UK | 2023 | English | 40 minutes
In The Nightingale’s Song folk singer Sam Lee takes us deep into the Sussex woods at night as he joins in song with the endangered Nightingales of England. Rich in folklore and myth the Nightingale is renowned for its beautiful, melodious song, often associated with enchanting encounters with humans. Most significant is their ability to incorporate our music into theirs, a delicate duet between artist and bird. Through Sam’s devotion to these elusive songbirds, the film explores how deepening our relationship with the living world can inspire care, stewardship, and love. As Nightingale sightings continue to decline, Sam’s work opens a pathway to remembering and protecting their enchanting voices.
Germany | 2024 | English, German and Latvian with subtitles
92 min | UK Premiere
In the Latvian Pirts (traditional Sauna), an age-old European folk-healing tradition has survived to the present day. It is based on a deep connection to nature, the wheel of the year, herbal medicine and the iconic Amanita muscaria (Fly Agaric) mushroom. Set in rural Latvia and filmed during the summer solstice celebrations Andrea Lötscher’s pastoral documentary presents four intimate portraits of the women healers performing the pirts-ritual, a healing experience likened to a return to the mother’s womb and of a rebirth. During the ritual the women healers use flowers, herbs, whisks made from Birch trees, herbal body scrubs, massage, ancient incantations and Amanita muscaria…
Q&A with Director Andrea Lötscher
TRAILER
BALTIC HEALING WEBSITE
Czech Republic | 2025 | French with English subtitles | 75 min
The pharmaceutical company Sandoz was present at the very beginning of modern psychedelic history. It was in its laboratories in Basel that Albert Hofmann first synthesized LSD and thus began the period during which the company became heavily involved in the research and the subsequent distribution of LSD as an experimental drug. Sandoz not only produced psychedelic pharmaceuticals, but also commissioned an artistically exceptional series of avant garde films attempting to portray the subjective experience of psychedelics. The Sandoz films provide a unique record of thinking about psychedelics that is very contemporary in its complex, ambiguous approach to the issue. This specially curated presentation by Czech researcher and filmmaker Lea Petříková unveils the pearls of the Cinémathèque Sandoz programme.
Q&A with researcher and filmmaker Lea Petříková, Ph.D.
Trailer
Director's website
France | 2025 | Various languages | 90 mins
Vincent Moon is an independent French filmmaker and intrepid explorer who made a name for himself as a music video director for indie bands like R.E.M. and The National. Over the past twenty years he has been traveling the world making films that probe the boundaries between cinema, documentary and ethnographic musical research.
With his live-cinema Vincent Moon presents a collage of experiences drawn from his personal archive Petites Planètes, a series of over a thousand films capturing the essence of traditional trance based ceremonies, ecstatic rituals and sacred music from around the world. Each performance is unique with Moon acting as a mesmerised medium summoning images and sounds woven from a stream of memories, his camera moves intimately among the celebrants he shares these experiences with. This is ritual cinema, where Moon transforms the projection hall into a visceral, body shaking spiritual ceremony, where he is not a spectator, and neither are we.
Filmmaker's website
Trailer
South Africa | 2024 | English & IsiXhosa | 60 min presentation with video
Who benefits from Cannabis legalisation?
While cannabis reforms promise progress, they often prioritise profit over people, ignoring traditional communities, practices, ecological knowledge and well being, and they continue to perpetuate harm to the most marginalised and those previously harmed by prohibition. Angela Prusa is a cannabis advocate, founder of the Cannabis and Hemp Association of Namibia and Roots Herbal, an independent business creating cannabis based health products. Using locally shot footage, she shares the experiences of traditional Cannabis farmers in the Mpondoland, a region in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa’s wild coast. What is needed in regulation and legislation to create models of legislation that benefit people and nature?
Q&A with cannabis advocate Angela Prusa
USA | 1969 | English, Spanish & Wixarika with English subtitles | 63 min
This 1960’s ethnographic film documents the journey of the Huichol shaman Ramón Medina Silva as he leads a small band of pilgrims to gather the sacred peyote at Wirikúta, the home of Huichol ancestor deities. The ritual pilgrimage includes the blindfolding of first-time peyote pilgrims and their subsequent passage through a symbolic gateway, ceremonies at desert springs, curing rituals, the actual hunt of the cactus, the communal eating of the peyote, all-night ceremonies and the final ritual dissolving the bond of the peyote hunters. The narration is adapted from a text dictated by the shaman and the film has been widely acclaimed for its verité and sensitive treatment of the sacred journey.
