Sheila died of hay dust in the lungs, and the family-owned farm somehow died along with the horse. After it was sold, the narrator visits it digitally on 3D online maps. But even the most detailed view reveals nothing about the grave of the three-legged farm cat. Using animation and image processing, he reclaims the remembered place of his childhood and youth.

At home in the uncanny: Startled, a woman turns on the light, hesitates, listens and goes to the door, full of dark forebodings … In this montage of similar scenes from Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s, the various actresses merge into a meta-protagonist who experiences the same horror over and over again: She is trapped in her home and in her classic movie role.

Rose and Rolf in the still-young FRG. He, 13 years her senior, was in the Second World War. She, who wants to have many children, accepts his proposal and leaves school. Rose watches Super 8 home movies from the fifties, sixties and seventies with her granddaughter Annika Mayer, the director of “Home Sweet Home”: her two boys in short leather pants, a home with a manicured front garden, dad coming home from work, mom cooking soup with sausage links. Rose does not recognise herself in these ideal images of the German economic miracle. This pretty young woman is a stranger to her.

Annika begins to ask questions. Together with her grandmother, she starts to look for traces of domestic violence in the latter’s marriage, which is invisible in the films. But Rose’s open narratives gradually make her experiences tangible. What biographical abysses may lurk behind Rolf’s proud smile? Judiciously deployed slow motion effects dissect the apparent domestic happiness. Atonal and hyperrealistic sounds lie under the distorted soundtrack. The birds sing all too happily, the idyll suddenly seems deceptive.

Lamine recently moved from Germany to Senegal with his family. His parents have bought some land and are now starting a farm. There’s always a lot to do and Lamine helps out after school. The fish have to be fed and the plants in the garden watered. But the afternoons are too hot to work, so it’s off to the beach with his new friend.

A woman’s voice shouts and whispers her wishes, depending on how she feels and what she wants. Her cartoonishly reduced and exaggerated body dances compromise out of the world. Straight, zig-zag or in sweeping curves, on we go through the hustle and bustle of life. Anne Isensee formulates an enthusiastic wake-up call for self-determination and lust for life.

A city crossing: Many things happen, one after the other, at the same time and sometimes inexplicable. Even in animated images reduced almost to symbols there is a lot to discover at this place. A speaker describes what is happening in words for people with visual impairments, but she increasingly questions the meaningfulness and translatability of what she sees.

In a sterile white examination room, a young woman is asked by a doctor to undress completely. An exhaustive examination of the protagonist’s skin begins during which every centimetre, the palm of her hand, the sole of her foot, the back and also the genital area are closely scrutinised. The doctor meticulously probes every nook and cranny of the young woman’s outer shell until she is able to identify a suspicious birthmark. A timely appointment to remove the mole is made.

Exposed and irritated, the protagonist finds herself confronted with her fears about the surgery and the after-effects of the examination. A tiny birthmark triggers an inner process: an analysis of her own body and the control others are allowed over it. Fragile lines on scarred paper and a tonal design that gives us goosebumps make us participate intensely in her emotions.

As she visits an exhibition, a graphic designer is mesmerised by the photocollages of the anti-fascist John Heartfield, who became known as the “montage dada.” Stefanie falls through a vortex of paper and photo snippets into an old-fashioned looking studio. A pair of scissors – an analogue tool she herself hardly uses – attracts her attention. She begins to cut a figure out of cardboard, a miniature version of the artist who at once addresses her and explores his life and works with her. The studio turns out to be a living archive that ceaselessly produces documents and information about Johnny. The research gives Stefanie, stressed and disappointed by her job, new motivation, and the courage to choose a different path as a designer.

Both protagonists have the same profession and find themselves facing the same questions about the significance and recognition of their work. Both are struggling in their own way with frustration and fears, caused by the different social and political circumstances of their generations. The different elements of this animated documentary come together in a dialogic collage that reflects on the mission of art, its educative and critical power, and its potential to bring about changes in our society.

Three directors prepare a film about the chemical factory in the Cologne district of Kalk, on whose former grounds a shopping mall has been built. With some self-mockery they talk about their investigation and search for sources, their capitulation to the resistance of the material. Meanwhile, an archivist struggles with a mis-spooled 16mm film. Historical images splutter across the monitor of his analogue editing table. The silhouette of the factory with its towering chimneys is discernible. Site plans are shown, chemicals are blithely mixed. In an album, the filmmakers discover faded photos of female forced labourers. Suddenly, questions arise: Which stories are kept, which forgotten? Throwing away is part of his job, after all, the archivist explains in the finest Rhenish accent. What does this statement mean for the directing trio?

Two young girls are drifting in the water of a public swimming pool. The film adopts this drifting attitude as it follows them through nocturnal Montreal and their daily life. Sometimes the two speak English, sometimes Inuktitut. Kathy and Teresa come from a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada. They show each other smartphone pictures of seals and bears they killed themselves. They read about the special relationship between the Inuit and their sledge dogs, which has lost its importance today. Home assignments are done in a park – the scent of the trees reminds them a little of home. They close their eyes. With great tenderness, the camera captures the deep bond between the two best friends who share the same heritage and language. Kathy has written a moving song in Inuktitut. In simple, clear words, she sings of the feelings and yearnings of a young Indigenous woman.

A new Musifants episode! Grandpa Günter – a retired circus elephant – and grandson Charlie take another musical excursion into the songbook of the 1920s and 1930s. This time, it’s the little green cactus’s birthday and Charlie bakes a cake. No sooner is it on the table, smelling delicious, than a bit is missing. Charlie wants to know who has been sneaking a bite …

Sometimes it really takes only two minutes to see through life. In her minimalist animated film, Anne Isensee comes quickly and straightforwardly to the point. What the direct line sketches out as a concept of life looks alluring, too. It is a good thing that there are one or two kinks after all. Nonchalant, witty and profound – and awarded the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig in 2017.

A colourful luminous river flows through the black void. Geometrical surfaces dance in small repeating loops around wondrous organic plants. The abstract lines, rectangles and semicircles briefly form animated figures. Tina Turner’s classic in the musical interpretation of Miles Davis and the animated visual world of Irina Rubina and Michelle Brand.

On the balcony Nele is really close to the clouds, though it would be much nicer to take a balloon ride and be even closer. The plan isn’t easy to realise, as Nele’s mother has mobility problems. They need help with every activity and their daily life is co-organised by many other people. They are doing fine together, but a trip in a hot air balloon would be something else …

A camera roams incessantly through an apartment and a life without any particular hallmarks. Sound and animated interventions portray family bliss and unhappiness, quarrels and separation, age and death. Radio news open the window a little to what is going on in the world outside. The constantly changing interiors tell of people who were at home here without ever showing them.

A brief historical summary to begin with: The Lagos International Trade Fair centre was built in the mid-1970s, intended to serve as a marketplace for the non-aligned states. Archival footage and inserts alternate abruptly. While the news images of the time are rather propagandistic in tone, the inserts supply the sober facts.

Some fifty years later, vast tracts of the exhibition halls are under water – an ideal place for ferns and other humidity-loving plants. The initially static camera begins to move. Young craftsmen have converted one tract of the giant complex into workshops: they hammer, carpenter, repair bicycles, prepare meals. There is also a lot of activity outside the rambling site with its artificial lake; people are still trading; everyone is busy with something. A woman’s voice remembers bygone days while two young men ride a bicycle through an empty exhibition hall. A building may have lost its original purpose, but new and independent life has moved in. An open, trans-historic space in the making.