Heidi Piiroinen‘s film I am a River has been selected for the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) taking place from August 13–19, 2026 in Edinburgh, Scotland. EIFF is the world’s oldest continually running film festival.

The film is screened in the section Experimental Shorts.

Inspired by Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions—a collection of lyrical, unanswerable poems that playfully interrogate nature, life, and the cosmos—the film weaves poetic inquiry with visual abstraction through the rarely used mordançage technique. Its veil-like formations evoke the fluid, fragile, ever-changing essence of rivers, suggesting they are living entities, much like us.

The film is produced by PALO.

Heidi Piiroinen (b. 1978, Tampere) is a Helsinki-based visual artist working across photography, experimental film, and installation. With a strong background in documentary storytelling and press photography, her practice has increasingly shifted toward more intimate, process-based works that explore emotional memory, invisibility, and suppressed states of being. Piiroinen’s work involves analogue techniques like mordançage and 16mm film, combined with text, archival material, and community collaboration. She is a recipient of the State Award for Public Information, and the Patricia Seppälä Foundation Photojournalism Award. Her current practice aims to carve out space for vulnerability, silence, and listening through both image and experience.

Edinburgh International Film Festival
13–19 August 2026
Edinburgh, Scotland

More information: EIFF – Experimental Shorts