Renée, an asylum seeker from Thailand, walks the night-time streets of Paris. Suspended by the asylum system and invisible to passers-by, she is neither here nor there. For one night, viewers are invited to walk with her, in a cinematic VR experience led by light and shadow-play. “Another Place” was made in collaboration with Renée and is grounded in her experience.

The name of her village stands for a utopia that has shaped Noam Shuster Eliassi from childhood: Newe Shalom (Hebrew) or Wahat al-Salām (Arabic) roughly translates as “Oasis of Peace.” This small community of 300 people from Jewish and Arab families which was founded in 1969, located in Israel at the border with the West Bank, is a test of solidarity in practice. Thus, Noam, who is Jewish, and her Palestinian friend Ranin become ambassadors of mutual understanding even as children, for example when Hillary Clinton or Jane Fonda come to visit. They seem predestined for a career in the United Nations.
In her comedy show “Coexistence, My Ass!”, which director Amber Fares uses as a leitmotif, Shuster Eliassi strikes a harsher tone. Her career shift from diplomacy to political comedy – in English, Hebrew or Arabic, depending on the audience – shows her as a critic of the Netanyahu government, both before and after the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October 2023. Her example also reflects the division in parts of the Israeli left: Shuster Eliassi’s deep pain of having lost loved ones herself is followed by anger about the Gaza war. What is humour able, what is it allowed to do in this situation? Perhaps help us mourn the suffering of two nations and, despite everything, not give up the utopia of peace.

When Marc confesses his love to his girlfriend Hélène, all she answers is “Later!” The timing of his confession could not be worse, as there is a whole other dimension to Hélène’s reply. Both belong to a group of activists who have just burned their mobile phones and tackled the ultimate important questions in the forest. Questions of fear, power, courage, loyalty, and doubts. Following this, they attack a rich and influential retired couple in their posh mansion, representing those guilty of the dilemma of this world in their eyes. The armed attack ends in a bloodbath. In the midst of the shootout, though, Hélène is struck with a strange kind of paralysis and soon afterwards sucked into the surrealistic maelstrom of a fatal second chance.
Canadian director and writer Félix Dufour-Laperrière says, he writes “with colours in mind, with transformations, dreamlike sequences, mental images that take shape on screen.” Hand-drawn templates unfold in a powerful symbolic 2D animation of flowing figures and silhouettes that neither shrinks from aggressively formulated messages nor from the exuberant magic of the format.

Fanta is 14 years old and lives in Conakry, the capital of Guinea in West Africa. Besides school and her household chores, she spends every free minute training at the acrobatics circus. One day, the return of the country’s big star is announced. Balla Moussa Bangoura, founder of the Amoukanama Circus Company, is returning from an international tour and now plans to rehearse a new show with his troupe. Training gets harder, because only the best will be in it at the end.
Of course, Fanta is determined to give everything to be one of the few girls travelling the country with Balla Moussa Bangoura. Every day, she is torn between caring for her sick mother, housework, schoolwork and what she thinks she loves best. Supported by her family on the one hand, striving to fulfil all expectations on the other, Fanta begins to doubt: What does she really want? Marjolijn Prins delivers the atmospherically dense portrait of an extraordinary girl, connected by rousing musical numbers, spectacular acrobatics and dream-like acting sequences.

A cyborg of a film, the work is a living interaction of computer graphics and nature. Shaped in real time by weather patterns, the film’s rhythm and sequencing is tied with planetary data from over forty locations around the world. In the spirit of geomantic practice, this truly magical experience is about listening and reacting to Earth’s stories.

