Berlinale 2024

In 1990 USSR, 17-year-old Yasha rebels against authority, but some forces prove dangerous. Unwilling to submit, Yasha's self-expression drives him toward irreparable harm.

A ten-year-old girl has discovered her haven: the loo. In a bathroom, her life is calm and secure, but also somewhat lonely. She gradually tries to find a way to deal with her obsession and navigate her way through life.

Boloy, a player on the Cuban national volleyball team, is tormented by the memory of a friend who is no longer around. Despite his pain, he tries to return to morning training.

Spain on the Noche de San Juan holiday. As so often, the sisters Jessica and Alma are on their way to the Caritas aid station. Although they experience violence at home, the two try to break the cycle and treat each other with love.

Two teenagers from the suburbs of Belo Horizonte in Brazil meet while fulfilling socio-educational measures. Through their shared experiences of repression at the hands of the state authorities, they slowly draw closer together.

British-Somali teen Muna is desperate to go on the school trip – but her parents aren't so sure. Tragedy strikes when her grandfather dies back in Somalia, and Muna must navigate a confusing mourning period for someone she never really knew.

Sixteen-year-old Clément spends a hot summer evening home alone by the pool. Determined to lose his virginity, he swipes through guys' profiles on Grindr.

The walker with the shaved head and dressed in a red robe is barefoot. He walks slowly but determinedly through the forest, over stones and grassland. He also makes his way through the shadows of trees and houses. He sets foot in the train station, the church and the museum. The sun rises and sets again. The walker passes through Washington, D.C. Another stranger is also on the move in the city. We are unsure whether or not he is following the walker.
Tsai Ming-liang began his Walker series in 2011; this is now the tenth film. In the role of the monk, his long-time collaborator and lead actor Lee Kang-Sheng travels all over the world. The figure is inspired by Xuanzang, a Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk who journeyed thousands of miles on foot between China and India.

Ten-year-old Wo Tu dreams of having a water pistol like the other boys in his village. Even though his father promised, he fails to bring one back with him from the city. But there is one hope for Wo Tu: his dying grandfather assures him that he will grant his wish once he becomes a ghost. After his death, the old man visits the boy in his dreams and initiates a treasure hunt. Soon, the boundaries between reality and dreams, past and present become increasingly blurred. Spanning three generations of a family in rural China, the film also paints a portrait of their profound love for the land.

Meena stubbornly refuses to speak. She loves a man from a lower caste. Her family thinks she is possessed and the spell is cast out of her. The day begins, a road movie starts, as religious fervour and insane misogyny are narrated in passing.

A meek word processor in New York impulsively travels downtown to Soho for date with an attractive, but apparently disturbed young woman, and finds himself trapped in a nightmarishly surreal vortex of improbable coincidences and farcical circumstances.

The children transform into adults before our eyes. Yet they remain in limbo, haunted by memories of the war in Kosovo. Combining raw realism and staged performance, Afterwar is a meditation on the long-term repercussions of war.

Martha, a filmmaker, lives in Hamburg with her young son. She moves in with a group of Portuguese friends "so as to be closer to society's throb". Teresa helps foreigners cope with administrative problems.

Joe works as a professional stand-in, posing as friends and family for clients. An occurrence at a funeral gig blurs the line between Joe's work and personal life.

When her partner Pat unexpectedly dies, Angie is left to worry about the flat in which the couple lived together for over 30 years. Supported by her chosen family, Angie begins a later-life journey into emancipation.

Misa Fujisawa suffers from premenstrual syndrome; that's what makes her lose it, against her nature, even when around her superiors. She changes her job and surroundings and five years later is working at Kurita Optics, who produce astronomic sets, packaging individual parts and buying her sweets for colleagues. Takatoshi Yamazoe sits next to her and is also much younger than the rest of the staff, becoming the object of her gentle manner and care – a strange, silent guy, plagued by panic attacks. Based on Maiko Seo's novel of the same name and carried by the sounds of DJ Hi'Spec and the gestures and voices of the two fantastic leading actors, Shô Miyake's cinematic universe has people find each other before finding themselves. Attempting to survive in a world full of pressure and stress, capital and tradition, they look for assistance from doctors, self-help groups and even the sick mother. From this realism of today, Miyake crafts a fairy tale scene by scene that could not be more enchanting. Between toy planetariums and long nights of starry skies, a pure poetry of kindness emerges. Two people who get closer without falling in love, so close that they do each other good.

The subject of this historical drama is a splintering Berlin in the years of 1948 and 1949. Played against the backdrop of social upheaval, the characters in the drama come to epitomize the best and worst of each pole of the political sphere. A 17-year-old hoodlum by the name of Gladow works hand-in-glove with a local white-collar criminal to rob and pillage every day and night, defying capture. While he and his gang of thugs are terrorizing the people of Berlin, the Soviets are trying to make the blockade of their region of control impermeable. The future casts long shadows over the drama, as Berlin's problems take the shape of times to come.

"Another End" is set in a near-future when a new technology exists that can put the consciousness of a dead person back into a living body, in an attempt to ease the grief of separation, providing a little extra time to say goodbye.

Radiant Neurologist Katerina and Yannis, a former well-respected doctor, are heading off to a deserted seaside resort. Silence spreads in the car as they travel across sandy dunes in a windy autumn, matching the less-than-pleasant occasion: Yannis had been called to identify the victim of a tragic accident at the hospital of the small town. When the local policeman informs them that the victim's vehicle had plunged over the parapet of a stone bridge and leads them to the morgue, Katerina sees her worst suspicions confirmed. Together with Yannis, but also on her own nightly excursions to a mysterious, rustic beach bar called Arcadia, they begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together, revealing a haunting story of love, loss, acceptance, and letting go.

A journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone, and their impact on a changing planet.

Averroès and Rosa Parks: two units of the Esquirol Hospital, which - like the Adamant - are part of the Paris Central Psychiatric Group. From individual interviews to "carer-patient" meetings, the filmmaker focuses on showing a form of psychiatry that continually strives to make room for and rehabilitate the patients' words. Little by little, each one eases open the door to their world. Within an increasingly worn-out health system, how can the forsaken be given a place among others?

Using diary excerpts, photographs and memories from companions, the film paints the portrait of the artist Jürgen Baldiga who sensitively and authentically captured the West Berlin queer scene of the 1980s and early 1990s with his camera.

A provocative and visually stunning appraisal of Mexican society's social divide. After causing the death of a baby, a kidnapper seeks redemption in sex and Catholicism.

A body is floating in the water. A strange bird is calling and memories come alive again. "Where were you when I was in despair?", asks the friend.

Through the lens of her father's camera, she looks back at a period of her childhood of which she can remember nothing. Twenty years after surviving cancer, she searches for traces of the illness between scars and desires.

Santiago in the shimmering summer heat. High-res images undergo a digital zoom which transforms spaces into surfaces and houses into textures. In between, there are the small gestures of everyday urban life. And two women in search of a place for their love.

He pays him a visit during his work trip to Europe. They have not seen each other since 2015, back in Beijing. This might be the last time they meet.

A girl is strolling through the fields when a Japanese river otter catches up with her. The two try in vain to communicate while all the junk of humanity rains down around them.

Artificial moons are going to be launched into space to eliminate the difference between day and night. An elderly couple retreats into the increasing darkness of their apartment, illuminated by digital devices.

Sophie and Jessica are anthropomorphic beings that wander through different worlds – searching for themselves and for one another. Their bizarre and battered appearances are modelled with so much detail you can almost touch them. The terrifying, but endearing result leaves an impression that we'd perhaps rather forget – but at the same time also poignantly asks what causes us to feel this way.

Buenos Aires, 2019. Lucrecia, who works as a museum security guard, foresees a sharp rise in the dollar's value with her pendulum and falls in love with the employee of a currency exchange office.

The endless tracking shot through a picturesque US panorama allows the American Dream to slide into ghostly auto-suggestion while Assange and Bezos ponder life.

A mysterious community of animals has chosen to live self-sufficiently in the basement of a church. Sheltered from humans, they engage in various rituals.

In a small, semi-utopian city, all the streets are named after poets. When war begins, new neighbourhoods emerge to accommodate the refugees. Now, the streets are named after soldiers.

After losing her husband, 65-year-old midwife Betânia is persuaded by her daughters to leave her remote village. She moves near the sand dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses in northern Brazil and ventures a new beginning.

A cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher reenters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student.
Between the Temples is a rare, offbeat comedy buoyed by its casts' lively yet heartfelt performances. Indie stalwart Nathan Silver reteams with co-writer C. Mason Wells for a script that delivers both jokes and emotional depths with a confident hand. Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane are a natural fit as our loving leads, while the rest of the film is peppered with a way-too-funny cast including Triangle of Sadness' standout Dolly De Leon and comedy writing legend Robert Smigel. They create a film that delights in frenzied misadventure while being carefully driven by a warm heart and loving embrace of human connection.—CS

Svitlana, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, examines the colonised part of her consciousness and tries to find answers to the question of how Soviet totalitarianism and Russification influenced the relationships within her family.

Aya, a young Ivorian woman in her early thirties, says no on her wedding day, to everyone's astonishment. After emigrating to Asia, she works in a tea export shop with Cai, a 45-year-old Chinese man. Aya and Cai fall in love but can their affair survive the turmoil of their past and other people's prejudices?

A nameless man gives up his identity to live with a large cardboard box over his head, to meet a range of characters as he wanders in Tokyo.

A middle-class family's fate becomes intertwined with their only son's enigmatic new friend in post one-child policy China, putting unspoken secrets, unmet expectations, and untended emotions under the microscope.
After an incident at their private school, Wei, an only son from a middle-class family, and Shou, a quiet, highly perceptive boy, find themselves connected through some mysterious energy that draws them intimately into each other's lives. In his feature debut, writer and director Jianjie Lin elegantly unfurls a story where, just under the surface of family dinners, polite manners, and daily school and extracurricular activities, lie dark truths and hidden yearnings threatening to explode into sight. With an arresting, sharp style and a unique sensitivity to the socioeconomic status of its characters, Brief History of a Family is an exciting new expression of Chinese film on the world stage.—SS

An ample community of cats has set up home around the Shinto shrine in Ushimado. Some local residents take care of them, others are disturbed by their mess. Kazuhiro Soda observes their co-existence with kindness, precision and occasional involvement.

A man lives a quiet live in a big house thanks to the wealth of his ancestors. Then a young woman arrives.

Two tales of migration. In the first, after a tailings dam disaster floods her hometown, rural worker Joana (55) moves to São Paulo to find her sister Tania, who lives with her grandson Jaime. Joana enters the universe of insecurity, replying to an application for house cleaning. She bonds with her colleagues, and their struggle for better conditions gives Joana's life a new meaning. Her relationship with young Jaime brings back old memories. In the second part, after the death of her estranged father, Flavia (32) moves to her farm with her wife Mara. The couple suffer a shock of reality when facing the harshness of rural life. The contact with the abandoned house reveals to Flavia unknown aspects of her father. She begins to suspect that there is something supernatural in the woods.

