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Azerbaijan

The film addresses the issue of the lack of green public spaces in Azerbaijan. Young people usually struggle to find peaceful and clean areas for their leisure time and tend to visit kilometers away from Baku to “escape” the gray scene of it. Also, Baku is surrounded by beautiful coastal areas, however, due to the mismanagement and lack of state responsibility, these spaces are usually full of trash and not taken care of at all. Although, it is cleaned regularly, even around the center you could see people irresponsibly trashing the streets. Psychologically, it is proven that contact with nature and green scenery helps people a lot to relax and sustain a better mental state. Unfortunately, Baku is a very gray city. It even worsens with time when authority is given to those with resources and connections to cut down more green areas to build their private property. We need to preserve and take care of the minimal green areas we have left in Baku and the film addresses its importance.

Albania

A short film created as a spontaneous action of inclusion of a local taxi driver into the conversation of foreign passengers, three friends. Although we didn’t speak the same language as him, in this short moment in time we let the music he likes become our way of silent communication with him. The simultaneous scenes of walking along the labyrinth of meander lines, drawn on the floor of Rruga Sermedin Said Toptani, symbolize the complex paths of interpersonal relations between strangers. While I was staying in Tirana I had a strong feeling of empathy towards older, local people. I saw that often they don’t speak any foreign languages, while at the same time, because of economic challenges Albanian people face, they are “forced to” work with tourists. As Tirana is rapidly growing and changing, the city center is full of foreigners, both investors and tourists. Local people don’t take a taxi — they take a bus or they drive a taxi. Local people often don’t go out to eat in restaurants — the eat at home or they work in restaurants. Economic differences between local people and foreigners are felt in all areas of life. In Tirana, I had a strong feeling that local people from Tirana often feel as second-grade citizens in their own city, “occupied” by English-speaking foreigners, surrounded by fancy shops, cars and restaurants, which they, local people — can’t afford. This short film is a documentation of one humble effort of trying to make a local taxi driver feel he’s at home in his own city, by a simple act of showing an interest in his culture via his own personal — music playlist.

Georgia

Denmark

Albania

Reinventing inclusive design through the use of cardboard. A material usually employed as container, now it can be a doormat or a table. Through examples of re-use, cardboard becomes a symbol and gives a new understanding of inclusive design: creativity, accessibility and recycling may be pillars for a new (social) inclusion within modern design and architecture.

Albania

What we see with our eyes, we make with our hands is an Albanian proverb, reflecting on our film's main subject: architecture without architects. More specifically our subject is the builders themselves, through the story of Besnik, a halal butcher, who also built together with his friends a bar in the informal settlement of Bathore, on the outskirts of Tirana. His story represents how people left alone by centralised building and housing policies can make their own architecture, infrustructure and urbanism, and find functionality, pride and beauty without adhering to ideals and rules of professional planning. The film was made by buhera klub, a collective consisting of Anna Seress and Anna Zsoldos.