The winner of the first golden “Animation Dove”: nine years of war between Greeks and Trojans have gone past. The impulsive Patroclus, comrade in arms and bed mate of the rather battle-weary Achilles, thinks that victory can be achieved by other means. The tragedy takes its course – just as it was passed down in the classical myths but supplemented by what they left unspoken.

Who hasn’t?! You arrive in a foreign land, ready to embrace the world, but the world refuses to be embraced. Tomoko from Japan travels to London. She is well-prepared, works hard on a language course and has brought her goldfish to fight homesickness. And yet she feels lonely and unable to utter a word when spoken to. What to do? How about a slight change of perspective?

What did the Corona lockdown look like from a window in the residential towers of posh East London in the spring of 2020? The reflective two-week observation shows serious shifts in the everyday coordinate system of a privileged urban population at an immediate level. Meanwhile, the vacant apartments in the district, which were deliberately caused by speculation, represent a warning sign for the future of investor-friendly urban spaces.

It begins like a classic “girl meets boy” story: Faith, a charismatic accordion player from Great Britain, travels to Serbia to learn about Roma folk music. She meets the violinist Branko, who is instantly smitten. They quickly marry and form a band. But with musical success their love dwindles. A turbulent story of expectations, disappointments and the dream of happiness.

Faith enters into Branko’s life in an almost disturbingly casual way. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by the new country, the sceptical family and the cultural differences. Branko on the other hand adores his new wife and boldly enters a new world. They are a big hit as a duo – travelling around the world and playing bigger and bigger venues. But while Faith feels as happy as a lark, Branko seems like an uprooted tree. Instead of dealing with their differences they keep moving on rapidly, until one ruthless step follows the next. Catherine Harte has produced a captivating and very intimate portrait of this contradictory couple. Relentlessly close and yet compassionate, the film develops an impressive pull you don’t want to resist.

An old man and his granddaughter are sitting in a quiet square in the middle of the city. Suddenly he has a heart attack, falls to the ground – and time freezes. This could be the famous second where you see your life flash before your inner eye. But in which direction is it moving? Forward into the past, backward into the future or sideways into the now?

This insight into an international subculture shows that the ballroom scene is more than just extravagant competitions. Five ballroom dancers describe a reality in which white-dominated, heteronormative patterns have no place. They talk about ideas of cultural appropriation, about safe spaces, community and mutual support, about identity and self-expression.

An eerily beautiful bedtime story with lots of loose ends. Featuring: a princess and her toy mouse, a mother who advises the girl to always be suspicious of strangers, and a bizarre grandfather who secretly munches dogfood. It’s possible that the sleepy child is taking in only a quarter of this absurd and morbid tale, but that’s probably a good thing.

Since 1865, no cab driver in London has been able to omit “The Knowledge”. It requires the memorisation of 320 routes, an achievement that takes years, but has been made into a joke by the robot cars of the future. A flesh-and-blood cabby “interacts with people from all walks of life”, according to a brochure by Transport for London, and that’s “a lot more than just taking people from A to B”. Visually fascinating, Colson traces his interviewees’ mind maps of the city using the mapping technology of robot cars.

A distant idyll featuring well-behaved children at play: a prettily illustrated and well-labelled world. An unsuspecting rabbit scampers there which may be cute but can also be tortured and slaughtered. And when a goblin who can turn insects into flashing diamonds springs from the dead body, one would have to be a stupid child indeed not to smell a business opportunity. Good children! Bad children!

What happens when we digitize our consciousness? We explore a virtual refuge of three-dimensional pixels. Gradually the outlines of a city unfold before our eyes. A choir of memories of its (digital) population is heard, tracing the past. The subjective knowledge of history fades away in a jumble of voices and pixels.

An inventive examination of the legacy of the 1990s: In his experimental short film, Ben Young portrays the figure of the then U.S. president – whom he is said to have met once in person in Louisville, Kentucky – as a foil for the questionable political developments, the beginnings of a globalised world and a society marked by collective amnesia. The director’s intelligent, witty and very personal reckoning with Bill Clinton.