Keyword Mourning Ritual

College student Danielle must cover her tracks when she unexpectedly runs into her sugar daddy at a shiva - with her parents, ex-girlfriend and family friends also in attendance.

The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, whose husband was one of 80,000 human beings killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.

After the loss of his daughter, Jurek, together with his father-in-law Ben, decides to perform the Chinese minghun ritual

An ant colony finds that the strange new food source they've discovered may be something more of a curse than a boon.

Meeting after many years, a makeup artist and her grandmother revisit tensions from an old family feud that still hangs heavy between them.

A young woman crosses a confined provincial town and its outskirts. Once at her destination, a strange mourning protocol awaits her.

“Gjama” is a rarely practiced mourning ritual that was performed by Albanian men throughout the centuries. By shouting specific phrases and acting out a strict choreography, it is a way of paying respect to the deceased but also overcoming grief and pain over the loss of a loved one. Through the documentation of the re-enactment of the ritual, Zgjim Elshani seeks to recover fragments of the practice in the communities where this form of collective grieving is still a way of overcoming loss. By doing so, the project intends to rethink collective grieving and what it means to publicly display emotions in a male-headed society.