We have probably all thought about the influence of digital logic and algorithms on our perception of the world at some point. This equally humorous and profound short film takes the interactive online tour service “Google Street View” as a starting point for an investigation of where the reality mapped by fifteen automatic cameras and the one perceived by human senses drift apart – and what the consequences are.
The “Accidental Animals” that happened to come across the lenses of Google cars defy the claim that every area, however remote, is reproduced as realistically as possible. Instead, their appearance in the frame produces unintentionally funny situations. Like glitches in the matrix, they remind us that we are watching only a patchy series of snapshots. Before we “drop” into a random place on the map, before we arrive to look around, the animals are already there. The fact that Google’s technology blurs many of those bird, dog and pig faces – like ours – to protect personality rights furnishes the directors with the perfect excuse for a provocative question: How is it that in this respect the algorithm acts more ethically than the humans who programmed it?

The truth is hidden behind blurs, but the allure of secrecy fades as the clarity increases. A woman in love ventures out of her cocoon to go out into the mundane world of “dead language.” Accompanied by a restless musical motif by Marian Mentrup, “Achill” boldly balances on the thin line between two universes – with raw, intimate drawings, shimmering stones and overpainted video sequences.

Where the sandy beach of the Salton Sea, the biggest lake in California, begins to crunch harder, it does not even consist of sand any more: Millions of dead fish, plants and insects pile up on the shore to form a highly toxic substance. This is how Derek explains it, a member of a Cahuilla tribe that managed to escape an attempted genocide in the 19th century to the Salton Sea and now sees itself as a protective force for the once flourishing but increasingly deserted area and its outcasts.
Derek is one of the many locals whose trails Lukas Marxt and Vanja Smiljanić calmly follow, gliding with them through the desolate landscapes. In the process, they pick up slivers of nuclear history time and again: During the Second World War, the area was a test site for the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The experiments continued through the Cold War; the armed forces are still training here. The film finds its starting point and end two states away: The nuclear devices were sent on their way from Wendover, Utah. The local Airfield Museum pays tribute to their development. Once, the camera performs an almost weightless dance around a model of the Hiroshima bomb “Little Boy” on display there, to the sounds of the indestructible World War classic “We’ll Meet Again.”

Art is often in the unseen, and in this AR project art is in the motion. Motion is what brings together the changing characters, drawn by exhibition visitors and updated daily. By bringing anyone and everyone’s artwork to the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, this piece challenges the notion of authorship in the art space. Come draw!

Can school be exciting and even fun? The integrative pre-vocational August Sander school in Berlin-Friedrichshain at least seems the perfect place for this. The noise of the cars of the big city can be heard from the distance, birds are singing on the lush green grounds. Lessons here include horticulture, agriculture and animal care. And when you watch the students weed garden plots and feed rabbits, things look extremely enviable at first glance. But of course, even in this paradisiacal place there are conflicts, annoying teachers and the anxious question: What comes after graduation?
This documentary follows the school life of a group of pupils with different learning disorders and other impairments over one school year. At its focus are young people who are on the way from training to work, from childhood to adulthood, and struggle to find their place in the narrow regulatory system of school and in society.

The winters in the Siberian taiga may be long, but at least Moscow is far away. In the early 1990s, a religious community lead by former traffic cop Sergei Torop settled in the endless landscape at the foot of the eastern Sayan Mountains. After a religious revival he calls himself Vissarion, wears flowing robes, long hair and acts as the Son of God on earth. Misty-coloured portraits on which “the Teacher” gazes obliviously into the distance hang in the homes of his followers. Together they have created the model town of “Abode of Dawn”, also called “Sun City” by the locals, to build a new society.
Director Kristina Shtubert travelled to Siberia five times between 2013 and 2022. Her gaze is observational, less concerned with the search of faith and meaning than with the question whether the Sun City dwellers are happier here than in their discarded lives. And what would their alternatives be? More and more, the long-term observation turns into a post-Soviet narrative of a faded-out state. Meanwhile, the militarisation of the country progresses. Moscow is coming closer.