The train ride is deadly boring. The landscape rushes past as a buzzing surrealist kaleidoscope of colours and Ariel and Paul pass the time by drawing their worst nightmares for each other. For Paul it is his mother swimming towards him on the open sea to drag him underwater, for Ariel it is the confrontation with a psychotic woman in the bathtub. What starts out as a game turns uncanny when fellow traveller Gilda joins them – and begins to tell them that the eeriest thing ever happened to her. She hypnotised her demented husband in his sleep. The one who answered her had been none other than God. An indignant God, a disgruntled God and finally a downright angry God, for she had absolutely refused to stop asking her sleeping husband: “Why do we exist?”
With an incredibly precise sense for the moment when the profane suddenly develops the potential for horror, Jocelyn Charles takes us on a magnificent psycho-trip. The director leaves it to the audience to determine whether to watch the 2D animation as spot-on genre entertainment or whether to take in the undertones: the hubris of humans who constantly play God and want to solve every mystery, for example. A hubris that does not remain without consequences.

A piece of land awaits Déni Oumar Pitsaev in the Pankisi Gorge, a Chechen enclave in the Georgian part of the Caucasus. His mother bought it for him, hoping to bring her son, who was socialised in Western Europe, back to his Chechen roots. When he arrives, he realises that the gift comes with strings attached: Relatives and friends from the neighbourhood constantly ask when the 40-year-old Déni with his receding hair intends to start a family. When he counters with his own vision – building a treehouse for adults ten metres from the ground, a childhood dream – he triggers complex debates about the relationship between the individual and society and what historical conditions it is subject to: The region is deeply scarred by the effects of the Chechen War, the wounds extending even to his estranged relationship with his father. In all this, Pitsaev’s manner of confrontation is always extremely delicate, never turning into an attack. With expert curiosity, he approaches a world that is both completely alien and home to him.

For Namir, the realisation that his beloved mother is not immortal is painful. He had actually intended to make a film with Siham. Now he is mourning in the church with his father Waguih and his children, who seem too young to understand death – and allowing himself to be filmed. “As always, I’m counting on cinema to help me.” He is convinced that cinema can turn tragedy into comedy – and preserve memories that would otherwise fade away.
Namir Abdel Messeeh has already worked through his family’s biography between Egypt and France, their Christian faith and love of cinema in “The Virgin, the Copts and Me” (2011). But it was Siham’s wish that her son finally realise a film with acting stars rather than his own relatives. Instead, Namir Abdel Messeeh recounts his mother’s love, her longing, and her mysteries using the power of cinema. A montage of home videos, family memories and Egyptian film classics by Youssef Chahine makes Siham appear almost “larger than life”.

We are travelling back in time to the early 19th century on the south coast of England. This is where Mary Anning lives, a 12-year-old girl who is inquisitive, persistent and fascinated by fossils. She spends every free minute at the beach to look for the fossilised remains of long extinct animal species in the strata of her hometown’s coastal cliffs. Her father, too, is an enthusiast and earns a little extra for his family by selling fossils. When he disappears after the collapse of a cliff, Mary’s life is shaken. All that her father leaves behind is a mysterious drawing whose meaning Mary only gradually makes out. She is determined to uncover the secret together with unexpected allies. An entertaining and warm-hearted biopic about one of the first female palaeontologists.

“Today, we’re raising funds for the 206th Territorial Defence Brigade”, Diva Monroe announces at a drag show in a Kyiv basement club. Whether on the front line or by civilian actions: A lot of people from the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ community are fighting against the Russian attacks – many of them even before the 2022 invasion. It would be understandable to flee from war and discrimination. For a long time, there was next to no social acceptance for queers in the Ukraine. But since Kremlin propaganda no longer reaches Kyiv, things have improved. That is what Olga Gibelinda’s film narrates via the example of three drag queens: Monroe, who remembers the empowerment of the Maidan protests and has worked for television and as an influencer since. Aura, at that time still siding with the pro-Russian government, today serving in the army under Commander-in-Chief Zelensky. And Marlen, who suffered abuse as a trans woman in the past and spreads joy on stage today.
The film establishes a poignant contrast between the show world and the private lives of the drag queens, while leaving space for their political demands. These include the call for the recognition of queer partnerships at this time to give relatives of those killed or wounded in action equal legal claims.