NOTE: FOMO Cinema is a small microcinema and lounge bar with 22 seats in the dedicated screening room. We expect this event to prove very popular and we may not be able to accommodate walk-in guests who do not have a ticket. In the event of a sell out, walk-ins are welcome to watch the shorts in the comfort of our lounge bar with high-end headphones or stand in the screening room.
18:30 - DOORS OPEN
19:00 - SHORT #1: THE POSSESSED
Directed by Muslim Sagov
Russian language with English subtitles
Contemporary screen adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Demons.
In a provincial town, a group of teenagers gathered around a charismatic leader transforms a film club into a space for a dangerous experiment. In an attempt to escape emptiness, isolation, and a sense of inner inadequacy, they begin not merely to reenact scenes from iconic films, but to live them as the only possible form of authentic existence.
Gradually, the game ceases to be a game. What begins as a passion for cinema and a desire for belonging evolves into radicalization, where art becomes an instrument of power, and collective imagination starts to reshape reality itself.
Reinterpreting Demons through the language of contemporary pop culture, the film explores the nature of obsession, the seduction of violence, and the fragile boundary where the search for freedom turns into self-destruction.
19:30 - SHORT #2: IT'S TIME TO DIE
Directed by Muslim Sagov
Russian language with English subtitles
A young man who has been haunted by the fear of death since childhood decides to take his own life, hoping to escape the terror of waiting for the inevitable. But his attempt results in an absurd metaphysical error: trapped on the threshold between life and death, he is forced into a strange and increasingly unsettling dialogue with a mysterious Messenger who insists that he finish what he started.
What begins as a black comedy about panic in the face of nonexistence gradually unfolds into an existential journey where fear, irony, and despair coexist. Through grotesque situations, absurd humor, and an almost farcical premise, the film explores one of humanity’s oldest questions: is it possible to overcome death, when life itself is inseparable from its inevitability.
Balancing between tragicomedy, philosophical parable, and surreal fantasy, the story turns one man’s private crisis into a reflection on mortality, the longing for immortality, and the trap of a mind unable to accept its own finitude.