Dialogue with director Jean-François Charles (An Alphabet for Grant Wood)
A Refocus Film Festival shorts block, featuring six selections that expand our understanding of art and adaptation—from narratively confrontational animation to intimate family stories, formally innovative historical documentaries and experimental work.
Kissing Loaves · Together · The God That Destroys · HAG · Miriam · An Alphabet for Grant Wood
KISSING LOAVES
(2026, France, 6 min.) Dir. Maï Borges Nilstam
Adapted from a poem by the director’s mother, "Baisure" in French can be translated as "Kissing Loaves,” the exact place where two loaves meet while in the oven, a specific zone of contact where the crust is softer because it is less baked. This film explores this tiny yet rich point of junction, a meeting between two beings, an entire world revealed.
TOGETHER
(2026, Germany, 14 min.) Dir. NEOZOON
Together examines the human drive for land ownership and property through archival material and social media. Contrasting visions of communality with growing individualism and aggression, the film asks whether the desire to possess stems from necessity or from a Eurocentric narrative.
THE GOD THAT DESTROYS
(2026, Austria, Sweden, 17 min.) Dir. Jyoti Mistry
Using archival sources from the first half of the 20th century, newly shot 16mm footage that mimics the archive and animation to create a tapestry intertwining Sámi cosmology with commentary on capitalist destruction, The God That Destroys looks at the legacy of Swedish colonialisation of the Sámi people as an ever-perpetuating cycle of forced assimilation, cultural oppression and extractivist exploitation.
HAG
(2026, UK, 17 min.) Dir. Anna Ginsburg
Based on the Greek mythology of Medusa, a symbol of female rage, HAG follows one woman's search for love and meaning in a hellscape of waning fertility, dating apps and the rotten stench of the patriarchy. In a world where being yourself makes you monstrous, what is the cost of compromise and repressing your authentic self?
MIRIAM
(2026, Mexico, 20 min.) Dir. Karla Condado
Through this handwritten letter turned video letter that incorporates Facebook messenger chats as well as 35mm photography, the director talks to her aunt Miriam, a victim of femicide, about how it has been for her to grow up afraid in a country dangerous for women, trying to cope with the loss of a loved one, frustrated with a family unable to confront the pain.
AN ALPHABET FOR GRANT WOOD
(2026, USA, 9 min.) Dir. Jean-François Charles
Adapted from the 2019 opera aria Grant Wood in Paris, which was written and composed by the director, commissioned by Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre, this short musical adopts the perspective of the iconic Iowa painter’s mother Hattie as she realizes her son might come out of the closet. The film references more than 20 works Grant Wood created in a small studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from 1924 to 1935.
Still taken from HAG