Radical Kinship: Reimagining Communities Through Solidarity

Film Festival: Where the Wind Scatters Seeds;
7.−9. February 2025
Filmhaus Köln

 Day 3: Radical Kinship: Reimagining Communities Through Solidarity
9. February 15h-20h

The films in this program invite us to traverse the labyrinths of colonial violence, resistance, and radical imagination. They explore how communities, beyond oppression and alienation, can forge connections with one another. By examining the shared experiences of groups affected by colonialism across different geographic contexts, the program fosters solidarity between communities suffering from colonial violence and its aftermath.
Starting from the Vietnamese diaspora, the films delve into forced migration and cultural survival, exploring how living archives are constructed through personal histories. These intimate insights challenge dominant narratives shaped by power structures, which are perpetuated by selective forgetting. These works examine the complex process of negotiating identity "in the belly of the beast". This confrontation with identity under colonial legacies is not only an act of survival, but also reclaiming of self in spaces shaped by systemic forces of control.
The second part of the program shifts focus to film as an archive of resilience, one that documents testimonies of colonial violence. These works disrupt established historical narratives and open new pathways to present collective suffering and resistance. The films urge questioning the systemic conditions that distort or erase the testimonies of marginalized subjects, encouraging new ways of listening and understanding. The screen becomes a space for deconstructing past and present traumas, enabling the creation of alternative methods and perspectives of documenting vulnerability.
The concluding section shifts towards radical imaginations from black and Kurdish resistance movements: What could a world beyond colonial legacies look like? These films imagine ways of living, creating, and being together outside the structures of imperial control. Through documentation of revolutionary practice, they break inherited hierarchies and propose alternative visions grounded in justice, reciprocity, and liberation.
In presenting these perspectives, the films invite the audience to view solidarity as a tool for healing and transformation.

Curated by Schaho Balbas, Idil Xaashi Hassan, Lan Mi Lê and Safiya Yon

 Info about the film programs: 

Program #1: Living Archives

Program #2: Radical Solidarity

Program #3: Radical Imagination

+ Drawing Corner and Fundraiser for Palestine over the three days

 Ticketing

The festival takes place over three days. You have to get tickets for the individual programs (price range between 4-10 EUR per ticket). There is no festival pass and no day ticket. The programs are held in English. Almost all (short) films have English subtitles (a few have English language without subtitles). Unfortunately, the Cineville pass cannot be used for this event.