The life in the kitchen of a restaurant in New York City where cultures from all over the world blend during the lunchtime rush.

Lia, a retired teacher, has promised to find her long-lost niece, Tekla. Her search takes her to Istanbul where she meets Evrim, a lawyer fighting for trans rights, and Tekla starts to feel closer than ever.

Chased by a mysterious woman, 17-year-old Gretchen, who just moved with her family to an alpine resort after her mother's death, must uncover a conspiracy to save herself and her sister.

After inheriting a pygmy slow loris from her long-estranged husband, a woman clings to dwindling ties to her past while her niece prepares for her wedding and worries about the future.

November, 2021. Twenty-six royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin, the present-day Republic of Benin. Along with thousands of others, these artifacts were plundered by French colonial troops in 1892. But what attitude to adopt to these ancestors' homecoming in a country that had to forge ahead in their absence? While the soul of the artifacts is freed, debate rages among students of the University of Abomey-Calavi.

In the course of a fictional road movie, women of the same age from the director's circle of acquaintances talk about couple relationships and love utopias. The final thesis at the Munich Film School was an early inventory of feminist positions.

With this film version of the book that was a movie industry takedown in the 1930s, New Hollywood used grand sets and costumes to bring the glamour of the "dream factory" to the screen – before letting it all go down in flames in an apocalyptic finale.

55-year-old Demba is about to retire after 30 years of service at the city hall in his small town in Northern Senegal. That hot summer, as the 2-year anniversary of his wife's passing approaches, he realizes he just can't "shake it off." As his mental health deteriorates, he discovers a new connection with his once-estranged son. Grief and depression are so alike that for years, the American Psychiatric Association has urged doctors not to diagnose major depression in individuals who have recently lost a loved one. But what does that mean for a society that does not have a word for depression and where psychosocial disorders remain a taboo? Can Demba recover from his loss without losing himself?

Boston, Massachusetts. A gangster is chosen to infiltrate the police force and a young cop goes undercover in the Irish mafia. When the two moles uncover each other's identity, the battle begins.

A straightforward thriller about three young men and a young woman engaged in armed robbery in Madrid. A testimony of the era after the Franco dictatorship and a classic of the cine quinqui genre, the film won the 1981 Golden Bear.

Upper Austria in 1750. A fish pond reflects the overcast sky. A deep, dark forest swallows the sunlight. On a hilltop, the corpse of a hanged woman is displayed. As an example. A warning. An omen? The deeply religious and highly sensitive Agnes regards the dead woman with pity. But also with longing: she feels like a stranger in the world of her husband Wolf, whom she has just married. It is an emotionally cold world consisting of work, chores and expectations. Agnes increasingly withdraws into herself. Her internal prison becomes ever more oppressive, her melancholy more overwhelming. Soon, her only way out seems to be a shocking act of violence.
Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala create a profound and disturbing psychological portrait of a woman made of flesh and bone, sinew and soul, played by Anja Plaschg who, as Soap & Skin, also composed the score. Des Teufels Bad gives a voice to the peasant women who were invisible and unheard at that time and depicts their harsh daily lives defined by religious dogma and taboos whose impact resonates to this day. The film is based on historical court records about a shocking, previously unexplored chapter of European history.

Lebanon, 2018. War, politics or revolution: these are the choices faced by Georges, Joumana and Perla Joe. Three destinies and a shared desire to rebuild a troubled country. How is it possible to continue to dream when everything around is falling apart?

Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.
Writer-director Aaron Schimberg's latest film is a surreal, singular tale of one man's desire to self-actualize. Sebastian Stan is Edward, a man overcome by the reality of his appearance, intent on curing his alienation and transcending his self- and socially-enforced artistic potential. Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve carefully embody foils to Edward's ambition; an artistic and philosophical juxtaposition of his, and our, conceits.
Through a haunting score, Lynchian approach to story, and folkloric magical realism, a unique psychological thriller emerges. A stylish vision of the theatrical currents of New York stages a universe where reality and fiction blend in beautiful ways; where lies, expectations, and internal turmoil weave a man's consequentially incipient senses of truth and becoming. A Different Man is a reflexive allegory for the modern tortured artist; a subversive, gothic fairytale that deftly begets obsession.—CA

Taking its title from the tactical protest strategy of the same name – "an action that seeks to achieve an end directly and by the most effective means" – DIRECT ACTION is a contemporary portrait of one of the most important militant activist communities in France – a 150-person strong rural collective that survived multiple violent eviction attempts by the French state, successfully resisted an international airport expansion project, created an autonomous zone from 2012-2018, and spawned a remarkable new ecological movement in 2021. Through a collaborative and uniquely immersive observational approach, DIRECT ACTION documents the everyday of a diverse ecosystem of activists, squatters, anarchists, farmers and government-labeled "eco-terrorists" – so as to better understand how the success of a radical protest movement can offer a path through the climate crisis facing us all.

Twenty-year-old Kwame toils in clandestine sapphire mines. When an unexpected event takes him back to his hometown, he is confronted by the rampant corruption that plagues his country. Kwame is forced to make a choice.

A policeman with a troubled past investigates a series of murders.

The Lunies family has not really been a family for a long time. Lissy Lunies, in her mid-70s, is quietly happy when Gerd, her husband who is slowly wasting away from dementia, is put in a care home. But her new-found freedom is short-lived: diabetes, cancer, kidney failure and the onset of blindness signal that she does not have much time left herself. Meanwhile, her son Tom, who is a conductor, is working on a composition entitled "Dying" with his depressive best friend Bernard. Tom's ex-girlfriend Liv wants him to be the surrogate father of her child. His sister Ellen begins an affair with a married dentist with whom she shares a passion for alcohol and intoxication. But everything in life has its price. Confronted with death, the estranged family members finally meet again.

Young biologist Yura actually leads a quiet provincial life with his job at the Natural History Museum. He's still living at home with his mother – if only her pompous admirer wouldn't annoy him with his readings from "Jonathan Livingston Seagull". In search of the marmot, a creature thought extinct on the Southern Ukrainian steppe, Yura is witness to arson. Trying to draw public attention to the injustice, he unexpectedly ends up on a sensationalist local news portal, and is drawn ever deeper into the absurd entanglements of a network that no one is really interested in unravelling.

Hazal is 17 and lives in Berlin. Her biggest wish: to be given a chance. For her 18th birthday she wants to escape the everyday grind and party with her friends. But a fatal incident changes everything. Hazal is forced to flee.

Eleven Tomorrows: Berlinale Meets Football is a Documentary film directed by Maximilian Bungarten, Anna-Maria Dutoit, Kilian Armando Friedrich, Indira Geisel, Eva Gemmer, Felix Herrmann, Hannah Jandl, Justina Jürgensen, Hilarija Ločmele, Daniela Magnani-Hüller, Sophie Mühe, Camille Tricaud, Marie Zrenner.

Beneath the exterior of the common life of the inhabitants of a fishing village on the Opal Coast, arises the parallel and epic life of knights of interplanetary empires. In prey to the bloody fights of these clans at the announcement of the birth of Margat, child of a young separated couple.

The Empty Grave is a compelling German-Tanzanian collaboration by kurhaus production and Kijiweni Productions, directed by Agnes Lisa Wegner and Cece Mlay. The film follows the emotional journey of two Tanzanian families in search of their stolen ancestors. Their quest leads them to Germany, where tens of thousands of skulls and bones from former German colonies are stored in museum depots — a haunting legacy of colonial plunder in the early 20th century, taken for racist research and as macabre trophies. Set in the present, the film unveils the enduring traces and traumas inflicted by colonial crimes on families and communities.

A dozen passengers are stuck at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport for one night due to fog. The largely improvised ensemble film condenses a collage of their encounters and conversations into a realistic portrait of society.

What happens if the person you love suddenly seems like a stranger? Factory worker Nadine searches the depths of her heart to try and rediscover her lost feelings for her husband. What did she once see in him that she can no longer see?

Dimitris Athiridis's fourteen-hour exergue – on documenta 14 follows curator Adam Szymczyk as he oversees the 2017 edition of one of the world's most influential art exhibitions.

Young shaman Hwa-rim and her partner and co-medium Bong-gil respond to a call for help from the USA, where the wealthy Park family, Korean exiles, is plagued by irritations: something is wrong with the family's descendants and the head of the family himself is hearing screams. The duo accept the job – after all, it's well paid – and, along with a feng shui expert and an undertaker, they start to exhume the ancestors' grave in the north of Gangwon-do province. In the process, something escapes from the coffin, people die, others prove to be obsessed and the real problems haven't even started yet. Jang Jae-hyun's third feature film is a horror mystery thriller full of humour and verve, addressing issues of class, history, tradition, religion and superstition. Unfolding around the strange coffin in this odd place is an episodic series of lushly staged incantation rituals with linguistic analyses of grave lids, that relishes in cinematic effects and is carried by a great cast – besides Oldboy star Choi Min-sik as the geomancer, above all Kim Go-eun.

One day, Dev discovers trees have been burnt down in his orchard in the Indian Himalayas. Despite all his efforts, bigger and bigger fires break out, which ultimately leads to Dev having to face the truth about himself and his family.
The Fable is a 2024 film directed by Raam Reddy, starring Manoj Bajpayee, Hiral Sidhu, Priyanka Bose, Tillotama Shome, Awan Pookot, and Deepak Dobriyal.

Autobiographical documentary film which questions the words within a family which was struck by incest.

Faruk, who is over 90 years old, increasingly becomes the protagonist in the film his daughter is making about the impending demolition of his block of flats in Istanbul. A story about gentrification and a complex father-daughter relationship.

"Beid, Hafsa, Melissa, Manessa, Mohammad… 25 children and their dedicated teacher. We wanted to find out who they are… to discover their skills and strategies, their joys, fears, wants and needs."
(Ruth Beckermann)
More than 60% of all children in Viennese elementary schools do not have German as their first language. At the same time, there is an acute shortage of teachers and tutors. These adverse conditions are the starting point for Ruth Beckermann's FAVORITEN, in which the Austrian filmmaker (The Waldheim Waltz, Mutzenbacher) accompanies a Viennese elementary school class over the course of three school years. The result is an astonishingly cheerful portrait of an unusual community.

In the summer of 2001, 16-year-old Andoy searches for his long-lost father in the most unlikely of places: on VHS tapes. When two movie-like characters appear in his small hometown, his reality begins to falter.

