Video artist and physics graduate Dan Sandin takes the viewer on a short tour of the Sandin Image Processor (IP), a modular video synthesizer that he invented. What starts as a serious technical introduction to the synthesizer slowly spaces out into a visual experiment in colour and effects, as Dan Sandin, wearing what appears to be a Catholic cardinal’s hat, tries to remain focused.

A naked body liquifies and becomes weightless. What’s left is its skin envelope which expands endlessly, longing for the tiniest touch. The increasingly shapeless figure vibrates in colours, fragments flashing, until the video track fails. The sensual piece by FKA twigs asks in slow motion what lust feels like. Jesse Kanda answers with enchanting computer-generated images.

Dark percussive sounds call forth anthropomorphic creatures. They come to life in short dance etudes. Optically manipulated, they stretch into gaunt shapes, unfold in a thousand layers like exotic animals, dissolve into abstract paintings. They are pure creatures of light: fleeting, immaterial. The rhythmic sound motif colours their movements with sometimes pithy, sometimes breathy variations.

For many years, Amin was unable to speak about the experience of his flight. It is only now that he finds the courage to open up to his schoolmate, filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen. From earliest childhood Amin’s life was marked by political unrest in his native country of Afghanistan and soon by growing up without a permanent home. His painful memories are visualized in haunting animations, interwoven with documentary footage.

It’s a well-known fact that flight does not lead from point A to point B and then simply ends. Amin’s story, though, shows how rocky and tortuous it can really be, leading from Afghanistan via Russia, Estonia and a few other stations to Denmark. Only when his life is on a safe track with an upcoming wedding and a good career does he find the strength to talk about what he had to go through to be where he is today. In an almost psychoanalytical setting, the protagonist – lying down – talks about his past. The narrative moves in a spiral between then and now, allowing for frequent respites between the traumatic impressions that the poignant animation makes almost physically tangible. It’s no coincidence that “Flee” has already won multiple awards and is considered an “instant classic” even now.

When the woman in curlers opens the door, Papa is blown away: Like a breath of air, a storm or tornado, he is blown in and back out. Even in his own apartment he is ungraspable: He grows and shrinks, becomes fragile or threatening, knocks everything down. And then he literally flies away, hurling eggs at passers-by. Caught in all this is his daughter, who at first can only helplessly stand by and who finds it increasingly difficult to visit him – the steps grow higher, the floor turns into chewing gum. Finally, she looks up at the sky and sees him hover there.
What to do when one’s father suffers from mental illness? How to deal with it when the responsibility (of care) switches sides so early in life? Jelena Milunović explores this, using bold, very tender and not always obvious parables. She sets strong colour accents: The depressed episodes are in claustrophobic black and white, the ecstatic highs are colourful free-hand drawings. And the red balloon, which briefly appears in the beginning as a metaphorical vehicle of hope, might point the way to bringing the two of them back together.

Ratté develops the pictorial concept of the floral still life into a new kind of illusionary space. The fragmented floral sculptures, created by 3D scans, design a speculative future in which extinct plants are preserved in a weightless archive. The representation gains a dimension but does not become more than a surface mould with no informative value about the living core.

A piece of soil with plants displayed in a cabinet – three-dimensional and yet only a digital image. The sound suggests a sterile exhibition space. As forest sounds start to play, the stems, leaves and blossoms dissolve in particles and layers. As if awakening from a coma, an organic rebellion flares up, a brief revolt against the technically perfect simulation of nature.

Surrounded by high-rises, Natalia has created her own, not-so-small paradise: Goats roam free, shrubs and fruit trees bloom, the chickens busily lay eggs. Natalia meets repeated attempts to buy the plot with brusque derision. Even when the city and country are attacked by Russia in the wintry February of 2022, she retains her apparent carefree resistance: While all the lights around go out at night, there is a warm and cozy glow from Natalia’s house. Only Kitty, with whom she lives, expresses concern, organises his flight from Ukraine and prophylactically shows the spots that would be safest in an air raid.
Adelina Borets’ portrait of an incorruptible woman finds its own unique tone, shows a simple everyday life throughout the seasons that presents itself as self-determined and buoyant despite the worsening situation. Borets adopts Natalia’s manner as natural, gives her space. The dimensions of the war unfold step by step, at Natalia’s own pace and by skilful cuts and pans. “Flowers of Ukraine” is a film about a disaster. But it is also a love song to life – and pickled tomatoes.

