Between Destinations: Short Films & Artist Discussion

Join us on October 8, 2026 for a special screening of three short films: Elephant Bird (2019), directed by Amir Masoud Soheili; The Preludes (2024), by artist Cheng Xinhao; and Lines That World a River (2026), by artist Shahana Rajani, followed by a conversation with the artists and filmmakers, moderated by Art Jameel curators Indranjan Banerjee and Lucas Morin. The films and conversation engage with landscapes and ecologies disconnected by infrastructural and social violence, and dwells on ways to keep disappearing worlds alive.

See you at the cinema!

Short Films & Artist Discussion

Elephantbird (2019)

A mini-bus is on a journey across the mountains to Kabul. Each passenger has a reason for making the journey. An elderly man is traveling to deliver a turkey to his grandchild as his final wish before he dies. When the main road is blocked by insurgents, the passengers are forced to take a far less secure alternative route.

Directed by: Amir Masoud Soheili

Genre: Dark Comedy, Drama Duration: 15 minutes

Language: Persian Dari Subtitles: English

About the Artist: Amir Masoud Soheili

Amir Masoud Soheili is an award-winning Iranian filmmaker, festival programmer, and photographer, best known for his acclaimed short films Blue-eyed Boy (2014), Elephantbird (2019), and MARDAZMA (2025). His films have screened at prestigious festivals including PÖFF – Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Leeds International Film Festival, Interfilm Berlin, and Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.

He has served on the jury of numerous international film festivals across Asia, Europe, and Africa, and is the co-founder and creative director of the Asia Peace Film Festival in Islamabad, Pakistan. Masoud holds a Master’s degree in Screenwriting from Kino Eyes – The European Film Masters, completed across Portugal, Estonia, and Scotland. Alongside filmmaking, his photography and videography have been featured by National Geographic, AJ+, VICE Media, TRT, Great Big Story, VOA, and Business Insider. He is also the author of the photography book Durian on My Head.

The Preludes (2024)

Cheng Xinhao draws on the mysterious tales surrounding Fuxian Lake in Yunnan to reflect on contemporary experiences of loss and escape. The film follows the Kanglang fish as it migrates upstream to spawn in springs deep within the cliffs around the lake. As the lake’s water level recedes under the impact of human activity, however, the fish’s spawning grounds dry up, preventing the Kanglang fish from returning.

Directed by: Cheng Xinhao

Duration: 15 minutes

About the Artist: Cheng Xinhao

Cheng Xinhao currently lives and works in Kunming, China. He received his Ph.D in Chemistry from Peking University in 2013. Cheng’s works are usually based on long-term field studies, centered around his hometown in Yunnan Province. With videos, installations, photographs and words, he personally investigates the polyphonic relationships between logic, discourses, knowledge, and the ways in which nature, society, and history play within them.

Lines That World A River (2026)

Lines That World a River explores practices and lineages of drawing and painting through which fisher communities of the Indus Delta, Pakistan remain connected to sacred ecologies of river and sea amidst the violence and erasure of infrastructure. As rivers are barraged, mined and ravaged, elders explain that the sea is coming forward in search of its beloved, the river. In the midst of this ongoing catastrophe, new modes of visual expression and devotion emerge, through which communities return the river to the sea and art to the promise of survival. The film intertwines these practices of drawing talismans, painting water shrines, and making river maps as echoing rituals that protect and keep alive disappearing worlds.

Directed by: Shahana Rajani

Duration: 22 minutes

About the Artist: Shahana Rajani

Shahana Rajani is an artist exploring the visualities, landscapes and infrastructures of development, militarisation and ecological resistance in Pakistan. Community-based and collaborative approaches to research are central to her practice. Working across moving image, installation and printed matter, she engages with histories, lineages and practices of representation and relation. She is a co-founder of Karachi LaJamia (with Zahra Malkani) which is an experimental project devoted to seeking and sharing eco-pedagogies that emerge from struggles around land and water in the city.

Exhibition Curators & Discussion Moderators

Lucas Morin

Lucas Morin is Senior Curator at Art Jameel. His work engages with animals, infrastructure, cities and the politics of emotions. He was previously curator at Bétonsalon — Centre for Art and Research (Paris) and worked at the Sursock Museum (Beirut). He graduated from Sciences Po Paris and Paris-Sorbonne University in Philosophy and Social Sciences. He loves books, cats and public transportation systems.

Photography by Daryll Borja of Seeing Things Studio]

Indranjan Banerjee

Indranjan is Curator at Art Jameel, Dubai. He was previously the Senior Curator at Khoj International Artists’ Association, New Delhi. As a curator, writer and cultural producer he often thinks with research based practices that are at the intersection of visual, material and performance cultures. His curatorial research is in the realm of ecology, technology, the body and speculative narratives, which informs his artistic research as well. Experiments in writing, writing in transmission and acts of annotation are his writerly fixations.