The first release by Little Egypt Collective stages a sound recordist reconnecting with the flat fields where once stood Pyramid Courts – the housing projects that formed the heart of the Black community of the Little Egypt region of southern Illinois.

A collage of voices from activists forced to flee the country offers glimpses into Myanmar's history through three locations: Yangon Zoological Gardens, Yangon Circle Railway and the Drug Elimination Museum.

With Owl disappearing, mischievous Rats terrorising the neighbourhood and a lake overflowing their home, Fox and Hare embark on an exciting adventure to save the forest. It will push their friendship to the limit!

In Berlin 1942, Hilde finds her place within an anti-Nazi resistance group as gradually as she falls in love with one of its members, Hans Coppi. With their lives being in constant danger, the two spend an unforgettable summer until they get caught by the Gestapo and Hilde Coppi is imprisoned, eight months pregnant. It's behind the bars that delicate young Hilde develops unimagined powers.

Absurd attempts to produce an amateur film about an amateur film company. The awards ceremony for the film takes place in a town cinema: 1st Prize for the leading lady: a goat.

In "German Chainsaw Massacre" people meet up with a household of butchers. They detect low cost meat in the East Germans moving over the old boundary into the West and start turning them into sausage. Clara flees the slaying of her sleazy spouse and the rotting East, and lands in the arms of butchers. She is held alive simply because the daughter of the family falls in love with her. This German movie is a satirical massacre splatter flick that provides lots of inexpensive gore. It's full of political overtones and has a lot to Tobe Hooper's terror classic "The Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers". If you're a lover of German gore and absurdness, check it out!. 16 million East Germans on their way to the golden West. 4% never got there: were they turned into Wuerste (sausages)? If you knew Christoph Schlingensief's other movies like "United Trash" you will know what this is all about - some call it art, some trash. Shot in 14 days after October the 3rd 1990. With Udo Kier in a small role.

In the search for a suitable man, "Lieschen Müller" asks politicians and passers-by about their male self-image in the federal capital Bonn. The torturous catalog of questions in this satirical documentary also includes male violence.

It is late 18th century in Venice, and in a convent school for girls Teresa, a girl with prophetic gifts, joins forces with some amazing music-makers. They create a new kind of music that is pop, bright and bold, and challenge the ancient and rigid system.

Atomic bomb tests rouse a sea monster that lays ruin to Tokyo. This Japanese classic of the monster movie genre has often been truncated and shown in various permutations. On its 70th anniversary, the original has now enjoyed a 4K restoration.

Fourteen-year-old Li Xing lives in a southern Chinese city in Great Phuket, a district full of decay and reconstruction. He doesn't get along well with his mother who refuses to leave the family home which is slated for demolition. He also encounters nothing but problems at school. One day, Li and his only friend, Song, discover a tunnel that leads to a strange hideout where stones have recorded sounds from the past. During a chase with security guards from an abandoned factory, Song is so badly injured that he has to go to hospital. Song's mother forbids the two boys from seeing each other again. Filled with despair and guilt, and feeling lonelier than ever, Li returns to the tunnel. But stranger and stranger things are happening there. Gradually the tunnel transforms into a creature that traps Li inside his sad memories. Step by step, Li finds the way out to the outside world. But as a trace of his passage, Li's poem about his homeland and the people around him remains, recorded by the mysterious shelter of stones.

Beitollah is a religious man who has been dreaming about a box of gold coins appearing at the end of a cave. He believes these coins are a miracle and wants to find them. But since he does not consider the coins to be halal, he wants to find a non-religious assistant to accompany him on the search. With the help of a job advertisement printed on the back of counterfeit dollar bills that Beitollah distributes on the streets of Tehran, he recruits the young Shoja and the two set off together to search for the coins. They discover several caves in the north of Iran but none is the right one. They move on to the central deserts of Iran and spend the night at a Caravanserai roadside inn. The inn's owner suspects that the two might be looking for treasure and decides to follow them on his motorcycle…

While exploring old manor houses along the Douro river, the young film student Maria do Mar finds herself trapped in a house of horrors. She needs the recordings to complete her doctoral thesis on reality in film.

"The United States of Fonda" is the motto of this three-hour autobiofilmographical monument, put together with cinematic passion and editing verve for a president that will only ever have existed on the big screen: Henry Fonda.

In the little town of Herzsprung - whose name harks back to an ancient legend of broken hearts - almost nothing has changed since German unification, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, becomes one of the unemployed and lives on welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with a dark-skinned, roving adventurer and the whole village starts talking about it. Director Helke Misselwitz became internationally known for her documentary Winter Adé (1988), about women in the final years of the GDR. Herzsprung was her feature film debut. The lyrics for the song, "Oh, Your First Love," sung by Eva-Maria Hagen, were adapted by singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, expelled from the GDR in 1976.

Leiba lives with his wife Sura and their son Eli in a village located within a Romanian landscape so beautiful it could be a painting. The Jewish family runs the village inn, a meeting point for travellers and the village community at the end of the 19th century. At first glance, the people that eat and drink here are all alike. This is where they belong. But their table conversations reveal prejudices and racist sentiments. A little derision here, some underlying envy there, poisonous attributions. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least for now. Those who are close always tease each other. Holy Week is a free adaptation of the 1889 novella "An Easter Torch" by Romanian author Ion Luca Caragiale. For this, Andrei Cohn crafts a world illuminated by considerable cinematic and psychological nuance. His characters seem to inhabit this world as if they were living today, like the people right next door, caught up in their own lives. Even when the fuse of anti-Semitism has already been lit, Leiba and his wife make plans, argue or giggle with joy. Between Jewish Passover and Christian Easter, a bomb will explode.

A brother and sister are hibernating. Only the sister wakes up. Human hibernation blurs the boundary between people and animals. A thought experiment equal parts sci-fi and meditation shot in searing images.

Libuše has been capturing her "rock-n-roll" life full of twists and turns in thousands of pictures and autoportraits. Yet the sudden photographic success after 53 years of work has not helped her to see her real self in the mirror. She is still searching for herself, the place where she belongs, as she goes through piles of negatives and diaries while working on a new book.

The destruction caused by the war against Ukraine is shown in lengthy tableaux. Intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families set up a shocking parallel world. Sound and image stare each other in the face, stunned.

Bhagole and Prabhata are an old couple, struggling with their farm's debts. He decides to let himself be killed by a tiger to save his family. Their last night becomes a surreal love story. A mythological, expressionistic and deeply moving film.

Accompanied by 10-year-old Anna, the director roams the streets of Berlin and visits places of Jewish history. She conducts interviews with Jews living in West Berlin. The question of one's own Jewish identity and how it feels for the interviewees to live in Germany today runs like a common thread through the film.

On the grounds of Zurich Zoo, workers are transforming the brown earth into a savannah landscape, with concrete baobabs to serve as a feeding system and storage space. A "scenography of the wilderness" is being created here, as art historian Christina Katharina May terms this animal pen designed with an eye for detail, a combination of pared-down architecture and an almost natural appearance – a central component of the zoo's efforts to make itself invisible. Across the seasons, Romuald Karmakar's film gives an account of life and work at one of Europe's leading zoological gardens. The effort that precedes the illusion of invisibility is shown, as is the logistical apparatus that keeps the whole enterprise running. The animals are also shown, which serve as an attraction. By revealing a complex network of economical and ethical questions that shape the zoo, precisely what usually remains invisible, this three-hour film expands what is shown into a reflection on the relationship between humans and animals: a mirroring and a "momentary imaginary relationship" (Sabine Nessel). The portrait of an institution – of modernity, of the present.

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen's view of reality begins to crack.
Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun's We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021 Sundance Film Festival) introduced us to a new genre of their own design: emo horror. Their follow-up feature builds upon that vibe, worming its way into the subconscious with an equally potent autopsy of reality versus fiction. As Owen, Justice Smith exudes a quiet vulnerability, while co-lead Brigette Lundy-Paine displays a confident yet awkward conviction. Schoenbrun has a knack for portraying the trappings of adolescent family life with nuance and a welcome ambiguity, freeing audience members to relate in a way that is best suited to their own experiences. I Saw the TV Glow forces us to consider whether the memories of our youth betrayed us, or if something more sinister is at play.—AM

A wise old man embarks on his final journey, entering the Colombian jungle to find a place to die. But the illegal army groups who control the area endanger his peaceful transition to the realm of the dead.

One year after the tragic loss of her mother, In-young finds herself without a home. She takes shelter in the building of her dance school, but her secret sanctuary is in peril when the choreographer, Seol-ah, discovers her.

Ivo works as an outpatient palliative care nurse. She travels to different households every day. To families, married couples and single people. In small apartments and large houses. In always different lives and deaths, in always different ways of dealing with the time that remains. At home, her pubescent daughter and her dog have long since become self-employed because of Ivo's working hours. Ivo travels from morning to night in her old Skoda, the hands-free system always in use. The car has become her personal living space, where she eats her meals, works, sings, curses and dreams.
One of her patients, Solveigh, was a close friend before she became ill. Ivo also has a close relationship with Solveigh's husband Franz. Day after day they work together to care for Solveigh. And they sleep together. Solveigh's strength dwindles and she soon has to rely on outside help for the simplest tasks. She wants to make the final decision alone, so Franz doesn't want to find out about it. She asks Ivo to help her die.

It's the summer before Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) starts sixth grade, and she is spending the lazy months with her acupuncturist mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), in their home in the woods. As the months drift by, the bespectacled, taciturn girl, fiercely observant, watches Janet and three enigmatic adults who drift in and out of their lives, whether romantic interests or reconnected friends. Set in 1991 rural Western Massachusetts, the superb debut film from Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker is a work of surreal tranquility that moves at a different, lost pace of life, and which perceives heartbreak just as Lacy is beginning to grasp the world and her place in it. Baker has created a film about a mother and daughter quite unlike any other, heightening the viewer's senses and expressing oceans of feeling with the smallest gestures. Nicholson and Ziegler perform their roles with an inspiring lack of sentimentality, and the wondrous supporting cast includes Elias Koteas, Sophie Okonedo, and Will Patton.

JESUS - THE FILM is a monumental feature film in 35 episodes, shot on Super8. The individual episodes retell the story of the New Testament and were made by a total of 22 filmmakers from East and West Germany in 12 months. The project's own history follows the story of Jesus Christ recruiting his apostles. The film's creator Michael Brynntrup is a central and controversial figure of Berlin's vivid independent community. His transgressive obsessions, as well as his capability to smuggle miles of Russian Super8 film-material through East-West customs, gathered a group of believers around him. Individuals and groups from various art factions filled the holy frame, inspired by the Dadaistic idea of an 'ecriture automatic'. From one to another, they passed ideas, material and actors, including Michael Brynntrup himself as the title character.

