In the north of Georgia, twelve kilometres from the Russian-influenced region of Abkhazia, a family are realising their dream. Under the optimistic motto “Plant the Future,” the Georgian government has launched a funding programme that enabled the people in this state which has been shaken by wars and crises for years to make a fresh start on their own farmland. With this support Soso, a retired engineer, took the big step in 2021 with his wife and two young sons and began growing blueberries.
Director Elene Mikaberidze and a dynamic camera follow the bold endeavour of the greenhorn farmers as they settle into their unfamiliar new life month by month. In the evenings, they pass the time with games and conversations, while the television is on in the background: images of a Ukraine under attack, news of the escalation in the Middle East remind the adults of the Russo-Georgian War sixteen years ago. Soso, the head of the family, contemplates his homeland in the midst of an escalating global situation. What dreams will still find a place there? Mother Nino is worried about her children’s future. She wants them to have the freedom to go their own way, to travel abroad and leave Georgia behind. Whether these ideas correspond with Soso’s remains to be seen.

In September 1992, four tower blocks in the town of Mantes-la-Jolie, not far from Paris, were demolished. They were part of the Val Fourré district, which was celebrated as a flagship social housing project in the 1960s, as archive footage reminds us at the beginning of the film. But filmmaker Dominique Cabrera, who grew up in a similar housing project herself, is not concerned with urban planning or architectural failures. Instead, she is interested in the residents’ memories: remembrances of the poor and the wealthy living together, of insidious but persistent decline, but above all of the beautiful things that make up a life, the variety, the emotions, the personal happiness.

Claire Simon’s filmic observation focuses on the institution of school. But instead of a systematic analysis of the objectives and workings of this place of education, her emphasis is on the daily interactions between children and teachers. How are disputes resolved? How do you teach consideration, forbearance, empathy? The film explores these questions calmly and with an unobtrusive camera, using as example the Anton Makarenko primary school in Ivry-sur-Seine, just outside the south-eastern outskirts of Paris.
Parents arrive with their children. The teacher shakes hands with a newcomer – a gesture of encouragement. In class, the instructors seldom raise their voices, authoritarian shouting is out of place here. The staff rely on dialogue instead, which in turn depends on trust and mutual respect. Claire Simon immerses herself in the life of this school and lets the captured moments between children and adults speak for themselves. A sensitive mosaic unfolds: moments of deeply felt learning and teaching bliss, boat trips on the Seine, turmoil in the schoolyard. All these details feed into the vibrant image of a pedagogical mission carried by small and big shoulders.

Every night, Paulette stands on the lookout of her lighthouse and observes the same shooting star. Her pet rat has mysteriously disappeared, so she sends her wish for a reunion up to the night sky. The apparent celestial body turns out to be a bat with a fondness for glitter. It helps Pauline in her search. A magical, fantastical fairytale with a happy ending.

Eleven-year-old Karin is spending the summer in the country, where she makes friends with a giant talking cat. So far, so cute. But there is more to come. Her father has run up debts with gangsters who will beat him half to death. The god of poverty stalks Karin. He will take her to hell, where her deceased mother is spending eternity as a cleaning lady. Does this still sound cute? If “Ghost Cat Anzu” is meant to be a children’s film, it is the most merciless one you can imagine.
The cat demon, or Bakeneko, is a well-known character in Japanese mythology. And there are other familiar patterns in Takashi Imashiro’s manga on which this film is based: the portal to a parallel world, the mythical creatures in the forest … But the devil is in the details, for comic and adaptation handle the traditions with an astonishing degree of irreverence; humans and ghosts often behave like unmitigated louts, and the entrance to hell is through a toilet bowl. First-time director Yôko Kuno and the renowned Nobuhiro Yamashita, who has co-directed an animated film for the first time here, work with rotoscoping. The quirky, cartoon-like figures and painterly backgrounds contrast so harmoniously, the highlights are so lovingly placed that one can feel, taste, smell and grasp the sultry summer atmosphere.

At the turn of 1961/62, Agnès Varda travelled to Cuba and saw a country that integrated Marx and Lenin into the everyday life of the Caribbean. Cha-cha-cha was part of it, but also cars à l’américaine. At her Parisian animation stand, Varda animated the black and white photos she had brought back home in an almost jaunty photo film. Chris Marker, her close friend from the Rive Gauche circle of the French Nouvelle Vague, had just paved the way for this cinematic form. They also shared an enthusiasm for the Cuban Revolution – and finally even a bit of Leipzig festival experience: In 1964, Varda’s moving photo montage won the Silver Dove. Despite or because of the subtle irony with which she looks at this somewhat improvised socialism?

Monsieur Comolli asks her to film the roses in the garden. But they do not bloom until May, and the critically ill octogenarian does not have much time left. The writer, film critic and filmmaker Jean-Louis Comolli spends some of his last days in the spring of 2022 with his long-term friend Dominique Cabrera and the film scholar Isabelle Le Corff. They philosophise, fantasise, enjoy, in short: they live, in the face of the imminent farewell. The result is the portrait of a witty, intelligent and highly erudite person who never tires of speaking about cinema – the art that enables us to share in the emotions of others without having to fear the consequences that may befall them.

In a fantastic sphere somewhere between animation, live-action film and performance, a tale of Hun Tun, King of Chaos, unfolds. Hun Tun cheers you on, Hun Tun drives you forward, Hun Tun keeps you awake. He gives you strength for countless hours of overtime and endless leisure activities. But in return, Hun Tun robs you of your sleep and transforms you.
Fragments of everyday life – cups, bottle caps, pill packages – speak of sleepless nights and complete exhaustion, of wanting to sleep and being unable to. Superimpositions of elegantly animated, delicate sand elements introduce rhythm and texture. Danced narrative moments in expressive costumes bring lightness and at the same time convey intense moods, with a precise overarching sound design weaving the various levels into a gripping reflection on a very personal conflict.

