love. When she unexpectedly meets a handsome truck driver, he will soon become the object of her loving obsession... The Dress, having won the Best Narrative Short Film award at the 2022 edition of Brussels International Independent Film Festival, asks us to rethink the invisible borders made up of prejudices and expectations we often, consciously or unconsciously, impose to the Other. Questioning identity, gender roles and adaptations to special needs, The Dress brings us face to face with factors of exclusion inside of us, and our own preconceptions of what is normal and what is acceptable.

Szymon Ruczyński, There Are People in the Forest, 2023: A lonely man limps down the road. A truck drives up to him. Several armed men jump out of it. They capture the limping man and take him back to the forest. The only witnesses of the scene are people from a nearby village. Since 2021, situations like this have become commonplace on the EU’s Polish-Belarusian border, which is the scene of an ongoing, little-known refugee crisis. An animated documentary whose creator happens to live in a town on the border.


Free entrance, without registration.
Food is not allowed in the screening room.