Reminiscing. Remembering. Reliving. Each implies a revistation, but not every old haunt is warm and welcoming. Harrowing experiences from which we forcibly averted our eyes years ago still have a way of sinking their talons into the present, tearing away the “now” to reveal the shape of our mind’s most tenebrous recesses: dank rooms to which we fearfully return, cowering in a corner at the sound of menacing footsteps; secluded spaces with gaping, abyssal holes at their center, leaving us anxious to cover up or seal whatever shadows fester below. But these stories are containers of a different kind. Vessels that allow for venting, they let creators repackage the inner darkness, alleviate the weight and make it bearable. Join us in taking a close look at the transformative power of art and its fantastic potential to commemorate, process and make sense of the past as it gets integrated into a less clouded present that opens the door to a more hopeful future.

During a home visit, Jeong-mi discovers a young brother and sister living in a house with a large manhole in it. The children ask Jeong-mi to go down the manhole.

Czechoslovakia, 1971. A woman cannot shake the demons of her horrific past as they come back to haunt her and threaten to destroy the life she’s tirelessly trying to build.

After festival rejections, a director revises his intensely personal short film about trauma, suicide, and the Holocaust, and transforms it into a painful, blunt, funny and fantastical dissection of the film and his life.

An Iranian boy befriends an old Japanese woman at a graveyard in Tokyo.