In three chapters, this film takes us through the Nigerian megacity of Lagos and explores its fluid side. The tour begins with boatman Osan, constantly moving, balancing on his waterway. In split screens we see the human body as a vessel containing water. Then we are chauffeured through the flowing traffic to the Lagos market and finally perform a water dance above the rooftops of the city. Interspersed are mobile phone videos of a young man on Tarkwa Bay Beach: The waves are good, the sun is shining. May the water bless us!
“Fluid Lagos” was created in three collective workshops conceived and moderated by filmmaker Nora Mandray. Inspired by documentary practices, the participants developed a hybrid film form in which different voices and perspectives combine to talk about water, about a place and its arteries.

Everything splashes in this poetic portrait sketch: the rain on the roof, the dog in the puddle, the grandchildren in the kiddie pool and the protagonist in the river Vltava. A middle-aged woman has lovingly converted a freighter into a house boat. The film captures her daily life in impressionistic, analogue aesthetics, from morning coffee in her bathrobe to the last cigarette on deck at dusk. She seems to have fulfilled a wish – a life by and in the river.

Sigmund Freud’s dream symbolism relates birth to water that one – or so he says – either dives into or rises out of. While an adolescent boy gets mysterious phone calls and shyly follows his clique to a shits and giggles party, his mother floods the ever-sparser home with separation anxiety and absurd scenes, mocked by the pompously wall paper pattern with all its curlicues.

In the global North, the DC-3 is regarded as a vintage plane and tourist attraction. In Colombia, however, it is still used as an airliner and serves as the only link to the outside world for remote villages in the Amazon region. The history of the former “Raisin Bomber” reflects economic and hegemonic conditions. Now the DC-3 raises its voice in an entranced cinematic journey through time and space to talk of dangers, sensual experiences – and a mystic passenger.

In Belgium and France, the documentary series “Strip-Tease” is real cult viewing. The creators of the TV production have now used more than twenty-year-old material to make a crime documentary in dirty black and white. The Brussels CID are investigating a murder case: A casual prostitute was killed in her flat. The discovery of a few French fries enables them to track down the perpetrator. True Crime.

The dead woman’s name was Kalima Sissou. Very quickly, the investigation focuses on her former boyfriend Alain, and so, in authentic, raw images, we watch Inspector Lemoine and his colleagues at work: at the crime scene, interrogating witnesses and, naturally, cross-examining the main suspect. Despite the serious character of the events, Jean Libon and Yves Hinant’s offbeat mixture of dark thriller and absurd reality comedy does not lack (black) humour. Shot in a simple cinéma-vérité style, the film does not embellish on what it shows. The creative and conceptual model is, of course, the series “Strip-Tease”, co-developed by Libon in 1985 and widely known for the unconventional, blunt and politically incorrect manner in which it tackled even delicate subjects. “For a Fistful of Fries” continues in this vein and takes us very close to the often incredibly profane action.

Mady and Merouane are two eleven-year-olds who grow up as best friends in the north-east of Paris. They live right next door to each other and that’s more important to them than anything else. And anyway, they feel so at home in their neighbourhood that they can’t think of a more perfect place to practice adulthood. When some other boys turn up, their friendship is briefly put to the test …

The flowing movement of a mountain landscape shrouded in orange fog is disturbed. The regular wafting stops, the landscape structures crumble. The atmospheric sound becomes a shrill screech. “For Tashi” describes the physical and emotional turmoil of a woman after the loss of her unborn child, seeking resonance with the viewers, hoping for comfort.

At the beginning Michelle Bastien-Archer shows and comments on photos of her wedding. The African-American and her childhood friend Jermaine were married in the unhospitable visitors’ hall of Sing Sing in 2007. He had been sentenced to 22 years to life for voluntary manslaughter in 1998. Ever since, she has been fighting tirelessly to prove his innocence. Now new documents have turned up that reinforce doubts about the trial’s decisive witness statement. Michelle becomes more confident. She presses even more determinedly ahead with her efforts to get Jermaine released. The camera is with her as if live, for almost a decade.

It feels like a thriller whose script was written by life and the U.S. American justice system. Daily life under exceptional circumstances, scenes from an unusual marriage. Timed phone calls from prison, countless visits to the lawyer, appearances at solidarity events for wrongly convicted African Americans. Michelle works as a house painter for the City of New York, raising her two children alone. We learn in passing that their biological father was the victim of a brutal crime. The portrait of a confident woman who shares her fears and hopes with us emerges.