While most were gearing up for the Mardi Gras celebration last week, Tulane University’s Language Learning Center of Liberal Arts and Tulane University Libraries were busy hosting the International Short Film Festival in Lake Theater on Feb. 10. 

The biannual event attracted both faculty and students eager to discover lesser-known international short films. Abeer Al-Mohsen, the assistant director of language education, founded the event in fall 2023 alongside Lisa Hooper, the head of media services at Tulane Libraries, and they organize it together every semester.

Al-Mohsen and Hooper collaborate on choosing the films. First, “[the] film festival starts with Abeer figuring out which languages to emphasize or highlight,” Hooper said. After that, Hooper will then “cull through [the] streaming film database to see what films [Tulane] has access to in those languages.”

This year, Al-Mohsen and Hooper did not just look for films in terms of languages — they chose films based on a theme as well. The official theme for the festival was “Under Pressure: Identity, Resistance, and Belonging,” which was ever apparent in the films they chose, all featuring stories where “critical life decisions [are made] under pressure,” as Al-Mohsen said.

The event’s films featured more than one language: multiple languages in “Das Spiel,” Haitian Creole in “N’Ap Boule,” Turkish in “Coffee Futures” and Farsi in “The Red Suitcase.”

‘Das Spiel’

Directed by Roman Hodel, the documentary short film “Das Spiel” follows the actual Swiss FIFA referee Fedayi San during a soccer game. The film highlights the intense pressure referees experience when making crucial, game-changing decisions on the field. Faced with energy from people in the stadium seats and players on the field, the stress of the job is apparent and the audience feels it as much as San himself does. Throughout the film, a veritable bouquet of languages are featured, including English, German and French, to name a few — an ode to the multicultural nature of soccer.

‘N’Ap Boule’

“N’Ap Boule” is set during the country-wide lockdown in Haiti — an event that has been unfolding since 2018. Amid political unrest and violence, a young couple must find a safe place to give birth to their first child. Through their desperate journey to find a hospital, the audience witnesses the devastating effects of political turmoil. 

In particular, this film brings awareness to the disproportionate toll unstable political climates take on women and especially mothers-to-be. While fictional, the film is rooted in real experiences from the lives of director Alexandrine Benjamin, her film crew and the lead actor, serving as a poignant reminder of the sad reality of many Haitians.

‘Coffee Futures’

In Turkey, it is a social custom to let your guests read your future from the leftover coffee grounds in your cup. At first, it seems like the film merely highlights a sweet cultural tradition. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the fortune-telling coffee grounds do not only inform individual predictions, but rather describe Turkey’s relationship to — or lack thereof — to the European Union. In the span of 23 minutes, director Zeynep Devrim Gürsel takes the audience through Turkey’s 50-year journey toward EU membership and the many emotions that carries for Turkish people.

‘The Red Suitcase’

An Oscar-nominated short film directed by Cyrus Neshvad, “The Red Suitcase” follows a 16-year-old Iranian girl who tries to flee an arranged marriage. After landing in Luxembourg — her new home with her much older husband, whom she has never met before — she escapes, battling fear and desperation while holding onto her red suitcase, which represents her heart and freedom. Everyone in the theater was on the edge of their seats with sky-high anxiety for this one. Most probably like to think arranged marriages are a thing of the past, but “The Red Suitcase” highlights that many girls and women around the world still face those heartbreaking situations.

While I and likely most of my fellow audience members did not understand the languages spoken in the short films, we were able to understand universal themes and emotions, highlighting the power of film to transcend barriers. Like Hooper said, this event shows us that we can “find moments of community and connection in unexpected ways,” through films we can’t even technically understand, but yet somehow still do.