It’s spring and the little bird discovers the first leaves on his tree. Already the buds open and the bee comes buzzing. Curious, the little bird stumbles after it and almost overlooks the fox who is growling hungrily again. After the farting caterpillar last year, the bird can now be happy about a new companion.

A young man apparently gets lost between his parental home in Lower Saxony, Berlin darkrooms and a flat share in Madrid. The clinical chill of the psychiatry reports is juxtaposed with a heart-wrenching diary text that resists being categorised too quickly. The images, too, speak a different language than the diagnosis: “Disoriented and not responding to his environment,” the initial anamnesis reads. But we see the film sequences trace and re-cast photographic evidence of getting lost, re-connect the narrator persona striving for self-empowerment with his environment. The protocol of a story of illness and treatment expands into an auto-socio-biographical document of self-location by artistic work – on life as lived.

In Korntal, a small town of 9,000 souls in Baden-Württemberg, hundreds of children were abused in the homes of the Evangelical Brethren since the 1950s. Forced labour, physical punishment and sexualised violence were the order of the day. To date, more than 150 former children have broken their silence, more than 80 perpetrators have been identified. Because the latter covered for each other and the neighbours looked away, the children were defenceless against the abuse for decades. When the scandal was exposed in 2013, the community and the village were hostile at first: That which must not be cannot be. It was only when the pressure from the outside grew that the community initiated a process of dealing with the scandal. But it is controversial: victims are re-traumatised, their statements doubted. To this day the children from Korntal are fighting for investigation and compensation.

The film focuses on the victims and avoids all dramatisation. What happened was dramatic enough, after all. When testimonies are only played as audio-recordings to protect the speakers, a simple animation fills the visual gaps. When those responsible today speak, the camera stays restrained and does not judge. That is not necessary anyway, because the inconceivable relativisation of the crimes speaks loudly enough – in Korntal as elsewhere.

Kollwitzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg: Children are playing and climbing all over the monument to Käthe Kollwitz, frowning adults are watching them. What would Gustav Seitz, the creator of the sculpture, say? Christa Mühl has asked him but reveals his answer only when the adults have finally disappeared. Until then, she constructs explosive matter as light as a feather, set to Belgian cembalo jazz and with the perky montage style that characterises her early documentary work. After Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler himself had the most controversial scene cut, the film could be broadcast on television and triggered a lively discussion about the practical value of art.

A train rattles in the distance, a heron stalks through the water, children practice gymnastics on the promenade. A couple is on its way to the opposite bank, hopping from stone to stone. One of the stones is shaped like a turtle, symbolising wisdom. An elderly man sings beneath a concrete bridge, his voice echoing. Moving snapshots of the Kamogawa, the wild duck river in Kyoto, develop a captivating rhythm that is easy to get lost in. The men, women and children seem absorbed in their activities and themselves. Like the fisherman who is downright surprised by the fat fish on his line. Sometimes the camera also peeks into the houses behind the embankment. An elderly couple make fabrics with fancy patterns in a workshop, the regular clacking of their loom has a soothing quality. The images are full of cheerful serenity.

A journey back in time to 1915 Dresden, where Karlchen lives, who dreams of seeing the famous elephants of the Sarrasani Circus one day. To earn the ticket, he delivers potatoes. But his few coins are not enough for the visit. When Karlchen’s dream at last comes within reach, everything turns out different than expected.

In 1971, Karpo Godina, then 28 years old, took his camera on a trip through the flatlands of Vojvodina and shot an unusual road movie. Only fragments of that footage have survived to this day. Forty years later, another camera undertakes the same journey, retracing the paths of the young Godina and imagining his impressions of the lives of ordinary people in this rural region. A new unusual road movie emerges. It is about places, times and memories. It is also paying homage to Karpo Godina, whose work flourished during the so-called Black Wave period of Yugoslav cinema.

Three directors prepare a film about the chemical factory in the Cologne district of Kalk, on whose former grounds a shopping mall has been built. With some self-mockery they talk about their investigation and search for sources, their capitulation to the resistance of the material. Meanwhile, an archivist struggles with a mis-spooled 16mm film. Historical images splutter across the monitor of his analogue editing table. The silhouette of the factory with its towering chimneys is discernible. Site plans are shown, chemicals are blithely mixed. In an album, the filmmakers discover faded photos of female forced labourers. Suddenly, questions arise: Which stories are kept, which forgotten? Throwing away is part of his job, after all, the archivist explains in the finest Rhenish accent. What does this statement mean for the directing trio?

Two young girls are drifting in the water of a public swimming pool. The film adopts this drifting attitude as it follows them through nocturnal Montreal and their daily life. Sometimes the two speak English, sometimes Inuktitut. Kathy and Teresa come from a small Inuit settlement in northern Canada. They show each other smartphone pictures of seals and bears they killed themselves. They read about the special relationship between the Inuit and their sledge dogs, which has lost its importance today. Home assignments are done in a park – the scent of the trees reminds them a little of home. They close their eyes. With great tenderness, the camera captures the deep bond between the two best friends who share the same heritage and language. Kathy has written a moving song in Inuktitut. In simple, clear words, she sings of the feelings and yearnings of a young Indigenous woman.

Men are felling trees in the rain forest, barefoot, using chainsaws to cut through the huge trunks. They live in nature, off nature and against nature. Illegal wood selling seems to be their only chance to feed their families. At the same time, they are destroying – tree by tree – their own livelihood. This quiet observation ends with the arduous transport of the wood out of the forest. Anyone who thinks ahead knows that it will end up in our apartments, too, as a mahogany table or Bangkirai floor.

So many stones are lying around. They used to belong to something whole that was broken. A red-haired boy sets about sorting, joining and stacking them. Little by little, the countless chunks turn into many impressive towers. We follow the boy’s path as he makes one tower after the other shine again.

The first animated film by visual artist Fransix Tenda Lomba is a kind of parcours through Congo’s historical education systems – and an analysis of the ideological function of the institution of the school. Using impressive collages and an always ironic commentary, the film – tellingly produced in Belgium – confronts its Western audience with their own ignorance about the region, challenging both their aesthetic and political thinking.

Sibylle Schönemann’s film about abortion lets young and older women speak; women who were forced to abort by their partners or who chose to carry the baby to term despite predicted difficulties. Assembled as a kind of collage, a round table alternates with stylised passages, while the camera also shows moments in a clinic right before and after the procedure. The attitude vacillates between drama and affirmation of life. Liberal perspectives, with one exception, are left out. Schönemann, together with Tamara Trampe, almost managed to take up the complex issue in a feature film.

An infrared dot pattern scans body shapes to supply system information for fascinating volume images. The space casts are virtual sculptures, mouldable, with unstable aggregate states. DJ Dixon’s “Transmoderna” performance is pulverized to the beats of Mëhill’s track “Through Withdrawals”: waves of millions of luminescent coloured microbodies against a black infinity.

Drawn entirely on paper, Zvonko Čoh has created a milestone of recent Slovenian animation history. A combination of figurative outline, surface and spatial development and a story feeding on associative elements and bordering the surreal. Classic cartoon heroes are replaced by their animated movement patterns and silhouettes.

Click, click, she virtually recreates a cluttered, narrow kitchen on her computer. Lady Di smiles with creased photo edges from the refrigerator, a half-opened chocolate bar lies on the table. The technical-looking, detailed digital reconstruction runs like a fingertip along remembered images, tracing their nicks. The images feed off a blurred video in which the grandparents and their kitchen-cum-living-room live on – a nostalgic place in the distant Ukraine of childhood.