Beer is out in Prague … well, actually only at a food stall away from the touristy Old Town. But that doesn’t make the death rattle of the spigot less dramatic for Hurikán, a regular who spends his days and much of his nights at these haunts of lost souls. With a crush on the stall manager, Hurikán takes matters into his own hands. Things get rolling, just like the empty barrel he wants to have filled. An epic parkour begins, starting with small mocking gestures and rapidly expanding into a breakneck chase through the drowsy but steep side streets of Prague’s Žižkov neighbourhood.
With brilliant timing and tongue-in-cheek humour, Jan Saska weaves typical genre elements from comics and action movies together, all revolving around a guy whose life is not easy. This time he needs luck if he does not want to die of thirst.

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times. As a Palestinian gynaecologist practising in an Israeli hospital he was able to pass the strictly guarded checkpoints to Gaza without a hitch. His humanist perspective is expressed in words like these: “Do we need to be sick in order to understand that we are equal?” When the Israeli army attacked Abuelaish’s home in Gaza in January 2009 and three of his daughters died, he picked up the phone. On the other end of the line was Shlomi Eldar, a Channel 10 reporter who decided to broadcast his friend’s despair live to the Israeli audience. A historic television moment; the shelling of Gaza was terminated soon afterwards.
Director Tal Barda has given her portrait the same title as Izzeldin Abuelaish’s book, which was published in 2011. More than ten years after the publication of this memoir, the doctor as well as his now grown-up children speak out in her film, talk about traumas, their new beginning in Toronto and the struggle to obtain an official apology from Israel. “I Shall Not Hate” addresses the complicated ties between the fates of Palestine and Israel. Izzeldin Abuelaish’s conviction that peaceful coexistence is the only chance of survival remains unbroken.

Many people probably know Chris Marker’s story of a time trip from a dystopian future back to the present, in which the hero experiences a traumatic event again, only through Terry Gilliam’s extroverted remake “12 Monkeys”. The original, Marker’s experimental science fiction classic “La Jetée”, however, was groundbreaking rather because of its minimalist narrative form: The 28-minute black and white photo novel with a single moving shot has made film history.
Dominique Cabrera now takes a very personal approach to putting the influential work in a historical context: The year of its creation, 1962, was also the year when Algeria gained independence from French colonial rule and hundreds of thousands of French people with roots in Algeria, the so-called Pieds-noirs, left their homeland to enter exile via Orly airport. In France, a new, uncertain existence awaited them – including Cabrera’s family. Six decades later, her cousin, who happened to be present on the pier of Paris-Orly when Marker took photos for his film, is convinced that he recognises himself in the fifth shot of “La Jetée”. This is the prelude to one of the most thrilling and at the same time loving time trips one can imagine – and the beginning of a detective and cinephile research with ever more astonishing twists.

19-year-old Maydegol fled from Afghanistan to Iran with her family. Here she tries to make her big dream come true: She wants to be a professional Muay Thai boxer. The sport not only gives her strength for her gruelling daily life, but is also meant to help her get out of this inhospitable exile at last and work towards social change in Afghanistan. In order to be able to afford the training, Maydegol works every spare minute without her parents’ knowledge, including on fruit and vegetable plantations. She reflects on her apparently hopeless situation with friends from her boxing club: stuck in a foreign country, without documents and without prospects. The young women do not give up, though; they state clearly what they think, what they demand and what they expect from life.
Maydegol’s expectations are as special as she is. The likeable, captivating protagonist not only impresses with her persistence, but also with her authentic personality, which shines through in this documentary – even in the dark moments.

In 1945, the Red Army are advancing on German territory, the Second World War is drawing to an end. Families are still trying to escape to America, but many plans fail. Five-year-old Sophie also loses her father and mother during the flight. They are killed by Nazi officer Scharf and a Soviet soldier named Vasily, with Hitler Youth Beckmann as a witness. The gruesome event takes place in an extremely strange hotel which henceforth will bind the four survivors to its premises in bizarre ways, no matter which rooms of the truly scary building they find themselves in. Up in the lounge, where the new customers arrive one by one, down in the kitchen, where the now grown-up Sophie prepares food, or even in an alcove near the elevator shaft, where Beckmann hides with the rats. The involuntary permanent guests age but never tire of courting Sophie.
Heinrich Sabl has built an excitingly disturbing dollhouse decorated with quotes from reality for the German-Soviet history of guilt and coping. In his first feature-length animated film, on which the director worked for more than twenty years, he sends extraordinary characters on an equally extraordinary visual and acoustic time journey through the war-damaged suites of the 20th century.

Gruesome grimaces, craftsmen at work, running animals, wild fountains of colours – the “not yet films” from the prehistory of cinema were only sixteen animation images long, but they left people amazed and satisfied the sensation-seekers. Parisian artist Dominique Willoughby has retrieved some 19th century wonder discs from the archives and re-animated them in a variety of ways to minimalist music.

Oto lives a quiet life on his planet until one day a spaceship crashes down. Out comes Exo, who claims half the planet as his own. A lighthearted story painted with dark humor, “Oto’s Planet” mirrors our own planet. As the story unfolds, the viewer can spin and rotate the planet to see it from all different perspectives. Oto’s planet is in your hands.

Pompon the little bear is excited: He dreamt of a special tree with pink blossoms last night. His parents are bursting with pride because this is a sign. The bear cub is now ready to go out alone and find a tree for life. A new episode from the animation series based on the successful French series of children’s books, “Pompon Ours”.