KASHISH 2026 INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE SHORTS IN COMPETITION

Muhammad’s fruity holiday plans hit a roadblock when he gets stopped by airport security and is accused of running off to join ISIS. While he desperately needs to catch his flight, he’d still like to have some fun along the way. Based on a true story.

After his father’s death, Mauro, a rural farmer, finds himself facing a freedom he never dared to live. Caught between guilt and desire, he confronts his fears to finally embrace who he truly is.

CATS CAN TEACH YOU TO DIE ALONE
Dir: Hanuš | 22 MIN | 2025 | Pakistan | Urdu

Cats Can Teach You’ to Die Alone unfolds as a tender yet fractured portrait of love, regret, and solitude in the quiet corridors of memory and longing. After three years of silence, Ali receives an unexpected call from Zain, his ex-lover from three years ago, who takes him on a nostalgic trip back to the night they met, a night of playfulness and intimacy.

MOLLY
Dir: Darius Shu | 23 MIN | 2025 | UK | English

A chance meeting at a launderette sparks an intense emotional intimacy between Vinnie and Ryan. As closeness blurs into desire, unspoken expectations surface, forcing them to confront what love demands before it fractures everything they have built.

TAXI MOTO
Dir: Gaël Kamilindi | 21 MIN | 2026 | France | French

Prevented from making his film, a director reinvents its images elsewhere, with another actor. As they search for each other, cinema becomes an act of love and intimate poetic resistance.

A woman makes her way to a sex worker to discover something about her world, about herself. Behind those walls, another war is being fought – one of truth, one of being.

A Black transmasculine Uber driver’s car becomes dangerously possessed when a German hippie offloads her trauma demon on a ride through the racially segregated, tourist-infested Cape Town.

A tomboy returns to her hometown for a funeral, sparking a journey of self-discovery and a shift in her perception of her mother.

Victoire, a 20-year-old judoka, has her trans identity outed in the middle of a tournament. Sonia, her next opponent, refuses to fight her. In the following hour, the gym turns into a battleground where athletes, parents, and officials clash. As debates over fairness and safety escalate, Victoire refuses to become a symbol and focuses on what matters most: her next match.

After a devastating breakup, Hsing becomes emotionally numb, feeling unable to move on. To end his agony, Hsing decides to set out from southern Taiwan to Taipei to demand an apology from his unfaithful ex-boyfriend. But in the bitterly cold northern city, tangled desires bloom like a thorned flower hurting him in return. While his ex finally offers him an olive branch by expressing remorse with kisses, Hsing just snaps. In that moment, apology, forgiveness, and revenge collide, leading to an irreversible act.

Lucas wanders into a late-night party looking for Tiago, a love from the past. Desire meets uncertainty, especially when Tiago shares that he is HIV-positive.

Krizalit follows Deniz, an enigmatic young woman drawn into the vibrant life of modern Turkey. Alternating between the euphoria of her intricate love with a Turkish woman, Melisa, and the weight of feeling like an outsider, the story weaves subtle hints about Deniz’s true nature — inviting contemplation on identity and belonging.

During a scorching summer in the mountains of southern Italy, introvert Luca develops an attraction for Valerio, who is passionate about motorcycles. The two meet in secret, in the quiet of the countryside just outside the small town where they live. Chasing a desire that slowly escalates into obsession, Luca is forced to come to terms with the blurred boundary between pleasure and violence.

In a quaint Welsh fishing village, a young Shirley Bassey impersonator and a fisherman are swept into a secret romance, battling the tides of family and tradition as they search for the courage to claim their own happiness.