High-school senior Peter considers the adults around him to be hypocritical, self-congratulatory, and immersed in the past. He gets suspended for writing an essay that his teachers consider to be a challenge to the state. Just Don't Think I'll Cry became one of twelve films and film projects-almost an entire year's production-that were banned in 1965-1966 due to their alleged anti-socialist aspects. Although scenes and dialogs were altered and the end was reshot twice, officials condemned this title as "particularly harmful." In 1989, cinematographer Ost restored the original version, and this and most of the other banned films were finally screened in January 1990. Belatedly, they were acclaimed as masterpieces of critical realism.

Director İsmet Elçi tells the semi-autobiographical story of Kemal (played by Elçi himself), who negotiates his identity between two cultures (Turkey and Germany), struggling to find a future as a director in the German film industry.

Farmer needs a wife. And marries a bristly betty … Based on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew", this antic film stars Henny Porten in a double role. Featuring a new score by Leopold Hurt, performed live by members of the Berlin Philharmonic.

Yuck! Kissing on the mouth is disgusting. But secretly, little Léo really wants to try it ...

To fullfill his responsibilities or defying his brother and embarking on a small three-wheeled adventure-that's the dilemma for a 10-year-old boy on a lonely coast in Mexico.

On a remote German island, the inhabitants of a village come together to celebrate a traditional eve-of-wedding party. As the shards of the crockery smashed by the guests pile up, ten-year-old Fina struggles to keep a piece of herself intact.

While their parents are away, eight-year-old Rafaela stays at home in the care of her 15-year-old sister, Laura. When Laura decides to go visit a boy she likes, Rafaela has to tag along. But then Laura and the boy lock themselves in his room. Rafaela waits, gets bored and finally begins to explore the house. She has a unique encounter with Uli, a queer young woman, and her pet. A film about the feeling of strangeness and the possibility of finding freedom in an unfamiliar place.

A man swims in the sea. As he does so, memories come flooding back. From his early childhood to his adult life, all the memories are connected to water. Some are happy, some glorious, some traumatic. This story will be the story of his last swim. It will take us from the source to the river – from the waters of childhood paddling pools to those of swimming baths, from a North African country to the shores of the Mediterranean, from Olympic stadia to reservoirs, from concentration camps to the paradise beaches of Réunion.

Teenage pen pals in France and Germany forge a friendship through letters, exploring cultural differences and improving their foreign language skills.

A-levels results day. An ambitious and brainy Iranian-British teenager embarks on a journey across London with her friends, while secretly grappling with a life-changing decision.

This Senegalese docufiction film explores the shy romance between Ngor and Coumba, set against the background of a tough rural life. The persistent drought means that earnings for millet and groundnut farmers in the village are in decline. Neither Ngor nor his family can afford to pay the dowry for Coumba, so he decides to try his luck in Dakar.
Filmmaker Safi Faye loosely frames her feature film as an audiovisual letter about the village where she was born. She used local villagers as actors and provides the occasional comment herself. There are tragicomic scenes under the tree in the heart of the village, where the menfolk gather to discuss the dire situation. The high-flown French in the newspaper read aloud by the teacher has little relevance to their daily life.
Faye also takes time for the daily routines of village life: children at play, and women at work on the arid land, cooking on a wood fire and sifting the millet. The subtle storyline meanders through it all—as does the indirect criticism of an agricultural policy that promotes monoculture, ultimately harvesting only poverty.

Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou's criminal family.
Following her critically acclaimed first feature Saint Maud, Rose Glass makes her Sundance Film Festival debut with a bombastic, larger-than-life sophomore effort. An off-the-wall, rambunctious lesbian love story crashes into a family drama of the darkest ilk in this muscular thriller. As a small-town gym and a ravine just outside city limits become the playground for all flavors of mischief and mayhem, a heightened Americana sensibility and Glass' deliciously distinctive, bold style create a world that is at once familiar and entirely fresh. Helmed by Sundance regular Kristen Stewart (Speak, Adventureland, Certain Women) and Katy O'Brian, Love Lies Bleeding is somehow as sweetly romantic about loyalty as it is doggedly hedonistic. With a vaulting imagination and its roots in deeply human places, this film packs a gut punch unlike any other.—AH

A take on "The Taming of the Shrew" as a musical. The prince consort in an operetta-style country rebels against his lack of rights in the marriage. Lubitsch's first talkie had a lasting stylistic influence on film's operetta genre.

Max Taurus, a sort of amateur detective, pursues the traces of general omni-present crime back to a partially demolished house. There, the remaining tenants try to gain pleasure and power from progressive abandonment in order to tear down their own conventionalities.Max Taurus, a sort of amateur detective, pursues the traces of general omni-present crime back to a partially demolished house. There, the remaining tenants try to gain pleasure and power from progressive abandonment in order to tear down their own conventionalities.

Directing great, Martin Scorsese, offers an intimate and personal consideration of the work and influence of fellow filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Responsible for classics including The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus, the filmmaking duo left an indelible mark on the world of cinema. They also had a formative influence on the Killers of The Flower Moon director from an early age and in David Hinton's documentary, he reflects on how they not only shaped his own filmmaking but on a later friendship he developed with Powell.

Following an accident, 14-year-old Ana has a metal plate in her arm. During the winter holidays, the plate suddenly starts to receive strange messages in Morse code.

The story of Maria Leiko - a famous actress who late in her career has to decide between fame and love for her grandchild, between her ideals or the lies of Stalin's totalitarian regime.

Mara - a young professor struggling through marriage - meets Matt, a man from her past who wanders onto her university campus.

An Afghan teenager living as an immigrant in Iran strives to pursue her dream of becoming a professional Muay Thai boxer while battling the social injustice and violence she encounters beyond the ring.

A 23 year-old girl is contacted by an unknown life form claiming to be able to bring her older brother safely back to earth, who disappeared during a space mission.

After achieving worldwide success with her debut, a low-budget underdog film called "Die Einstellung" ("shot" and/or "attitude"), which even produced offers from Hollywood, a young director talks in an interview about how it was made, using a single camera set-up to tell a complicated love story. Memories of her dead (!) mother, a relative who owns a cinema, a boarding school principal and the lead actor in her films complement her own explanation, delivered not entirely without vanity, of the secret to her success – "When I shoot a film I really only think of myself"… The internationally-known portrait photographer Bettina Flitner made Me while studying directing at the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB) in Berlin; it is a fictional self-portrait of her as a young, internationally famous film director. Entertainer Hella von Sinnen plays four roles in this amusing satire of the cult of genius worship that surrounds film directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Wim Wenders, or Jim Jarmusch, whose public interviews certainly contributed to the film's dialogue.

In contrast to his own fights, Costard observes established directors like Fassbinder and Hark Bohm during filming and asks: "Is it possible to make films today in Germany?" To negotiate this question, Godard comes to the NDR to Hamburg.

Repression and taboos have shaped the image of womanhood for Ana (68), Patricia (69) and Mayela (71). Their stories poetically combine to form a kaleidoscope of memories, secrets and longings that are incarnated by another woman's body.

Greatness paired with modesty: 93 years old and a daughter, world-famous director Lana remembers her mother Nutsa, Georgia's first female filmmaker. A cinema legacy that revolves around being human in dark times: feminist, loving, critical of violence.

Seventy-year-old Mahin lives alone, until she decides to break her solitary routine and revitalize her love life. But as she opens up to romance, an unexpected encounter quickly evolves into an unforgettable evening.

Police officer Lucie's solitary daily life is disturbed by the arrival of a young couple and their little girl who move in next door. As she grows fond of them, she discovers that the father is an anti-police activist...

My Stolen Planet is a diary-style narrative by Farah, an Iranian filmmaker. Born during the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, she captures moments of joy and defiance in her daily life, navigating the contrast between domestic freedom and external oppression. Simultaneously, she collects 8mm archives from people she doesn't know. Relying on these recordings from other people, she gains a new perspective on losing memories. Her connection with Leyla, an Iranian professor who left Iran during the revolution, adds a name and a story to one of the faces in her archive. Farah's mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, motivates her to continue her fight against forgetting. In the autumn of 2022, the Women, Life, Freedom uprising becomes a turning point in Farah's life, as well as in the lives of many others in Iran. This is a homemade history.

Italy, 1997. Clara and Irène, both 17 years old, meet at a summer camp organised by the hospital where they are being treated. Clara is shy while Irène is untamed. They are completely unalike but they understand each other straight away. Instead of returning to their families, they decide to run away to a faraway island off the coast of Sicily to spend their first summer as young women. There, they live in a carefree way, dream of love, record their moments together on VHS tape and confront their fears about the future.

Inadelso Cossa visits his grandparents' village in Mozambique, where he grew up during the civil war. Back then, his grandmother kept the war out of sight for him. Now the film shines a careful light into the darkness of the past.

This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely alliance which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.

An apartment block in Kuala Lumpur that houses migrants. Hanh moves calmly, incessantly. She cleans, washes up, tidies, helping everyday life to function better for others. A gentle yet determined wander through the spaces of an existence denied rights.

After living life on the edge in London, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland's Orkney Islands - where she grew up - hoping to heal. Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot.

Immediately after the birth of her child, Diane abandons her boyfriend and baby in a Zurich hospital and disappears into a Spanish city she does not know on the Mediterranean. But the changes her body is going through remind her of what she is fleeing from

A voice that claims to belong to a hippopotamus. A voice that does not understand the perception of time. A voice that tells of a historical event as if in a trance. "Am I making that sound that comes out of my mouth? And what is a mouth anyway?" The only thing the animal knows for sure is that it is dead. The first and only hippopotamus ever killed in the Americas. The Colombian press called him Pepe. Between encounters and misunderstandings, epiphanies and sadness, we enter a world full of stories replete with even more stories. In a serious and playful way, both authentic and deceptive, images and sounds narrate the overwhelming orality of places full of beings who, like Pepe, died without ever knowing where they really were.

Here, where even monsters are political, the topography has its own memory. It has the mythological blues. Meanwhile, old gods are upset with us, and I am upset with my father.

A 16mm film performance draws inspiration from the Nanacatepec, a rock traversed by a network that extends without a defined shape. Its fruits, in the form of mushrooms, serve as creators and transformers of everything in the world.

hold on to her traces a lived social infrastructure of care, solidarity and struggle, addressing a recent case of police and state violence in Belgium. Mawda Shawri, two years old in 2018, sister of Hama, daughter of Phrast and Shamden, was shot dead by a Belgian police officer during a migration border control. In 2023, over 40 people, both undocumented and documented resident activists, assembled before the camera at La Voix des Sans Papiers in Brussels to stage a collective hearing of documents from and reactions to Mawda's case. During this gathering, the speakers acknowledge a ghostly haunting, caused by the impunity of the police and the lack of accountability of the state. It is in their refusal of such a lack of truth and human rights that they feel the need to explore beyond the official narratives. They produce the forensic counter evidence of this deadly crossing, and they practice justice as a sensuous social space for collective mourning and healing. Faced with the inability to proceed within the dominant frameworks, this hearing challenges what is visible and audible, supported by Vanbesien's audiovisual grammar, which foregrounds the opaque and the poetic.

