Opening this double event, the experimental film ‘Salt Bath’ (2025), directed by Camille Aleña and K. Desbouis, makes its national debut, presenting a Prague gripped by an unnamed threat. Over the course of the night, the lives of nine young inhabitants intersect in scenes of disorientation, where perception and language begin to fracture. Each character is pushed toward a reckoning with their own convictions, navigating a liminal time-space of purge and paranoia.

Structured in episodic crises, the film is charged with the sense that something is about to happen or has already happened. With a cast of mostly amateur actors, the protagonists find themselves suspended in a generational and science-fictional purgatory. In several scenes, their lines are not memorised but whispered through discreet earpieces, generating a sense of speech that has been hijacked. ‘I guess you always die a few days before being dead’, one of the characters confesses, capturing the film’s unease and fatalism. The title itself signals transition through a process of cleansing that irritates rather than soothes.

‘Salt Bath’ borrows from thrillers, horror, Christmas films, and teen dramas, yet it disrupts their codes and conventions. It resists classic narrative linearity, tending toward a spiral structure. Shot over four nights in Prague, the film channels the claustrophobia and temporal distortion of the lockdown era – at times resembling the conditions of reality-show confinement. Exterior and club sequences were partially improvised at real parties, letting the city’s nocturnal atmosphere seep into the narrative.

The film will be subtitled in Portuguese and English. The talk will be in English with Portuguese Sign Language interpretation.

After the film screening and talk, the evening shifts from cinematic suspense into a party and DJ set organised by Courtesy and K. Desbouis, an opportunity to collectively release the film’s charged energy through music and dance.