41st edition COURTS MÉTRAGES 2026
Gülem is a mythic figure from the Uyghur weaving tradition, conjured here as a companion on a journey across Central Asia in search of what has been lost. Weaving together interview footage, home movies and historical archives the film becomes a dream conversation between generations.
A word from the selection commitee :
The Uyghur people live on either side of borders at the crossroads of Central Asia. Separated from her family, the director takes Gülen – a forgotten goddess of weaving – as a guide, crossing locations and languages in search of her people and a sense of Uyghur belonging; along the way, female figures emerge, along with the thousand-year-old art of weaving. But what she discovers is not a fixed sense of identity.
Weaving together the threads of space with those of myths, folktales, documentary, poetry, archives, as well as photographic traces of a people and of loved ones left behind, the film takes us on a gently dizzying journey. A cave that reveals antique treasures, the encounter with an angelic young man who illuminates a scene, or the rise of a spiritual love song – none of it needs translating. The unexpected power of Darya Andijan’s endeavour is to make the audience feel before they understand, it is to braid together and set in motion - like threads on a loom - a thousand and one emotions, as spectators discover its echoes within themselves; as if the film dredged up some deep, eminently sharable, knowledge of this “Uyghur story” that it is careful not to flatten in a single stroke.
Flroence Maillard
Traduction : Aurore Kahan
- Photographie
- Letiția Popa, Darya Andijan, Nils Steinmetz
- Son
- Selle Inti Sellink
- Montage
- Darya Andijan
- Musique
- XiangMing
- Production
- Nils Steinmetz
Darya Andijan is a Netherlands-based filmmaker from Central Asia. Working across film, performance, and expanded cinema, she uses critical fabulation to reimagine Uyghur cultural memory and forms of resistance. In 2025, she directed the experimental short film Dame du Ciel.