In the scorching heat of the desert, where the ground is blistering and the air thick with pervasive sand, an infrastructure project unfolds in the unforgiving natural environment. The scale of this endeavour is so immense that the individuals navigating through it appear minuscule in comparison. Within the haze of sand and dust, those who have relocated for the construction of the infrastructure, returning from a day's toil, find their way back to the tented area hastily assembled.
As the roaming lens of the camera moves through the living area and returns to the expansive terrain where this massive engineering project is unfolding, the sun begins to set. Trucks and figures gradually disappear into the swirling winds and sand. At this moment, the camera's eye, constantly worn down by the persistent dust, suddenly loses its usual ability to discern light and shadow. Nevertheless, it persists in its attempt to capture, to the point where it seizes the abstract interplay of light and shadow in this world. The light itself becomes akin to etched marks on the virtual canvas of digital imagery, leaving behind traces and lingering impressions.

Today, in Lebanon, power cuts are not an event, they are a new state. Even the national museum is often deprived of electricity. But visitors want to see, despite everything. Armed with their phones, they come to visit the traces of past civilisations as their world crumbles. And so, in the darkness, shadows appear and things organise themselves differently, strangely…

Issah visits his mother-in-law to inform her of his plan to go to the south of Ghana in search of a better life. A new day dawns, and the village awakens as we witness the socio-political and economic engagements driving his desire to migrate.

Examines science, politics, spirituality, and superstition in India through conversations about grief, loss, and absurd events in the aftermath of a global pandemic.

Due to economic and technological forces reshaping the city of Tangier, the profession of the bleach street salesmen, along with their insistent chanting, is disappearing. The film explores modes of resistance against the relentless pace of capitalism.

Trapped in a hotel room by a never-ending typhoon in Hong Kong, an artist duo finds themselves isolated and cut off from the world. Affected by the social movement in the city, they start questioning the role of filmmakers in challenging times.

barrunto is a speculative fiction that takes place in a future of the past, in a present ruptured now. Its far-reaching network of affinities spans from Puerto Rico to Scotland, from the land to the bottom of the sea, and all the way to planet Uranus.

The difficult story of a young outsider and his involuntary entanglement in the moral ambiguities of the society he lives in.

Gentle or rough, blonde or shaved, cis or trans, long term inmates or those newly admitted: women re-enact their lives in a Buenos Aires prison, in trance and balance, voguing and singing. A hybrid musical and charming piece of collective empowerment.

Berlin queer community members mourn the substance abuse-related loss of their friends by sharing memories and rituals. Resembling glow-in-the-dark fungi, they radiate light together as a network of support and care.

Surrounded by social and political chaos in Lima during the summer of 1992, Lucia, Aurora, and their mother, Elena, plan to leave and seek opportunities in the United States. Their farewell involves reconnecting with their estranged father, Carlos, adding turbulence to the regrets, hopes, and fears of their emotional departure.
Director Klaudia Reynicke subtly weaves a tale of shifts and sacrifices that shows, whatever the familial configuration, strength and loss are necessary parts of growth. Grounded by a strong performance from Jimena Lindo as Elena and a wonderfully inquisitive Abril Gjurinovic, a family is brought to life. Reynicke's effective direction honors each community the camera focuses on, and her Lima, the city where Reynicke grew up, feels personal, like a memory or a version of a city that no longer exists but emerges vibrant and alive in the film. Reinas is truly an emotional trip, transporting the viewer to Lima in the '90s, right into the heart of a family faced with a universal challenge: the search for a safer place.—AE

How much does a place reveal about its history? How much can forbears and their descendants know about one another? And how much continuity is contained within progress? When Katharina Pethke became a professor at Hamburg's University of Fine Arts, it set in motion a process of reflection and research. Before, she had studied there, and so too had her mother and grandmother. Each of the women believed they were breaking new ground and yet, consciously or unconsciously, through stance or in protest, continued to carry on a legacy. This essay film examines the three generations caught between social determination and artistic ambition, self-will and motherhood, production and reproduction. The university building and its sole sculpture by a woman artist purchased by urban planner Fritz Schumacher, "Frauenschicksal" (Women's Fate), become a mirror as well as showcase for enduring ambivalences. A virtuosic and astute work from an established filmmaker, Reproduktion explores questions of feminine and artistic identity through the lens of Pethke's personal experience, interweaving her family biography with the architectural history of the art and media campus.

Eryang has turned his Beijing cave into a private micro-club with fine music and a mezzanine bed for love. No space at all, but lots of time to kill, with passion and psychedelics. They drink and ponder money, Communism and the cosmos.

"Nothing falls from the sky apart from rain," says Amílcar Cabral in a tape recording from 1970. The women of the Satna Fai agricultural workers' collective listen to this historical document stemming from the politician, poet and theoretician; they rest as Cabral demands equality between the sexes, which he sees as essential for shared progress. The setting is the Abotcha building in Malafo, a traditional Balanta village in Guinea-Bissau, which has housed the Mediateca Onshore since 2023. Together with filmmaker Sana na N'Hada and others, since 2011 director Filipa César has been working on reconstructing the audiovisual memory of the country's liberation movement and making it accessible to the public; artist Marinho de Pina has been involved since 2017. In Resonance Spiral, César and de Pina document the construction of the Abotcha and the agro-poetic practices that take place there, showing dialogues between archive, performing arts and community. At the same time, they grapple with their own position, sharing insights, despairs – and the mud of the mangroves.

Darkness falls over Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and its 17 million inhabitants. It is just before Christmas and people are struggling to gain access to electric light. Kudi is mobilising the residents of his Kisenso neighbourhood to collect money for a new power cable. On Mount Mangengenge, a holy place overlooking the city, Pastor Gédéon delivers a sermon about the light of Christ as the path to life and truth. Davido is searching for a place to stay after his house was flooded by the Congo River. Together with other young men, he kills time by working out and dreams of a better future.
Tongo Saa is a sensitive portrait of the residents of Kinshasa as they face the challenges of life in an environment plagued by violence and coloured by the uncertainty of tomorrow.

Detective Ma Seok-do joins the Cyber Investigation Team to nab Baek Chang-gi, a former mercenary and the head of an online gambling organization.

Set at the start of a nuclear apocalypse, film philosopher Andrei Tarkovsky's drama is a powerful pictorial parable of human (mis)behaviour in the face of war and environmental destruction.

A year in the life of a unique family. It captures the daily life of the Sasquatch with a level of detail and rigor that is simply unforgettable.

As Sicilian journalist Giuseppe Quatriglio turns 90, his daughter starts filming him. When he dies, she keeps on filming. Boxes become archival materials, as journeys, women and post-war Europe come to the fore. And in the end, there is a father.

An earnest theater director has the task of remounting her former mentor's most famous work, the opera Salome. Some disturbing memories from her past will allow her repressed trauma to color the present.

Two chimney sweeps living in monogamous, heterosexual marriages both end up in situations that challenge their views on sexuality and gender roles. One has a sexual encounter with another man, without himself experiencing it either as an expression of homosexual longings or infidelity. The other suddenly experiences nocturnal dreams in which he is seen as a woman. This confuses and disturbs him. He begins to wonder to what extent the gaze of others shapes his personality and whether there are aspects of himself that he has suppressed, thereby limiting himself.
In Dag Johan Haugerud's Sex, the chimney is swept before we get down to business. Whether hetero or homo, witty wordplay challenges normative images of men and society in modern urban Norway.

A wildly clever film that's part reality, part fiction, part theatre and part musical. Director Narges Shahid Kalhor directs an actor playing a version of herself. She doesn't want to be called "Shahid" (martyr) anymore, and is determined to change her name. Then, her heroic great-grandfather turns up – given the title of martyr 100 years ago in Iran – from whom his descendants inherited the name. He wants to dissuade his great-granddaughter, and shadows her in her quest along with his dancing friends. The Bavarian district administration sends her to a psychologist, who also has a difficult name… In the end, everyone is hindered: the director by bureaucracy, the actor by the director's demands, her great-grandfather by his descendant's determination and the film by itself. The winds of history blow her round and round in circles, through the scenic German town and through her own film shoot, as stereotypes and privileges are shaken up performatively and inventively, all while having a lot of fun along the way. Ambiguous autofiction with visual arcs, songs and poems: a tragicomic, defiant act of self-empowerment in exile.

In the heart of the Nepalese Himalayas, the spirited Pema embraces a polyandrous marriage with Tashi and his two younger brothers. They initially lead a harmonious life, but when Tashi fails to return from a trading trip to Lhasa, the legitimacy of Pema's unborn child is questioned by her community. Determined to prove her love and purity, she embarks on a quest to find Tashi. Accompanied by her brother-in-law, her now de facto spouse Karma, she goes into the wilderness. Karma is a monk. After initially resisting giving up his monastic life, he gradually comes to appreciate the simple existence of a secular life. However, urgent duties call him back to the monastery and Pema is left alone. As she navigates the harsh Himalayan terrain, her quest transcends the search for her missing husband. Pema becomes increasingly immersed in a spiritual search for meaning in which every step brings her closer to self-discovery and liberation.

Zhuang takes the blame for a theft actually carried out by his classmate Meng. But then she gives him the cold shoulder. Zhuang is just waiting for the right moment to make an impression.

A diverse cross-section of Israeli society converges in a single multi-use building, the Shikun. As people of different languages, origins and generations come together in highly theatrical encounters, they grapple with the current state of affairs. In a poignant metaphor inspired by Eugène Ionesco's famous play "Rhinoceros", some begin to turn into rhinoceroses, while others resist.

A young Turkish girl flees from an arranged marriage into West Germany. She finds factory work but then loses it and her only friend. She is raped, falls into prostitution, and is murdered.

Nails painted in red polish, tender hands invite the saints to dance. Out in front of the church, feet in the grass. Close-up, wide shot, doubling, solarisation. God-fearing folds of fabric get moving in earnest. A costume drama.

"Ensoulment" was Lassnig's term to describe how she made her own drawings move via stop-motion animation. Two figures, an encounter that begins as a confrontation before all differences are overcome. Her first animated film.

Stomach, legs, knees. The movement of the body parts collides with the movement of the film. A chin rises up from between two breasts. Iris looks at herself in a distorted mirror. "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child".

A scrawny chair does gymnastic exercises, an upholstered one puffs and sweats. Hand-drawn animation, burlesque sketches. Early cinema. Then she enters the scene and sits on a chair. Everything is sitting well!

