Screening of Baħar Biss (Just Sea) by Franziska von Stenglin | 12 February 2026 | German Embassy New Delhi
On 12 February 2026, ICAS:MP, in collaboration with the German Embassy New Delhi and the High Commission of Malta in New Delhi, hosted a screening of Baħar Biss (Just Sea), the latest short film by Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Franziska von Stenglin, at the Blue Hall of the German Embassy in New Delhi. Following the screening, the filmmaker was joined in conversation by New Delhi–based visual artist and film scholar Pallavi Paul, a former ICAS:MP fellow.
About the film and the artist conversation:
What the Sea Remembers
Set against the towering cliffs of Gozo, Malta, Baħar Biss traces a fisherman’s quiet reckoning with ecological loss, vanishing traditions, and a sea emptied of life. Through sparse narration, haunting sound, and meditative images, the film becomes an elegy for fragile ecologies and ancestral practices eroded by industrial modernity-inviting audiences to sit with grief, remembrance, and the uneasy persistence of memory. Following the screening, the filmmaker will be present in conversation with artist and film scholar Pallavi Paul. Together, they will reflect on cinematic ways of engaging with eco-melancholia, memory, and places long left behind yet not forgotten, considering how environmental unravelling crosses borders and binds distant lives.
For more information, see Franziska von Stenglin — Baħar Biss (Just sea)
About the artists:
Franziska von Stenglin was born in Munich and grew up in the Czech Republic, Senegal, India, and Germany. Baħar Biss (2024) is her second short Film and will be screened as part of the artist film screenings at the Kochi Biennale in February 2026. It was commissioned by the Malta Biennale and screened at the Rotterdam Film Festival,Cinéma du Réel, Dok Leipzig, Cinéma Galleggiante, Gijón International Film and the 8th Sharjah Film Platform amongst others. It won the award for best Short/Medium Length Film at the 2025 Porto/Postdoc International Film Festival and she won the Best Director Award with the film at the Bisreke Film Festival in Serbia. The Dust Of Modern Life (2021) her first feature length documentary was premiered at FID Marseille and the screened at DOk Leipzig, CPH Doxs and the ICA London amongst others. Her work has been exhibited at Vila 31 Art Explora Tirana, Steirischer Herbst, the national Gallery of Iceland amongst others. Her work spans photography, film, and installation, often weaving elements of her own biography with local myths and the personal histories of those she encounters during her travels and residencies. Archives play a central role in her practice, which is deeply humanistic and concerned with memory and lived human experience shared across cultures and borders. She lives and works in Berlin.
Pallavi Paul is a New Delhi–based visual artist and film scholar. She received her PhD in Film Studies from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her work has been exhibited at the Kochi Biennale (2025) Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023, 2024); the Berlinische Galerie (2023, 2022); IFFR, Rotterdam (2020); the Berlinale Forum Expanded (2022); Tate Modern, London (2013); the AV Festival, New Castle (2018, 2016); the Beirut Art Centre, Lebanon (2018); SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2019, 2022); Contour Biennale, Mechelen (2017); the New Alphabet School, HKW, Berlin (2020); the Rubin Museum, New York (2019); and Colomboscope, Sri Lanka (2021). Paul’s work spans film, installation, sculpture and performance, and her hybrid practice scratches the limits of vision through poetry and imagination as disruptive methodologies with which she dilates time, space and geography.
ICAS:MP extends its sincere thanks to the German Embassy New Delhi and the High Commission of Malta for their collaboration, and to all attendees who contributed to a thoughtful and engaged discussion.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
sukritimanocha (February 24, 2026). Screening of Baħar Biss (Just Sea) by Franziska von Stenglin | 12 February 2026 | German Embassy New Delhi. ICAS:MP. Retrieved April 23, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15r7r