Q&A with Rogelio Carrillo, Traditional Wixarika (Huichol) Medicine Man Santiago Alonso, Wixarika (Huichol) Advisor
Hosted by Dr David Luke
Mexico | 2025 | Wixarika with English subtitles | 66 min | UK Premiere
Itsanaxa unveils the richness of the Wixárika life, a deeply rooted indigenous community from the Sierra Madre of Mexico with a living history and culture. Narrated by don Antonio Carrillo, known as Young Deer, grandfather and respected healer of his people. The film explores their cosmovisionand traditions, from creation myths to spiritual agricultural practices. Capturing rituals and day-to-day life, don Antonio imparts his wisdom and his desire to pass on this legacy to his grandson Samuel. In the face of Western influences and modern challenges such as alcoholism, Itsanaxa offers a profound and critical look at the struggle to preserve an ancient culture.
Q&A with Director, Emilios Goutas Gonzalez
Rogelio Carrillo, Traditional Wixarika Medicine Man
Santiago Alonso, Wixarika Advisor
Hosted by Dr David Luke
Mexico | 2024 | English, Spanish & Maya with English subtitles | 89 min
A young Maya is hired to deliver hallucinogenic toads for a shamanic ritual in the jungle, where he finds himself caught in the middle of a mutiny between the native Mayas and a cult-like community of Euro-Western spiritual seekers led by a darkly charismatic new age guru. Shot on 16mm film with pulpy colour saturated cinematography Wetiko is an intense and inventive psychedelic horror and satire on new age psychedelic shamanism.
Q&A with Director Kerry Mondragon
Kerry Mondragon is a writer, director, and producer of Tyger Tyger (2020) and Wetiko (2024).
France | 2025 | Various languages | 6 hrs
A monumental six hour live and expanded version of Vincent Moon's Live Cinéma at Roborough Studios. Drop in and drop out or stay all day if you want to!
Vincent Moon is an independent French filmmaker and intrepid explorer who made a name for himself as a music video director for indie bands like R.E.M. and The National. Over the past twenty years he has been traveling the world making films that probe the boundaries between cinema, documentary and ethnographic musical research. With his live-cinema Vincent Moon presents a collage of experiences drawn from his personal archive Petites Planètes, a series of over a thousand films capturing the essence of traditional trance based ceremonies, ecstatic rituals and sacred music from around the world. Each performance is unique with Moon acting as a mesmerised medium summoning images and sounds woven from a stream of memories, his camera moves intimately among the celebrants he shares these experiences with. This is ritual cinema, where Moon transforms the projection hall into a visceral, body shaking spiritual ceremony, where he is not a spectator, and neither are we.
Filmmakers website
Trailer
UK | 2024 | English | 43 min
In 2023 the Scottish Psychedelic Research Group (SPRG) held a 3-day Celebration of Scotland’s Indigenous Apothecary encompassing cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms, as well as other healing plants indigenous to the Scottish land. The film focuses on the final day panel and Scottish Parliament event with inspiring, and at times painful, stories of healing and gratitude for the plants and the potential they have. The sharing of John Anderson’s lived experience was a powerful moment which sent shivers around the room, the power of being heard and having the opportunity to speak our truth in these environments cannot be understated.
SPRG founders Anna Ross and Fiona Gilbertson with guest panelist John Anderson will present Psychedelics in Scotland in person.
Greece/UK | 2024 | 93 min | UK Premiere
The Land of Forgotten Songs is a creative collaboration between The Deep Forest Foundation and indigenous amazon communities. It captures moments of the Kaxinawa Huni Kuin, Awa,Kayapo, Matis, Enawene Nawe and Shipibo, who all live alongside the forest. With an ancient myth as a recurring motif connecting their past and their present. A transcendental journey into the life, rituals and myths of indigenous communities of the amazon forest.
Q&A with Director Vladimir Nikolouzos
USA | 2024 | English | 69 min | UK Premiere
A new documentary film about experiencing Holotropic Breathwork. -- a group therapeutic technique developed during the 1970's by Stanislav and Christina Grof as a way to induce psychedelic experiences without the ingestion of any substances. The movie follows a collection of scholars, artists and dreamers through a Breathwork session, where they are asked to simply: "breathe until you're surprised." The film features: Lenny Gibson, Elizabeth Gibson, Peter Sjostedt-Hughes, Christine Hauskeller, Johannah Sopanen, Rosalind Stone, Reanne Crane, and Farzad Mahootian. Life & Breath premiered in December 2024 at the Psychedelic Film Festival in New York, where it won the Best Feature Documentary Award.
Q&A with Director Mustapha Khan
Mustapha Khan is an Emmy-Award winning film and television director based in New York and an Associate Professor of Film at Brooklyn College.
Trailer
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