A self-portrait with a stick. This film was completed in the same year as the painting, the facial expressions are similar. "The face of phases". What's new are the lyrics and her voice: "Until you are gone with the wind, be aware". Film 5 of the Forum Special programme "Ten Short Films by Maria Lassnig", which we are showing to complement Anja Salomonowitz's film Sleeping with a Tiger from the Forum main programme. Maria Lassnig's cinematic works are exercises in body transformations: Gratifying frictions, lively critiques, wonderful ideas, sometimes hand-drawn and sung by the director herself. Sketches and animation. Ideas about women in relationships are put slyly in motion.

Physical poses are set in motion, like in many of Lassnig's film works. Nudes. Engaged leg, free leg. A wild circular dance of silhouettes, templates and multiplications. And a game involving art historical platitudes to top it all off. Film 6 of the Forum Special programme "Ten Short Films by Maria Lassnig", which we are showing to complement Anja Salomonowitz's film Sleeping with a Tiger from the Forum main programme. Maria Lassnig's cinematic works are exercises in body transformations: Gratifying frictions, lively critiques, wonderful ideas, sometimes hand-drawn and sung by the director herself. Sketches and animation. Ideas about women in relationships are put slyly in motion.

The tone is lyrical, the voices are real, the bodies are sketchy: A couple talks at the phone and in bed (a casanova and his victim). "You helped me, you made me strong, but you can´t blame me for anything. When somebody loves so blindly, they pay with their life."
(Maria Lassnig)

Split screen: the drawing of a woman sitting at a real table perfectly decked out eats and eats and eats. Maria has her palm read; she finds family photos between the lines of her hand. "Are you possessive?" Film 8 of the Forum Special programme "Ten Short Films by Maria Lassnig", which we are showing to complement Anja Salomonowitz's film Sleeping with a Tiger from the Forum main programme. Maria Lassnig's cinematic works are exercises in body transformations: Gratifying frictions, lively critiques, wonderful ideas, sometimes hand-drawn and sung by the director herself. Sketches and animation. Ideas about women in relationships are put slyly in motion.

Scenes from the lives of the masters: Vermeer, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo. But what happened to the women? They become artworks, muses or secretaries. And having barely come into existence, Adam thus asks: "Why is she not God?"

A life in fourteen verses: tragicomic horror stories drawn by Lassnig herself that take the form of a street ballad sung by Lassnig herself: "It's art that always keeps me young, it makes the spirit hungry and then fills it up!".

Sandra takes Bus 243 through Medellín to work. She's forced to stand. She can't make it in time to the seats that become free. No one sees that it's her turn. The routine commotion of the bus journey envelops Sandra. She concentrates on the stop where she has to get off, as the camera concentrates on her in every scene of the film. As it trains its full focus on Sandra, her own gaze increasingly turns towards herself and her sexuality. In her debut film, director Yennifer Uribe Alzate succeeds in creating the concise portrait of an inner transformation, quite literally embodied by actor Alba Liliana Agudelo Posada. For fifteen years, Sandra's life has entirely revolved around her son. Now he is turning away from her. Time to start something new. She now does the rounds in a huge mall as a uniformed security guard with a truncheon on her belt, taking her job seriously. The film makes clever use of its locations, their sounds, the people that populate them and each new moment of attention that Sandra receives in the midst of this hustle and bustle: whether from colleagues who become friends or from Javier, the driver of Bus 243.

Birgit Minichmayr plays avant-garde painter Maria Lassnig at all ages and in all mental states, giving access to internal and external perspectives alike in radical fashion.

A coastal metropolis in Brazil. Heartbroken, Kai lands from Taiwan for a vacation. A broken air conditioner leads them to Fu Ang's umbrella shop. He could become a friend, but the rainy season doesn't come and his business disappears. While searching for Fu Ang, Kai discovers the story of Xiaoxin and a group of Chinese workers in a posh skyscraper. Imported products made in China deliver problems to their rich, white neighbors. In Xiaoxin's story, Kai finds himself strangely reflected.
Main characters come and go unexpectedly in this quiet comedy of misunderstandings, played by amateurs and actors. From one foreign city to the next they follow the needs of work more than a classic dramaturgy. But over the course of a hot, slow summer, tender bonds grow between them like islands in a sea full of sharks.

It is 1985 in the run-up to Christmas in a small town in County Wexford, Ireland. Bill Furlong toils as a coal merchant to support himself, his wife and his five daughters. Early one morning while out delivering coal at the local convent, he makes a discovery that forces him to confront his past and the complicit silence of a town controlled by the Catholic Church. Based on the novel of the same name by Claire Keegan.

40-year-old housewife Cai has lost track of who she is and who she wants to be. During one of her daughter's basketball matches, she inadvertently injures an elderly woman. This seemingly trivial event is a catalyst for a life spinning out of control, as past events resurface while she moves into an unknown future. Director Qiu Yang follows a series of multi-awarded shorts with his debut feature, a mesmerizing and intimate drama about a woman forced to confront the wreckage of her life and her longing for change?

The idealistic prison guard Eva faces the dilemma of her lifetime when a young man from her past is transferred to the prison where she works. Without revealing her secret, she asks to be moved to his block, the toughest and most violent in the prison. And so begins an unsettling psychological thriller in which Eva's sense of justice puts her morality and her future at stake.

An intergalactic odyssey of love, ambition, and self-discovery. Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Procházka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions. Alone in Deep Space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth for a second chance with Lenka?

Over four centuries ago, William Shakespeare collaborated with others on a play about the historical figure Sir Thomas More. In it, he wrote a speech in which More passionately articulates a defence of refugees, culminating in a poignant reference to their plight. Fast-forward to the present: Aleppo, in the midst of the Syrian civil war. Amira, a paediatric surgeon, performs a life-saving operation during the darkest days of the conflict. Through an unexpected twist of fate, she and her daughter become central characters in a dangerous tale that intricately interweaves the lives of five families spanning four continents and redefines all of their existences. Versions of this story continue to repeat themselves over the centuries. For this reason, Shakespeare aptly named this plight "The Strangers' Case".

Filmstunde_23 is the documentary examination of Edgar Reitz's attempt to introduce film as a subject in schools. In 1968 he taught 26 girls with an average age of 13 for a semester and had them make their own films using, among other things, Super 8 material. 55 years later he meets his students again. How much did that semester shape your film experience?

Willi is a street kid trying to make a living with petty crimes. He befriends both a journalist who wants to help him make an honest living and an older petty criminal looking for a quick buck.

Rocco Siffredi is considered to be the most famous porn star in the world. Born Rocco Tano in Ortona, Italy, he grows up in humble circumstances. His role models are his eldest brother Tommaso, who is dating the most desirable girl in town, and Supersex, a very particular superhero in a pornographic comic. When, in an incredible twist of fate, Rocco meets Supersex, he discovers that the two share the same superpower. This can save him from the difficult circumstances of his life, but it also forces him to pay the highest price: to give up love forever, or so it seems. The series depicts a life in the porn industry. It is about sex and passion but also about death. The story examines how masculinity is constructed and which questions of desire and power still dominate the relationship between men and women today.

April 2020––Lockdown. Etienne, a film director, and his brother Paul, a music journalist, are confined together in their childhood home with their new partners Morgane and Carole. Every room, every object, reminds them of their childhood, and the memories of the absents––their parents, their neighbors… This compels them to measure the distance that separates them from each other and the roots they share, those of their ground zero. As the world around them is becoming increasingly unsettling, unreality, and even a disturbing strangeness, invades their daily gestures and actions.

Filmed during the "Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour" in 2022, this documentary seamlessly weaves together exclusive archival gems with dynamic tour footage to capture the transformative journey of Canadian Merrill Nisker into the internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse that is Peaches. From the inception of the stage show to the rigorous rehearsals and riveting performances, the film provides an intimate look at the inner workings of the tour. As a feminist musician, producer, director and performance artist, Peaches has spent over two decades challenging gender expectations, solidifying her status alongside pop and music industry icons. Her fearless originality has called social norms into question, dismantled stereotypes and confronted patriarchal power structures. Through biting wit, she advocates for LGBTQIA+ rights and tackles issues of sexual and gender and identity, leaving an indelible mark on popular culture.

According to the mythology of the Hopi, the deity Maasau requires that this Indigenous nation pledge to lead a simple life upon entering the fourth world, which is our world of today. This life is based on agriculture, mainly the cultivation of corn. Techqua Ikachi, Land – My Life is a document of self-determination and the upholding of traditions within the Hopi community, who have been based in Hotevilla, Arizona since the beginning of the 20th century. It shows the life of the community in simple, clear images. They are split in terms of their stance towards white US government policy, primarily the question of whether Hopi children should go to the "white" schools of their "enemies" in Hotevilla or their "friends" in nearby Oraibi, which has been continually inhabited since the 11th century. Over 20 years, James Danaqyumptewa filmed and documented ceremonies and protests at the behest of the village elder. This Super-8 footage forms the basis of the film, which was made with the help of filmmaker Anka Schmid and artist Agnes Barmettler. From this footage, historical photos and Barmettler's images, the film forms a mosaic of the life of the Hopi.

Looking for clues about the "Chaplin of Theresienstadt", ghetto cabaret artist Karel Švenk, Schönemann meets his acquaintances and creates an inter-generative network of memory. Laughter was a form of defence. Resistance means commemoration.

Eight-year-old Feliciano spends his days herding alpacas in a remote region of the Andes. His only companions are Ronaldo, a young alpaca, and Rambo, an old dog. Feliciano chats with them about football and the Peruvian national team's World Cup qualifying matches. But behind this apparently monotonous and peaceful routine lies a threatening reality: a contaminated lake and his parents' deep-seated anxieties. A mining company is pressuring the community to sell their land and is resorting to radical means of intimidation: several alpacas are found with their throats slit. The authorities ignore all pleas for help; Feliciano and the village are on their own. When Ronaldo disappears one day, Feliciano embarks on a desperate search. Meanwhile, his parents and neighbours band together to take action against the company...

If there is anyone who embodies the current state of life in Croatia, it is the police detective Ivan Peric. The son of a fisherman, he became a detective as a way of avoiding working in the only really prospering industry of present-day Croatia – tourism. Now his life is consumed by trying to solve a series of essentially unsolvable murders of tourists. Because the tourists are so widely despised, no one will help Ivan. Evidence disappears into the labyrinth of bureaucracy. He is humiliated in public and online. In the local press, his boss even labels him an "uhljeb", the Croatian slur for a "lazy bureaucratic parasite". All of this takes place in the city of Split, where the breakup of Yugoslavia has left its mark.

