Born in Flames

The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning? This year, our focus is Resistance – and what comes after it: Dystopia. Our two curated sections, Fragments of Resistance and Abseits: Dystopia, are bridged by one pivotal film: Born in Flames. Lizzie Borden’s visionary work imagines a world ten years after a peaceful socialist revolution. But what happens after the revolution, when the banners are gone and the system claims to be just? The film shows us what remains: patriarchy, economic inequality, the continued oppression of women, queer and trans people. Freedom is promised, but not delivered.

Led by black lesbian working-class women, a new movement rises. Not to tear down what was – but to demand the liberation that was never granted. Born in Flames offers a radical vision of intersectional revolution: one that doesn’t stop at regime change but reshapes the very fabric of society.

If Fragments of Resistance is about memory and struggle, and Abseits: Dystopia warns of the future we’re complicit in creating, then Born in Flames is their convergence – a story of resisting dystopia from within, of imagining otherwise in a world that insists we cannot. This is not just the end. This might be the beginning – again.