As tradition dictates, Monday is dedicated to short films with the traditional Showcase Shorts (6:30 pm – Kinepolis Kirchberg). There’s a different atmosphere at Ciné Utopia, where a candid portrait of the world is painted: Soldiers of Light (6 pm, in the presence of director Johannes Büttner) plunges us into the delusions of a childhood friend who has become a far-right conspiracy theorist influencer.
While the Luxembourg Cinémathèque is undergoing renovations, Le Chantier (8 pm – Cinémathèque @Théâtre des Capucins) by Jean-Stéphane Bron offers a glimpse of a Parisian cinema rebuilt by Renzo Piano. In between, the Sorogoyen retrospective kicks off with Stockholm (2 pm Ciné Utopia), the film that launched the edgy Madrid native, President of the International Jury for this 16th edition.
And to finish, Memory of Princess Mumbi (8:45 pm – Ciné Utopia) by Damien Hauser turns everything upside down: a retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic Africa, the first Kenyan film in competition at Venice, shot on a shoestring budget with AI-generated sets.
