Five short films by women filmmakers on the theme of 'What We Carry'
Thu 2 Oct 2025, 7.30pm – 9.30pm
Venue: Chapel Gallery, Objectifs
Rating: PG
Ticket prices (per screening programme)
Single concession ticket (student) – $8 (please note that ID may be verified at the door)
Single general ticket – $10
Pair general tickets – $18
Watch All 3 Programmes Package!
Single concession ticket (student) – $20 (please note that ID may be verified at the door)
Single general ticket – $25
From the tropes romanticising feminine deaths, to the labour continuously borne by women taking care of homes, these films observe the social and lived-in realities of women carrying their hope and burdens amidst unspoken tension and displays of resilience.
Dedicated to showcasing diverse and contemplative stories, A Quiet Load is a short film programme featuring films from our Open Call submissions.
This screening is part of Objectifs’ biennial Women in Film and Photography showcase.
Click on the following links to find out more and buy tickets for the other Women in Film screenings:
Carnival of Solitude: The World of Qiu Miaojin
During her 28 years living in Brazil, Bu Ipah never stopped working. Initially arriving as a domestic worker accompanying her husband, Pak Soleh, who worked in a hardware store, she later became a mosque caretaker and has been one for the last 21 years. Besides balancing her role as mother, liaison to the ummah, and committee member for mosque social programs, Bu Ipah also busies herself preserving the memory of Indonesia for her children through food.
An honest and heartfelt documentary short, Mãe Menjaga Masjid (Mom Minding the Mosque) is a depiction of the multiple roles and responsibilities women have to juggle both at home and in society to keep things together for their families and communities.
A family of four and their dog arrive at a seaside hotel in Kui Buri, Thailand. What appears to be an ordinary vacation turns into a series of interactions that betray an unspoken tension in their relationships. The next day, complexities unfold in a cave housing buddha statues.
Spanning film photographs, scanned images of pages and book covers, 3D animation, and 2D animation, Hangnail critically explores the fetishisation and romanticisation of feminine death, delving deep into the complex legacy of fictional heroines across various art forms and within the digital realm. The work exposes the pervasive occurrence of the deaths of young girls and rethinks the unrealistic portrayals perpetuated by late male literary and artistic figures. The artist examines society’s fixation on the concept of ‘reality’ and its perception of ‘truths’, and how the dominant systems of power have historically exploited the concept of ‘fictionality’ to fulfil fantasies and fetishisations.
Deepa Didi (The Housekeeper) by Surya Balakrishnan / 23min 41 sec (Hindi with English subtitles)
Deepa Didi is a quiet, introspective narrative that delicately explores the profound, often unnoticed connections that form in the routine of daily life, especially in a city as bustling and indifferent as Mumbai.
The story contrasts the lives of Abhi, a young man adrift in the monotony of urban existence, and Deepa, his housekeeper, who comes each day to clean up after him. Though they physically occupy the same apartment at different times, the space they inhabit is experienced in vastly different ways.
Originally created as a multimedia work consisting of photographs, videos, and text weaved into a photo set and a silent five-channel video installation, Neither Here Nor There But Just As Important was first made in 2020 as an expansion of Here, Here (2019), which centred on a town in slow decay as a result of large-scale mining operations.
Produced in response to the departure of two of the filmmaker’s closest friends to and fro the mountains to take part in the struggle for societal liberation, and her subsequent introspection on her inability to make the same choices, the current iteration of the short film is a single-channel mixed media work consisting of the same photographs, videos, and text that it originally had, but which now feels closer to fiction than fact.
About the filmmakers:
Gladhys Elliona (b. 1994) is an Indonesian multidisciplinary writer/artist and Brazilian literature translator. Her past experiences in film were as an actress, namely in Pria (2017). Mom Minding the Mosque (2024) is her directorial debut. Her upcoming short documentary project Muddy Tales is in development as a part of Ritus Liyan-Biennale Jatim 2025. Her interests are in feminine narratives, decoloniality, community-based arts, documentary filmmaking, and theatre-making, along with Southeast Asian-Latin American artistic and cultural relations.
Pom Bunsermvicha (b. 1993, Thailand) is a non-binary filmmaker based in Bangkok, Thailand. Their work, which mostly combines documentary elements with fiction, has been shown at festivals in Southeast Asia and abroad, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Locarno Film Festival, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, and SeaShorts.
Hou Lam Tsui (b. 1997) is an artist who works across moving image, sculpture, installation, and text. Her practice centres around personal experience, affect, gender politics, and peripheral storytelling. Tsui rethinks how femininity and queerness are imagined within cultures, critically exploring how media and consumer desires shape emotions, our notion of love, femininity, and identities by drawing inspiration from pop culture, advertisement, anime, literature and beyond. Her work has been previously exhibited and screened at ACMI (Australia), Art Basel Films (Hong Kong), Beijing International Short Film Festival (China), Guangdong Times Museum (China), Para Site (Hong Kong), Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong), VIDEOEX Festival (Switzerland), among others. Selected recent exhibitions include Follow the Feeling (Guangdong Times Museum, 2024), One is not born a woman (Square Street Gallery, 2023), Post-Human Narratives—In the Name of Scientific Witchery (Para Site; Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences, 2022).
Tsui lives and works in Hong Kong. She received a BA in Fine Art and History of Art from the University of Leeds in 2018 and later obtained an MFA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2024.
Surya Balakrishnan is a graduate of the New York Film Academy. She has directed several TV commercials and short films, and also helmed a couple of episodes of the critically acclaimed Amazon Original series Khauf. She is currently completing her feature documentary, Amarkatha—a DocuDiary that explores and questions ritual, environment, and the enduring man vs. nature dilemma through deeply personal journals. The film centers on an ecocide triggered by the Amarnath Pilgrimage, set in Kashmir, India.
Surya co-runs Footloose Films, a Mumbai-based ad film production house, and also leads HOPE—a social initiative focused on improving nutrition for children in urban poor communities.
Joanne Cesario (b. 1995, Philippines) is a filmmaker, lens-based artist, and labor and women’s rights activist currently heading the Women’s Affairs Department of Kilusang Mayo Uno, an independent trade union center in the Philippines. She works across film, photography, and publication. In her works, she melds personal and collective histories on women’s struggles, labor, and ever-shifting landscapes and spaces.
Joanne was awarded the Prince Claus Seed Awards by the Netherlands’ Prince Claus Fund in 2022 and the NoExit Grant for Unpaid Artistic Labor from Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art center Para Site in 2021. Her films have screened at various international film festivals such as the Locarno and Hong Kong International Film Festival, and have won awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Ibiza Cine Fest, Shorts Mexico, and the FAMAS Awards in the Philippines. Meanwhile, her photographs and video art have been shown at various exhibitions both locally and abroad.
For the rest of our Women in Film and Photography 2025 programme, click here.