BFMAF programmer Myriam Mouflih talks to filmmakers Sarah Ballard and Ufuoma Essi about the films they showed at BFMAF 2025.

Full Out

• Director: Sarah Ballard
• Year: 2025

In 19th century Paris, at the Salpêtrière Hospital, patients were hypnotized on stage to reproduce the symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. Over a century later, high school cheerleaders are fainting en masse… Full Out is the first in a suite of films investigating intricate threads between historical accounts of mass hysteria, the body’s capacity for knowing, and ways in which collective resonance can both fracture and heal.

Half Memory

• Director: Ufuoma Essi
• Year: 2024

Using Toni Morrison’s The Site of Memory as a starting point for integration, Half Memory is a languid mediation on memory, conurbations, isolation and the histories we live amongst. Oscillating between years, cities, and unfolding images, the film is an examination of the present as an artefact of the past. Shot on Super8 and filmed between the US, France and the UK over the past three years.

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