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How much are we worth – and who decides? The three films in this programme explore digital worlds where masculinity, desire, and success are increasingly measured in numbers: looks, income, followers, rankings, and self-improvement. Moving between intimacy, ambition, and online culture, these works ask what happens when attraction and self-worth become something to calculate, optimize, and compare.
In 2018, an incel posted a suicide note on Reddit entitled «America is responsible for my death». «The Mechanics of Fluids» is an attempt to find answers to his words. The film is a virtual drift through the internet in search of the man's digital traces, which ends up being an inner journey between two connected solitudes.
How is masculine value quantified and abstracted within online cultures? This short video remix brings together fragments of YouTube content that reveal the ways masculinity is increasingly measured, optimized, and translated into numerical value. Moving from incel communities’ obsession with calculating «sexual market value» through facial proportions, attractiveness scales, and looksmaxing practices, to contemporary discourses around masculine success – followers, wealth, productivity, and self-improvement – the piece examines how desirability and achievement are reduced to metrics, ratios, and supposedly objective forms of evaluation. Through this constellation of online materials, the video explores the emergence of a masculine imaginary shaped by quantification: a culture in which the self becomes a project of constant optimization, and intimacy, status, and social worth are reorganized according to the abstract logic of numbers.
Pol is 21 and lives with his grandmother. He dreams of living in Miami and generating 10,000 € a month. He attends personal development events, follows online coaches, and invests in cryptocurrencies. Pol doesn't know when he'll achieve his goal of becoming the best version of himself. The only thing he knows is that one day, he'll get there.
What if the future has already begun – not as an event, but as an idea that shapes the way we act? Gala Hernández López is interested in stories, fantasies, and promises that circulate in digital spaces and increasingly feed back into the material world. In her films, cryptocurrencies, incels, self-optimization, cryonics, or the technological control of our dreams may initially appear like extensions of science fiction. Yet their real uncanniness lies in the fact that they are already part of our present – things we built while we were still dreaming of them.
Hernández López explores how data, algorithms, and digital platforms increasingly shape our desires, fears, and ideas of success. Algorithms, data streams, and financial markets are not abstract systems existing outside the individual. They structure desires and fears, as well as ideas of success, love, the body, and the future. The filmmaker describes the narratives emerging in online communities as shared or symptomatic fictions: stories that reveal something about the state of our society while simultaneously beginning to produce reality.
These issues run through all four of her films: In « La Mécanique des fluides», the search for an incel leads deep into the lonely and misogynistic spaces of the internet. «For Here Am I Sitting in a Tin Can Far above the World», which premiered at Berlinale Forum Expanded in 2024, connects cryptocurrencies and cryonics in a world where even the future becomes an economic resource. In «+10k», which premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2025, a 21-year-old dreams of financial independence, Miami, and a monthly income of more than €10 000 – desires increasingly translated into metrics, rankings, and calculated desires. «Like Moths to Light», which premiered in the Tiger Shorts Competition in Rotterdam in 2026, addresses the technological control of dreaming and thus one of the last unexplored territories of the self. The films have also been shown at DOK Leipzig, IDFA, Clermont Ferrand, Cinéma du Réel, IndieLisboa, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, the Berlinische Galerie, C/O Berlin, and the Palais de Tokyo.
Gala Hernández López deliberately moves between documentary, essay film, installation, and speculative fiction. YouTube videos, screenshots, archival material, 3D images, and her own footage are removed from their original contexts and recombined. The internet is not merely a subject of her work, but also its material and its setting. Her films ask how fantasies become material infrastructures, desires influence financial markets, and visions of the future shape the present. Are we still dreaming of the future – or have the systems we live in already begun to dream for us?
John Canciani & Gala Hernández López
Economies of Desire
How do we measure desire, attractiveness, success, and self-worth? In «La Mécanique des fluides» and «+10k», Gala Hernández López enters digital worlds where masculinity is increasingly translated into numbers: facial proportions, rankings, income, followers, productivity, and promises of self-improvement. Between incel forums, online coaches, and fantasies of financial independence, the self becomes something to evaluate, optimize, and market. A recent video remix made from YouTube material connects the two films, tracing how the same logic of quantification moves from the body and intimate relationships to money, visibility, and social status. Together, the three works reveal a culture in which desire is no longer simply felt, but calculated – and where self-value increasingly appears as something that is measurable.
Les Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur représentent le plus important festival de courts métrages en Suisse. Chaque mois de novembre, Winterthour se transforme en métropole du court métrage pendant six jours.
Le programme des 30ᵉ Kurzfilmtage sera annoncé le 14 octobre 2026.
Des courts métrages actuels du monde entier. Les œuvres les plus prometteuses seront récompensées le dimanche soir.
Hors Concours
Des courts métrages actuels zurichois, suisses et internationaux diffusés en dehors de nos compétitions.
Focus
Une analyse en images d’une région, d’un phénomène social ou d’une tendance artistique.
Focus sur une personne
L’œuvre d’un·e cinéaste est mise sur le devant de la scène.
Programmes spéciaux
Des programmes de courts métrages sur des thématiques brûlantes, ou simplement divertissantes.
Programmes familiaux
Des courts métrages pour les jeunes dès 6 ans et toute la famille.
Expanded Cinema
Des installations, des performances et des expositions qui font découvrir au public des formes de cinéma inhabituelles.
Programme d’événements
Des concerts, des soirées, des lectures et de nombreux autres événements qui complètent l’expérience du festival.
Discussions et podiums
Des discussions et des tables rondes animées durant lesquelles l'art du cinéma ou des thématiques précises sont approfondis.
Industry Events
Un large éventail d’événements d’information, de formation et de réseautage.
Le court métrage
Le court métrage n’est pas juste un film «court». C’est une forme d’art à part entière à laquelle nous consacrons chaque année un festival.
Il existe des courts métrages de tous genres et de toutes longueurs. Grâce à des voies de production facilitées, il permet de capter rapidement une époque et de l’illustrer. Il divertit, surprend, analyse lasociété, exprime une opinion politique ou donne un aperçu de mondes étrangers.
Nous rassemblons nos courts métrages pour créer des programmes thématiques ou des sections – comme nos compétitions – et nous les projetons dans un ordre bien précis. Pour apprécier le court métrage, il suffit d’être curieux, d’avoir envie de faire des découvertes et de se laisser surprendre.