PUBLICS Youth Advisory Board welcomes you to a screening of short films that explore relations to home and the land while experiencing migration.

The shorts are by young filmmakers based in Finland and Sweden and have been selected in collaboration with Noncitizen, a collective exploring border politics, moving images, and art.
The event is produced in collaboration with Nordic Culture Point.

Nordic Culture Point, Suomenlinna B28
12 December
17:00 – 18:00 film screening
18:00 – 19:30 Q&A and mingle

(We advise to take the ferry from Kauppatori at 16:20)

The entrance is free and the event is an alcohol-free space.
For accessibility details on the island, please check this link.

FILM PROGRAM

Alireza Masomi, Black Lamb (2024, 14:00)
Haliz Yosef, Shelter (2022, 9:52)
Shamsil Balkis, Conference of the Birds (2023, 10:08)
Dennis Harvey, The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp (2024, 20:00)

Speakers: artist Haliz Yosef, filmmaker Shamsil Balkis, PY member Yu Yue, PY member Matilda Järvi

Founded in Sweden in 2015, Noncitizen has organised film screenings, media workshops, public conversations, and cultural events across borders. Noncitizen opposes repressive boundaries between citizens and noncitizens; between those granted rights and those denied them. We do this by regularly creating forums for discussions and encounters, as well as supporting the production and archiving of films, images, and texts.

PUBLICS Youth Advisory Board is a collective of young adults working on contemporary art and cultural production at PUBLICS, Helsinki. As part of the network Future Futures with Index Foundation (Stockholm) and PRAKSIS (Oslo) they have been exploring the moving image as a medium to read and understand our present.

PUBLICS Youth Advisory Board 2024 are Akanksha Bhat, Arnav Ghurde, Helena Massuda Garcia, Isabella Oropeza, Joanna Lagerblom, Kaius Kuhmonen, Linh Dan Vu, Matilda Järvi, Yelyzaveta Babaieva, and Yu Yue. Micol Curatolo is the project coordinator.

SAFER SPACE

We wish the event to be a space of reflection, support, and grief when needed. We will arrange a quiet room if you need a break during the event. The films address sensitive topics through real-life stories and fiction. In the following paragraph, we’ll list content that may disturb you. The films’ descriptions and more information can be found below.

The films address: rejection of an application for asylum, episodes of racism, images of street conflict (no injuries are shown), homelessness, illness, homesickness, rehearsal of hunting and gun shots, animal carcass treated for food consumption.

If you are under 16 y.o., bring an older friend to keep you company.

FILMS

Alireza Masomi, Black Lamb (2024, 14:00)

A young asylum-seeking boy escapes with a lamb from a farm to save it from slaughter. The lamb is the only being he speaks to. Through flashbacks and glimpses of the future, we gain insight into their life together—until the inevitable end. Black Lamb is a story about the transience of life. The question is when or how a life ends and how it is lived.

[The film tells about the rejection of the protagonist’s asylum. One scene is recorded in the workshop of a butcher, treating the carcass of a lamb for food consumption.]

Dennis Harvey, The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp (2024, 20:00)

A group of asylum seekers in Dublin pitch their tents on Sandwith Street, around the corner from the immigration office. This protest camp is a reaction to the decision of the Irish government to deny accommodation to 1400 asylum applicants. Camp residents Sami, Hasiballah and Simon show us around the little village they call home: this is where they eat, this is where they paint banners, and here are flowers planted in a pot.

This peaceful scene is soon disrupted by the arrival of the Irish anti-immigration activist Philip Dwyer, who uses livestreams on social media to call for the tent dwellers to be chased away. A group of progressive activists come to the aid of the asylum seekers, but an outburst of violence looks inevitable.

Phone footage of the increasingly intense confrontations alternates with easy-going conversations between the camp dwellers and the sympathisers who are protesting the lack of support in this fiercely divided country. The violent incidents mount up, and finally things really explode.

[The film includes amateurial footage of street conflict and racist slurs. No injuries are shown. The film narrates about homelessness and poverty due to the waiting process and rejection of asylum.]

Haliz Yosef, Shelter (2022, 9:52)

Shelter delves into the liminal spaces between the abjection of alienation and the yearning for connection. The mother is present, yet absent. She is both a home and not—a paradoxical refuge that is simultaneously comforting and fraught. Emotions remain untethered, snaking through the in-between spaces that define the concept of “home.”
In the film, the artist explores the unsettling duality of a hug—a gesture that should convey safety but can evoke discomfort, even violence. A hug invites an image of vulnerability: the expansion of the chest, the outstretched arms, and the intimacy of touch. Yet, this closeness can also unsettle, blurring the lines between solace and violation.
Shelter is an ongoing film project by Haliz Yosef.

[The film portrays the complex relationship between the artist and their mother, addressing illness and aging.]

Shamsil Balkis, Conference of the Birds (2023, 10:08)

“Conference of the Birds” follows a farm worker’s encounter with a mysterious winged visitor in the depths of the forest—a reverie on the interconnectedness of living beings amid proliferating boundaries.

[The film includes rehearsal scenes of bird hunting and gun shots.]

BIOS

Alireza Masomi arrived in Sweden in 2015 as an unaccompanied minor and spent over eight years as an asylum seeker before receiving his residence permit in 2023. During this time, he discovered his passion for filmmaking. His journey into film began in 2018 when he created a music video with two friends, sparking his desire to tell stories through the medium of film. Inspired by works like Twelve Years a Slave and Chernobyl, Alireza continued to develop his craft. He has studied film extensively, including programs at Nordiska Folkhögskolan in Kungälv, Ljungskile Folkhögskola, and Biskops-Arnö, and is currently in his second year at the Film Worker Training Program in Trollhättan. His work spans music videos, documentaries, and short films, exploring the power of images to convey deeply personal and universal stories. Alireza’s debut short film, Black Lamb, has been screened at many festivals and received significant attention. Through his films, Alireza seeks to share authentic and meaningful stories that highlight the beauty and challenges of human experience.

Dennis Harvey: Based between Stockholm and Dublin, Dennis makes non-fiction cinema about migration, identity and bureaucracy. With a cinema vérité approach and a particular sensitivity to the human, his work interrogates the political through the personal. His debut feature documentary, I Must Away (2023), and his short documentary, The Building and Burning of a Refugee Camp (2024), are currently screening around the world.

Haliz Yosef (b. 1990, Iraq) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work navigates the intersections of intuitive practice, hauntology, and speculative relics. Their art explores alternative realities and liminal spaces, where narratives transcend conventional boundaries and materialize as sound art, moving image, and organic or non-organic forms. By decolonizing the Western body’s gestures, Haliz draws on their tribal ancestry to rediscover embodied knowledge — a cellular memory that projects into the future. Haliz’s work has been exhibited internationally, including in Finland, Sweden, Latvia, the United Kingdom, and South Korea.

Shamsil Balkis is a Helsinki-based filmmaker born in Kerala, India. With his background in film and liberal arts, Balkis explores decolonial storytelling practices through memories of oral traditions, collective identity, and diaspora. His recent film “Conference of the Birds” has received acclaim at festivals and academic venues. An alumnus of the Academy of Moving People and Images, Balkis is currently pursuing a Master’s in Documentary Film Direction at Aalto University.