25 November @ 18:45 – 22:00
Date: Wednesday 25 November
Time: Screenings start from 7pm prompt
Location: Online
Admission: £5
“What our bodies require in order to thrive, is what the world requires. If there is a map to get there, it can be found in the Atlas of our skin and bone and blood […] I am tracing a map with my fingertips, walking into the heart of the storm that shakes my body and occupies the world.” — Aurora Levins Morales
For the first online screening of SET Film Festival 2026, SET presents a programme of films that reject the conceit of corporeal or geographical “borders”, connecting political struggles, health crises and ecological destruction as always already entangled.
Moving between intimate encounters and contested territories, these works explore borders as both geopolitical and embodied conditions that shape movement, belonging, and relations across human and more-than-human worlds.
A filmmaker writes a love letter to her cat, reflecting upon the complexities of animal companionship and captivity; another turns to the Białowieża Forest, exploring the shared scars of its human and non-human inhabitants and imagining borders as spaces of transition; another draws upon the concept of barrunto—an omen, or bodily sensing of unrest and environmental change—to trace connections across diasporic distances, from Puerto Rico to Scotland, and from earth to the planet Uranus.
If the body is a map, these films attune to its landscape as a means of storytelling and political resistance, offering other ways of being in the world.
Films in the programme
Henry Is a Girl Who Likes to Sleep
Marthe Peters | 2026 | 14 min | Dutch
This film is a love letter to Henry, the narrator’s cat, with whom she shares a desire for sleep and a horizontal life. Unfolding within their shared bed-space, we drift through slow rhythms of sighs, purrs, and changing bedsheets as the narrator reflects on the complexities of companionship and captivity. Here, the bed is not solely a space of confinement for the sick and disabled body. Rather, it becomes a domain of crip and more-than-human temporality, a space where bodies rest in resistance to the demands of productivity, embracing interdependence and living according to their own rhythms.
barrunto
Emilia Beatriz | 2024 | 70 min | English
In Puerto Rico, “barrunto” describes bodily unrest—an omen sensed through the environment: rain felt in the bones, ants emerging before an earthquake. Taking this intuition as its point of departure, Barrunto is an intimate exploration of grief and resistance across landscapes marked by displacement, nuclear contamination and military occupation. The film is described by Beatriz as a practice of expanded griefwork, tracing entangled histories of bodies and land through digital, archival and 16mm film hand-processed in “grief tea.”
[paˈlʲit͡sʲ]
Ania Mokrzycka | 2023
In [paˈlʲit͡sʲ], the Białowieża Forest—a landscape divided between Poland and Belarus by a 170-kilometre steel and barbed-wire border wall—becomes both protagonist and storyteller, tracing the wounds of humanitarian and ecological crisis. Older than the border that cuts through it, the forest undermines dominant narratives of territory and reminds us that “every living thing is both indigenous and a migrant.”
Tickets and booking
- Online tickets: £5
- Festival passes: £32 for one or £52 for two
A viewing link will be emailed to ticket holders in advance of the screening, giving you access to the programme online. There will also be an opportunity to submit questions for an online Q&A, which will be recorded and made available on the viewing website.
While we encourage you to watch live with us and join the live chat, you are also welcome to watch the films in your own time and at your own pace. The films will remain available to watch until the end of the festival on Saturday 5 December.
If you have any questions about accessing the screening, please contact filmfestival@setspace.uk.
Visiting the festival
SET Film Festival’s in-person screenings take place at SET Social in Peckham. For information about venue access, facilities and transport, visit SET Social’s accessibility page.
If you have access needs or questions specific to the festival, contact filmfestival@setspace.uk.
About SET Film Festival 2026
Founded in 2023, SET Film Festival is an independent, grassroots festival for contemporary, artist and archival film, run by London-based arts organisation SET and curated by Amina Ali, Ellie Dobbs and Verity Monroe. Returning for its fourth edition from 5 November to 5 December 2026, this year’s programme features four short-film nights, a feature-length screening and a free evening of archival film and performance. Each night centres on a distinct theme, with selected screenings followed by Q&As with filmmakers.
The festival concludes on Saturday 5 December with its inaugural awards, recognising work across four categories: Audience Choice, Special Mention, Best Artist Film and Best Documentary.
View the full festival programme here.
With support from Goldsmiths Exhibition Hub.
Poster design: @ashleykinnardstudio