Michael (9) is a latchkey kid. He is usually already asleep when his mother comes home late at night, and when he leaves for school in the morning, she, in turn, is still abed. She is a sex worker and cries a lot. Michael is saving up for a bicycle; he runs errands and feels forced to steal from his classmates regularly. Michael is often alone… The Anton Chekhov quote, "I am like the wind blowing across the lonely fields" was the impetus for this impressive sketch of everyday life from the perspective of a child in Berlin's Wedding district who must prematurely bow to the rules of the grown-up world. With sparse dialogue and in precisely stylised visuals, Time of Maturity is a story of social numbness and marginalisation. Both are accompanied by a generalised, latent sense of violence that, in the end, becomes manifest before the young boy's eyes.
The restoration was done as part of a transnational project with the goal of making the entire oeuvre of director Sohrab Shahid Saless available again. He worked in Germany beginning in 1974 and died in 1998 in the US.

Fictional film with documentary elements about a jazz musician in Berlin.

The film gives brief glimpses into rooms bathed in light. The Bolex camera whirs. Twenty years after the closure of Swiss publishing house Pendo, which was founded in 1971, its story is revealed by way of personification: heir Theresia Weigner and her partner, who repeatedly circle, examine and lose sight again of this legacy with all the weight it carries. Here articles of memory are piled high, cared for, stashed away. Remaining stock, no longer hot off the press, but still packaged up for sale, unfinished manuscripts, cover designs, cassettes, office supplies, correspondence and tax documents are all laid out like in a time capsule: books by Margarete Mitscherlich, Dorothee Sölle, Dom Hélder Câmara, illustrated volumes about Robert Lax or the Sihl Valley. René Frölke's film gives a structure to this archive and becomes a simple chamber of wonders. He finds his own annotations within the inner pull exerted by the artefacts and accompanies these stubborn, overwhelmed preservers on their way through their everyday life amid the piles of material. Written elements from the film script also play a part.
At the end of the corridor, jazz music sounds from a small radio.

Nobody knows where the woman comes from. She is sitting on a park bench and diligently playing a child's recorder. She says she is from France. With no money or means of supporting herself, she has been advised to teach French. This is how she comes to have two Korean women as her pupils. The woman likes to walk barefoot and to lie down on rocks. And when she is feeling up to it, she tries to see each instant in a non-verbal way and to live life as rationally as she can. But things remain as hard as ever. She relies on the Korean alcoholic drink of makgeolli to provide a bit of comfort every day.

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, music journalist Ruth and her father Edek, a Holocaust survivor, go on a tour of his homeland of Poland. Their journey takes them to Warsaw, Łódź, Krakow and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Ruth wants to discover her own roots and to explore her family's history. Edek, who back then made the decision to leave Poland forever and be done with the past, accompanies his daughter primarily to keep an eye on her. The charming bon vivant follows his own amusing agenda on the trip, filled with distraction and entertainment. Only when the two visit the family's former home and meet the Polish family who now live there does Edek's attitude start to change. For the first time in their lives, father and daughter truly grow closer to each other. This journey of two New Yorkers through post-socialist Poland is a powerful example of how reconnecting with a painful past does not have to be painful in itself.

Frantz Fanon is a renowned politician and decolonisation activist. This feature focuses on his visionary social therapy methods during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1953 to 1956. A piece of sober anti-racism.

A film about performance, poetry, music and the experience of people at war. Searching for meaning in the never-ending suffering and conflicts that echo the past, Turn in the Wound looks at the eternal quest for freedom in the face of oppression and military force. The voice of Patti Smith, reciting works by Artaud, Daumal and Rimbaud, joins the words of soldiers and people living in the combat zones in Ukraine and those of its President Volodymyr Zelenskyj.

Berlin, shortly before the Wall was built. At the last moment, the East Berlin truck driver Kalle flees with Christine across the border to the west of the city. But even here, life is not as rosy as they had hoped.

Three sisters living on Canary Islands find their routines transformed by a sense of magic and meditation. Each sister copes in her own way without a breadwinner expressing themselves through their body mixing realism and fantasy.

The Visitor is a British-set reimagining of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 film Teorema. Pasolini's enigmatic protagonist, known to everyone as "the visitor", arrives at the house of an upper-class family and seduces each family member one after the other. When he suddenly departs, he leaves behind an emptiness for which the rest attempt to compensate in different ways. In Bruce LaBruce's The Visitor, it is a refugee who washes up in a small suitcase on the banks of the River Thames in London. He is one of several identical-looking men who simultaneously emerge from suitcases in other locations around the city. Dressed in the guise of a homeless man, he arrives at the house of an upper-class family and gets to know the maid. When she passes him off as her nephew, the family invites him to also work for them as a live-in servant. The guest makes love with each of the residents of the house one after the other, depicted in explicit sex scenes. Each member of the household experiences a radical sexual and spiritual transformation.

Now nearly 90 years of age, Park Soo-nam had already lived half her life when she swapped the pen for the camera to tell the story of Koreans in Japan: discrimination, forced labour, traces of the atomic bomb. "Beyond description" at every moment.

Free-floating yet rigorously structured, this essay film presents botanist and educationalist Catharina Helena Dörrien and her time in Orange-Nassau in the 18th century. Via regulations and floral formulas, nature philosophy and social policy converge.

The woodchip wallpaper is pixelated, the sound heavily out of sync. The distance between Berlin and Isfahan: just under 4000 km. Not something so easy to bridge. The webcam does its best, creating the possibility of intimacy, but sometimes also simply testifing to the gulf. Over ten years, Faraz Fesharaki documented his exchanges with his family, a digital dialogue between the one who moved away to study film in Germany and those who stayed behind in the sizable Iranian city. Father Hassan and mother Mitra discuss the traditional role of the woman and present persimmons from the garden. He mutates into Abbas Kiarostami for a moment, she recalls her time in prison. Cousin Rahi supplements this intergenerational diaspora conversation from Austria with his favourite recipe: toast, mozzarella and egg. Much remains unsaid and is only alluded to. What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov? also narrates between the lines, with texts on a red background that Fesharaki edits into the film like notes and messages, as well as VHS image memories. For ultimately, this debut film is also about a dilemma: the desire to be understood without being easily able to describe one's feelings.

The people of the forests pound their drums to keep their chants alive. Those of the city shriek of "Progress!" Still more rush in to seize the treasures of the land, only to be met by new voices shouting in defiance.

17-year-old Jeff is invited by his friend Max's family to spend some time with them in film director Blake Cadieux's secluded log cabin.

Aicha lives in the isolated north of Tunisia with her husband and youngest son. The family lives in anguish after the departure of the eldest sons Mehdi and Amine to the violent embrace of war. When Mehdi unexpectedly returns home with a mysterious pregnant wife, a darkness emerges, threatening to consume the entire village. Aicha is caught between her maternal love and her search for the truth.

Mona has fled Syria with her Kurdish family and ends up in a primary school in Berlin-Wedding. Things are tough in the school. Everyone on the girls' football team Mona is on plays against each other. But only "team work makes the dream work".

This film might be the final chapter of a story we're all part of. A chamber piece set in a US city. Keren Cytter reveals her ensemble very slowly: young people loosely connected to each other and yet existentially linked. Trying to understand themselves and others. Money is a problem, to say nothing of life. Uniqueness. Everyone is carrying some sort of burden: Angel an old flame, Timur drugs, Nicole the ashes of her dead father (in her shopper bag). Death leaves behind traces, filth, reality. Beliefs pop up alongside shortcomings: "You're too white." In constantly shifting relationship constellations, they wear their intense feelings on their sleeves, get wrapped up in each other and fall into magnificent loops of dialogue. And yet every attempt at intimacy leads to another moment of helplessness. "It's a vacuum cleaner. Do you wanna fuck me?" – "No." Within all this somnambulant swerving, technological gadgets point to the future. The close and the distant, identity are easier to negotiate online for digital natives – and to market. A cleverly constructed tragedy about chilling, with fantastic synth sounds and one of the best uses of a drone in cinema history.

In the middle of the school year, 14-year-old Elias meets his new neighbour Alexander, a boy from Brussels who seems self-confident and headstrong. The two quickly hit it off. Alexander asks Elias if he has a girlfriend – and reveals without hesitation that he's into boys himself. Elias enjoys spending time with Alexander but keeps his burgeoning feelings to himself. Afraid of the reactions of those around him, he becomes entangled in a web of lies until he no longer knows how to extricate himself apart from to push Alexander away. Elias feels completely alone. However, after a heartfelt conversation with his grandfather about how much he loved his deceased wife, Elias realises that love is too precious to let it slip away. He has to find a way to win Alexander back...

Tim is out clubbing with his mates and is having a great time. But then the buoyant mood changes when he suddenly loses control. A little later, he is picked up on the street by an ambulance, but the paramedics see no need to take further action. The police also refuse to help Tim home. So the 18-year-old sets off alone. In the middle of the night, he rings on strangers' doorbells but they also want to get rid of him as quickly as possible. The police show up again. This time, they take Tim with them and, shortly afterwards, drop him off in the middle of nowhere on a lonely country road. With his strength ebbing away, Tim struggles through the impenetrable darkness. He will never find his way back home. Who will accept responsibility for his death?

Johnny calls himself "the panther". He is a trickster and a fraudster, a totally nice guy and a ruthless criminal, a human catastrophe and a loving father; but above all, he is a gambler. As a confidential informant, he provides the police with tip-offs about criminal gangs and makes big money by playing both sides – because he wants to get out of debt, because he promised his drug-addicted daughter a new life, because he keeps saying that he will soon be running away to Vietnam. No matter what the story is, Johnny needs cash. In order to rise up through the ranks, he carries out brutal acts of violence sanctioned by the police. When Johnny meets the gang leader Porno, he sees his chance to hit the jackpot: he will outsmart them all, cops and gangsters, and then finally go on the run, taking nothing and no one with him except the thousands in his pocket. Because a panther thinks only about itself; it has to be free and has to go it alone, right Johnny? Alone until death.

Cem and his five best friends have been a close-knit group since childhood. In fact, Cem regards the others as his true family. But he is changing: becoming tougher and more brutal, threatening his friends and frightening their relatives. After a stay in a psychiatric hospital, Cem fails to take his prescribed medication. His threats of violence and aggressive outbursts grow increasingly common. What is going on inside him remains incomprehensible to the outside world. It is only around Lara that he behaves differently. Cem's world is alien to her, maybe that's why he likes her so much. Cem's mates are torn between loyalty to their childhood friend and fear of the ever-increasing danger he poses. At some point, this fear grows so great that it erupts into an act of brutal vigilantism.

When Earlie Thomas travels to Ghana to inherit her murdered father's legacy, her life is suddenly in danger. Ralf, her lover from Germany, tries every means possible to bring her to safety.

