Team
Bethany Privitera – UCL Student Showcase Programmer
Christopher Petitt-Mee – Expanded Realities Programme Advisor
Damilola Lemomu – Volunteer Coordinator
Ellis Lee – Technician
Elizabeth Dexter – Talks & Workshops Coordinator
Emily Mason – Guest Services Coordinator
Harry Løvstrøm – Expanded Realities Technical Producer
Huda Awan – Editor (Open City Texts)
Juliana Silva – Expanded Realities Exhibition Assistant
Laurence Avis – UCL Student Showcase Programmer
Laverne Caprice – Marketing Manager
Lucy Wardley – Festival Producer / Expanded Realities Programmer
María Palacios Cruz – Festival Director
Oliver Wright – Director of Programming
Ralph Pritchard – Technical Manager
Siavash Minoukadeh – Programme & Marketing Coordinator / Expanded Realities Programmer
Stina Krage – Guest Services Assistant
Tabatha Batra Vaughan – Marketing Assistant
Tomiwa Folorunso – Production Manager
Venue coordinators: Yao Tu, Iris Došen, Cosmo Reindorf, Grace Feinmann
Programme & texts: Annabelle Aventurin, Laurence Avis, Marta Calderón, Laverne Caprice, Hyun Jin Cho, Abiba Coulibaly, Elizabeth Dexter, Saeed Taji Farouky, Jason Fox, Alexander Horwath, Audrey Lam, Emily Mason, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Siavash Minoukadeh, Keegan O’Connor, María Palacios Cruz, Beth Privitera, Mathilde Rouxel, Elhum Shakerifar, Valentine Umansky, Bo Wang, Lucy Wardley, Ed Webb-Ingall, Oliver Wright, Nadia Yahlom.
Branding and Design: GIRL
2025 Festival Trailer – ‘A departure’ by Niki Kohandel
Niki Kohandel’s practice sits in the space between recording and rewriting a story. She works in collaboration with family members, friends and young people, playing with languages, analogue film, childhood memories and colours.
She is currently a Cubitt artist in residence at the Arts and Media School Islington, where she shares her story-telling practice with students through workshops, talks and paper boat making.
‘A departure’ begins with a question: how do we navigate on disappearing rivers, seas, sources, bodies of water endangered by neo-colonial extraction? The film responds to the call of Sohrab Sepehri’s poem ‘Beyond the Seas’ and invites the viewers to build their own paper boat.
Open City Documentary Festival would like to thank:
AFCC (Matsumoto Toshio), Aihara Family, Aikawa Yoichi, Alchemy Film & Arts (Milo Clenshaw, Rachael Disbury, Michael Pattison), Jonathan Ali, Another Gaze (Daniella Shreir), Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V. (Angelika Ramlow), Art Monthly (Chris McCormack), Association Jocelyne Saab (Mathilde Rouxel), Athénée Français de Tokyo (Ikuko Takasaki), Auguste Orts (Marie Logie, Eva van Tongeren), Australian High Commission (Heather McDonald), Austrian Film Museum (Eszter Kondor, Florian Haag, Michael Loebenstein, Kevin Lutz, Katharina Mueller), Erika Balsom, Barbican (Matthew Barrington, Susie Evans, Vania Gonzalvez, Alex Davidson), Sam Barry-Parker, Bertha DocHouse (Tom Dwyer, Jasmine Haniff, Jenny Horwell, Max Tindley, Sean Parnell, Elizabeth Wood), BFI (Simon Duffy, Will Fowler, Rod Rhule), Bernadette Boussuge, Braquage (Sébastien Ronceray), British Council (Jay Arnold, Fiona Fletcher, Briony Hanson), Burley Fisher Books (Emma Cheung), Cinémathèque de Toulouse (Nicolas Damon), Close-Up Film Centre (Damien Sanville, Jake Wardle, Will Watt), Benjamin Cook, Courtisane Festival (Pieter-Paul Mortier, Ditte Claus), day for night (Sonali Joshi), Diplomatic Representation of Flanders in the UK (Jeroen Deckmyn), Doc Society (Sanne Jehoul, Luke Moody), Documentary Film Council (Emily Copley, Steve Presence), EQZE (Carolina Cappa), EYE Filmmuseum (Olivia Buning), Yannis Falconer-Johnson, Saeed Taji Farouky, Fishtank Workshop (Bianca Kohli), FLAMIN (Rose Cupit, Maggie Ellis, Nathan Geyer, Duncan Poulton), EAI (Karl McCool, Jooyoung Friedman-Buchana), Elena Gorfinkel, HATANO Yukie, Hirasawa Gō, Hosoya Shuhei, Ian White Estate (Mike Sperlinger), ICA (Nic Farnan, Cheyanne Mccormack, Nicolas Raffin, Daniel Turner), IFFS (Michaela Borg, Benj Gerdes), Insight Lighting (Brendan Clarke, Emma Smith), Karma Drinks (Gabby Baxter), Kino Rebelde (María Vera), Koyama Osahiko, LADA (kane stonestreet), Mathilde Le Masson, David Leister, Lightcone (Miguel Armas, Dalva Deshogues, Eleni Gioti), LUX (Matt Carter, Hanan Coumal, Sophia Musa, Sun Park, Charlotte Procter, Ali Roche), Majazz Project (Mo’min Swaitat), MIRAJ (Lucy Reynolds), MoreThan Films (Emma Caviezel, Queralt Pons Serra), Chie Moriwaki, Nakanishi Kanako, Narita Community and Airport Museum, Aily Tanaka Nash, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (Melinda Robertson), National Film and Television School (Jessica Darvill, Sandra Eggleston, Sandra Hebron), Markus Nornes, PARC (Tanaka Shigeru), Miranda Peyton Jones, Charlotte Procter, Lis Rhodes, Rich Mix (Negede Assefa, Helen Baldwin, Jack Birch, Dennis Cooke, Michael Crowe, Alexander Jackson, Seyi Joseph, Aagya Pradhan, Wez Thurston Martha Rumney), Sakamoto Hirofumi, Sarha Collective (Nadia Yahlom), Elhum Shakerifar, Sine Screen (Cici Peng, Hester Yang), Sisu (Eva Coulibaly-Willis), sixpack (Isabelle Piechaczyk), Laura Staab, Adam Sunderland, Takasaki Ikuko, T A P E Collective (Isra Al Kassi), Tate Film (Valentine Umansky, Beatriz García-Velasco), Third World Newsreel (Shu Wang), Emma Tsuji Harrison, Matt Turner, UCL (Athar Ahmad, Richard Alwyn, Laurence Avis, James Bull, Wendy Chandler, Simba Chivaka, Andrea De Santis, Dieter Deswarte, Ellen Evans, Caroline Garaway, Haidy Geismar, Ruth Harper, Martin Holbraad, Keiko Homewood, Lasse Johansson, Savannah Lahtinen, Dinah Lammiman, Ed Lawrenson, Angela McArthur, Charlotte S. McElvaney, Mailis Merisalu, Tomoyo Miyakawa, Richard Palmer, Lucy Parker, Chris Pettit-Mee, Bethany Privitera, Spencer Samuel, Michael Stewart), Mark & Frances Webber, Henri Williams, World Records Journal (Jason Fox).
We would also like to thank all festival volunteers, all participating filmmakers, artists & speakers.