After reunification, immigration made the Israelite Religious Community of Leipzig grow to considerable size, too big for its old rooms. The Ariowitsch House, built in the 1920s as an Israelite old people’s home, is to become the home of a generously dimensioned cultural and community centre – and at the same time commemorate the residents of the home who were deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. But the start of the development is delayed: neighbouring land owners file a lawsuit. Miriam Pfeiffer intervenes in the ongoing public debate, asking citizens of the city about their suspicions concerning reasons of the refusal that the competent court may not be aware of.

Surreal formations, stalactites, rocks moulded by water and poisonous bubbling. The images that turn into an exploration of her own soul for Paula Ďurinová seem like a dream landscape. Grief plays a key role – Ďurinová’s grandparents both died during the Covid pandemic. She looks for them between the gases and fumes, dives through a body of water that has ceased to exist but in whose cool freshness her grandfather once bathed his feet and across which she used to swim with her grandmother.
“Lapilli” works in an associative and abstract way. At the same time, the minerals recovered by Ďurinová have something very concrete about them: compressed, buckled and broken, sharp-edged, corroded or gently polished. At one point, the director compares herself to a stone detached from its rock, questioning and without orientation, drifting around: “I don’t feel the ground anymore.” “Lapilli” leaves no doubt that feelings of pain and helplessness can harbour greater strength, but also a very special poetry and beauty. The interplay with an organic experimental soundscape opens up an intimate, almost universal experience.

The chalk chases the shadow. Once it is captured, only traces of the game remain. Drawing, erasing, drawing again on a porous surface. Like on a sloppily wiped blackboard, shades of images that have long ceased to exist shine through. Špela Čadež stages a race between fleeting and manifest forms that – at least in terms of film theory – knows no winner.

Former fighters of the Colombian FARC guerilla report in letters on their most formative experiences from their time in the armed underground. University students from three continents adapt these personal memories in a parallel collective process to develop a touching film whose visual joy of experimentation is impressive.

What does it mean to live a nomadic life in Germany today? How do people see you when to keep moving is more important to you than possessions and social status? What are the prejudices faced by people who work outside the 40-hours-per-week regular job model and want to be fulfilled? To get some answers to these questions, Anna Friedrich walks part of the way with four women who prefer travelling to settling.
The journeywoman Magdalena loves the intensity of permanent new beginnings, but travelling also keeps her from working in her dream job as a qualified farmer. As an activist, Johanna lives in her refurbished van, which she has parked at various spots for years, and frequently takes part in political protests like forest occupations. Elwera, a former tightrope artist, and her granddaughter Ghislaine belong to the Yenish community who move from market to market, continuing a generations-old tradition. Director Anna Friedrich uses the conversations to shed light on her own longing for being on the road, but also for a critical reflection of the settled world in the eyes of these women. The potentials of a nomadic existence thus emerge – and how they are in danger of wasting away between settlement permits and garden fences. Stepping to the other side of the fence opens possibilities.

Captain Ramadan’s “gym” is located in a dusty residential area near the port of Alexandria. This is where the former professional athlete has coached young women in weightlifting for over twenty years – including his daughter Nahla, the first Egyptian world champion. An extraordinarily intimate portrait of this lone and fighter who raised Egypt’s young athletes to world class level with self-funding, which also puts the focus on a second protagonist: young Asmaa.

Mayye Zayed has followed the Captain’s student, who was fourteen at the start, for four years. Wearing a red Popeye t-shirt and backed by her coach, she fights her way to the global top league matches. The story of the inner highs and lows of the introverted young woman unfolds gently as the camera captures her emotional states precisely without many words. The dramaturgy of the chronological narrative follows the events in the best direct cinema manner, impressively adapting to the rhythm of life – and death. The result is the portrait of an unusual relationship and of a harsh environment that demands more than physical strength from the participants.

Breathing is vital and needs space. A small blue square appears out of nowhere, vibrating nervously and growing into a narrow line. Its red mirror image follows suit. Both take up more and more room in a contest to outdo the other, while a growing shortness of breath is wedged between them.
Martin Schmidt pulls off an astonishing feat: He generates a physically tangible cinematic experience from abstraction. He choreographs smooth surfaces in the cold, technical logic of their skirmish and electronically deconstructs the sounds of gasping. As the battle is getting fiercer, things are visually and acoustically compressed and stretched, twisted and filtered, until a heavy monster of tension emerges. “Lines” is big and loud; it can be read metaphorically, but also understood only in terms of its aesthetic power.

The curtain is up, the stage is clear, the microphone on: Let the show begin. The little singer steps forward and everyone is waiting with bated breath what singing talents are about to be heard. She clears her throat one more time and then it starts. But what is this? She’s not really going to lick the microphone like a popsicle, is she? Surely an idea we’ve all had at one time or another!

In 2018, thousands of people from Latin America set out together, fleeing from a lack of perspective, poverty and violence to the U.S. Among them Lilian, a single mother from Guatemala, who found the courage to leave her violent husband. The caravan was her only chance to achieve this act of strength. Nevertheless: 4,000 kilometres with four small children, walking, hitchhiking and travelling north on “La Bestia”, the freight train, are still extremely perilous.

The film contrasts the media coverage with a sensitive view that deliberately focuses on one family. It registers inconceivable hardships, but also great helpfulness, Lilian’s power of endurance and her ability to make the exertions seem like an adventure trip for her children – at least occasionally. Despite this lightness, though, the struggle remains as present as the fact that the US is simultaneously building a wall to prevent anyone from crossing the border. When Lilian and her children reach the border after weeks of fear, she breaks down. Suddenly the question arises whether her goal is really this rich country. Isn’t it rather about finally standing up to male dominance and traditional gender roles? It’s very obvious that one thing remained on Lilian’s arduous way: Fear has yielded to a new self-confidence.

Almost every inhabitant of Fondo Negro has relatives abroad. Since the 1980s, job migration, meaning wages shared with the residents from afar, has been one of the most important sources of income in this region in the southwest of the Dominican Republic. Young women in particular go to Europe or the U.S. to support their families by unskilled labour. In her enchantingly beautiful film, director Anna-Sophia Richard shows how this affects the ones who stay behind.

When she set out on the journey to Europe, she didn’t know what to expect, says one of the seven people portrayed. It was as if she was going on a holiday: a holiday that’s now lasted more than thirty years. Others haven’t seen their families in over fifteen years, their only contact being by phone or video chat. The mayor of Fondo Negro, herself the first job migrant from the region, tries to keep the women in the village. But the pull of jobs elsewhere is powerful. What’s left are separated families, children who grow up without parents and couples who become estranged. Almost in passing, the director shows in colourful, dreamy images how provisional solutions manifest themselves and permanently shape the reality of people’s lives. Happiness is only an eight-hour flight away – and still unattainable.

A pain in the heart, never-drying tears and turned heads are hard to treat, but fortunately not incurable. In X-ray images and tissue samples, on examination couches and in waiting rooms, always under medical supervision, Špela Čadež’s puppet animation studies the difficult-to-diagnose lovesickness. An animated physiological case study.