Inci's mother died during the night. The five-year-old wanders alone through the vast hilly landscape by the Black Sea. She meets a young woman in a red sweater and is fascinated by her. Zeynep, who grew up here as well, has returned after many years away. Her luggage is heavy and the journey is long. Together, they walk through the sunshine and the clouds, from one father to another, from dawn until darkness.

Following In the Shadows, the film Scorched Earth is the second part of Thomas Arslan's Trojan trilogy. Twelve years after career criminal Trojan was forced to flee Berlin, the search for contracts leads him back to the city. Trojan is broke and urgently needs a new job. But Berlin has changed and his old contacts are no longer of much use. Plus, Trojan's maxim of only ever working for cash is hard to follow in an increasingly digitalised world. So it takes some time before the middlewoman Rebecca finally offers him the prospect of a lucrative contract: a painting by Caspar David Friedrich is to be stolen from a museum. The heist unites Trojan with getaway driver Diana, his former mate Luca and the young Chris. Everything looks promising, but the shadowy client and his henchman Victor have their own plans for the painting. Soon it becomes less about the money and more about getting out alive.

It is a hot summer in Taipei. Water is scarce, but melons make a good alternative. A young Korean woman reencounters an old acquaintance and, over the course of nightly meetings in her apartment, a tender, almost non-verbal romance develops. Shiang-chyi has no idea that Hsiao-kang now works as an actor in cheap porn movies that an amateur film crew shoots in the same high-rise. Melons are involved… Big-city isolation and its close companion, alienation, alongside sexual exploitation are at the core of the modern love story told by The Wayward Cloud, with the diverse uses for melon guaranteeing both annoying, but also comedic, moments. The film garnered three awards at the 2005 Berlinale, including the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution.
The 4K restoration brings out the contrast between the silent, dark scenes in the urban jungle and the cheerful, colourful musical interludes that repeatedly interrupt the story and function as ironic commentary.

Tú me abrasas is an adaptation of "Sea Foam", a chapter from Cesare Pavese's "Dialoghi con Leucò" published in 1947. The ancient Greek poet Sappho and the nymph Britomartis meet beside the sea and have a conversation about love and death. Sappho is said to have thrown herself into the ocean from lovesickness. Britomartis apparently tumbled off a cliff and into the water while fleeing from a man. Together, the two discuss the stories and images that have emerged around them to try and understand, at least for a moment, the bittersweet nature of desire. The film adapts not only the text but also footnotes and gaps in the story. For example, the fact that, in 1950, a desperate Pavese committed suicide in a hotel room with this book by his side. Or that Sappho's poems have survived only in fragments. Or that sea foam is historically and scientifically associated with fertility and bacteria, that is, with life itself. "Everything dies in the sea and comes back to life," says Britomartis. Tú me abrasas introduces new readings and translations that go beyond the myths by Pavese and Sappho.

A schoolteacher's life is disrupted by a chime that brings with it an increasing sense of dread.

Rural policewoman Andrea wants to end her marriage and become a detective inspector in the city. After a birthday party, her drunken soon-to-be ex-husband runs out in front of her car. In a state of shock, Andrea commits a hit-and-run.

In 1970s East Berlin, two teenagers rebel against pervasive paternalism. In settling accounts with everyday and cultural life in East Germany, this film farce from the environs of Berlin's Volksbühne theatre tried out a new cinematic language.

An homage to Berlin: to the chaos, the hidden signs and the city as a palimpsest. The eye is drawn to the Museum of the Inconspicuous, constructed from the urban material which becomes the aesthetic representative and identification space for its users and residents. Based on his experiences in the urban space of Berlin, the narrator describes a subjective paradise in which human-made systems of order are repeatedly disrupted by the chaos factor.

A girl draws a circle on the ground. Passers-by step into it, one by one. Soon the circle is full of people.

China at the end of the 1990s, lunch in an extended family. The father works in distant Shenzhen and is rarely home. The grandmother cooks and keeps an eye on the children. The air is filled with levity, longing, worries and exhaustion. Memories of a bygone era, told from the perspective of the six-year-old daughter.

Six months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army withdraws from some occupied regions and settlements, leaving a trail of shockingly similar traces of war crimes. In the reports from several human rights organisations and independent groups of journalists, there is increasing evidence that Russian and Belarusian troops in the occupied territories have also been pursuing the systematic destruction of the civilian population's national identity. Based on accounts from civilian victims, the filmmaker addresses this system of oppression. The individual statements are voiced by two Ukrainian actors, while the streets of his Berlin neighbourhood serve as the film's backdrop. To determine the responsibility he himself might bear for this war, the filmmaker reflects on his childhood and school education in post-Soviet Belarus.

A fictitious video correspondence between two women of different generations. A director is planning a film about her struggles with being a mother and remaining a filmmaker. But she is failing to make any real progress with the project. She turns for help to a writer who has reflected on her motherhood in a novel. The author replies with a simple suggestion: instead of writing about the film that doesn't seem to be working out, why not just write about her own situation? She could describe what she likes about life with her daughter, what she misses and what mattered in her previous life. The author would also like to know what a video correspondence might look like. The filmmaker now adds images to her words. The letter becomes a film, and this film still has room for a completely different narrative.

Mr. Ham decides to have his heart removed to free himself from his complicated emotions. The doctor assures him that, in this day and age, this procedure presents no problem. Of a pensive disposition, Mr. Ham keeps his heart for a while after the removal in the hope of understanding it better someday.
Takotsubo syndrome, also known as stress cardiomyopathy or broken-heart syndrome, is a rare, acute and often serious dysfunction of the heart muscle that usually arises from extraordinary emotional or physical stress.

What if the famous biblical ark, the last refuge of humankind and the animal kingdom during the great flood, was not merely an act of divine intervention but, instead, a meticulously planned programme for professional reintegration? The director uses a video game world she built herself as a filming location and joins everybody on the ark in the form of her avatar. There, her questions about the present collide with the ancient narratives of the Old Testament.

An elaborate fashion shoot is planned on the beach, but the backdrop built in advance has been swallowed by the sea overnight. The young assistant is the only one who tries to save the situation. She sends out a camera drone to search for the backdrop and the film slowly slips into the magical.

In her essay film, Eva Hiller takes us to unknown and inhospitable places at night. Whether it's a power plant, a waste incineration plant or a discotheque, Frankfurt is constantly changing and ruling. Off-screen reflections on the phenomenon of darkness and dreamy thoughts of restless city dwellers accompany the forays through the darkness.

Guddal, a free-spirited five year old, loves eating the sour sweeties called Anaar Daana. Her antics with her brother Laddoo often land her in trouble. One day, a sad incident in the house causes a shift in her idyllic world.

Hind is a young karate athlete. One day, after she is subjected to abusive behaviour at her training centre, the world of the hard of hearing girl becomes distorted. Determined, Hind looks for a way to reclaim her power.
Inspired by a true story, Sukoun sensitively reveals what happens when a supposedly safe space is shattered. Experienced through the eyes and ears of the protagonist, the film moves between pain and tenderness, silence and noise, the hidden and the obvious.

"I can't live without my children!" It is the cry of a desperate mother when Nina Kern, in her late 20s, has her three children taken away from her by a court order. They have been living in a children's home for four months. The young mother is accused of "neglect" and an "anti-social lifestyle". The court grants Nina one last chance, appointing a civil engineer and a teacher from her neighbourhood as her guarantors. Will Nina be able to prove herself a fit parent? For her portrayal of Nina, Katrin Sass won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 1982 Berlinale.
Bürgschaft für ein Jahr is being presented barrier-free for the first time in the cinema with German subtitles for the hearing impaired and audio description as part of the Heiner Carow Prize ceremony. The award, endowed with 5,000 euros, is presented by the DEFA Foundation and goes to a first or second, predominantly German documentary or feature film made by a filmmaker currently based and working in Germany. This year's jury comprises Evelyn Schmidt (director), Cem Kaya (director) and Linda Söffker (DEFA Foundation).

In a village near the southern Chinese city of Chaozhou, a boy has spent the summer with his grandfather. As the last day of the holidays approaches, he gathers together his hard-earned savings to fulfil a dream: he has long yearned for a city hairstyle. But the gap between expectation and reality is large. This story of a boy who bids farewell to his childhood and embarks on a journey towards self-discovery transcends the boundaries of a small village and resonates with universal themes such as growing up and the unpredictable nature of life.

In the Chancy neighbourhood of Pointe-à-Pitre, the economic capital of the Guadeloupe archipelago, bulldozers from demolition firm Avenir Déconstruction are pulling down residential blocks consigned to history. On nightly patrols L'homme-vertige : Tales of a City follows the city's wanderers through the empty streets. These are dizzying circumstances. They all carry the wounds of this city within them and are now seers. Circulating throughout the internal and external spaces, both endangered, are the director's empathetic conversations and relationships – with the lung-diseased former freedom fighter Ti Chal, with the crack addict Priscilla, with the wild, angry and then calmer Eddi, with the fish scaler Kampèch. Even elegant Erik resists the inevitable dilapidation with his view of the city, his recitation of texts by Joël Beuze and Amílcar Cabral. Malaury Eloi Paisley: "And I ask myself why I feel the need to wander the streets of Pointe-à-Pitre."

An emotive portrait of a multispecies matriarchal family composed using found footage from communist Poland.

Director Gernot Wieland worked for twelve years with an animal trainer who taught birds to fly in circles or squares. The film examines how aesthetic norms influence Western views of the world and why these norms end in failure.

Quebrante follows Ms. Erismar, a retired teacher and spelunker, as it traverses the caves, ruins, and phantasmagorias of the Trans-Amazonian Highway – still a fresh scar of the wrecked dream of Brazil's history – portraying its stones and ghosts.

A woman dreams of a future economic crisis affecting the cryptocurrency market. Thousands have been cryogenized, awaiting better times. Are they suspended, or are they falling into the void?

A housekeeper receives a film made by her daughter. The film, combining found footage of Thailand during the Cold War with present-day images of Bangkok, triggers a re-telling of her own story of coming to the capital.

Rose, a little girl in Tehran, lives with her mother and her dog. She discovers that her neighbours are killing sheep. Her mother explains that the animals are being sacrificed in a traditional ritual where their meat is cooked and distributed among people. Rose considers it foolish to follow this old tradition in modern life. She decides to save the remaining sheep.

Prem, the charismatic host of a popular radio show offering advice on matters of the heart, is himself plagued by heartache. He seeks solace in the rugged mountains. As he goes through his own emotional upheaval, desperate calls from listeners asking him for advice echo through the wilderness. Both Prem and his audience try to navigate their way through the treacherous terrain of love. A gripping tale of emotional turmoil and self-discovery.

In 2019, a nationwide movement forms in Chile to create a new constitution. For three years, the film accompanies Indigenous, feminist, militant, legalistic, anarchist and conservative activists. A timely large-scale canvas of democratic protest.