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.

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”.

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.

Julie lost her parents when she was still very young. Now she is 13 and has long since settled in her new home, with a family who loves her. Over the years she has managed to accept her fate. “Light” follows Julie for a while and shows a girl who, despite immeasurable loss, faces the world with her arms wide open.

Witali and Łukasz have graduated from the Orthodox seminary. To take up priesthood, they must either start a family or become monks. But the two friends prefer to live for the moment, to muse, philosophize and sing. The camera looks on, full of empathy, giving the two men space and time to face their situation. A documentary observation turns into a thriller: Can their tender friendship withstand religious obligations and family expectations?

Only light lifts the outlines of the world from darkness. In cyanotype, light-sensitive material is used to make white drawings materialize on a blue background. Tata Managadze challenges the light-sensitivity of our mind. She uses reflections and mirrors to expose the sensitive, gossamer-thin material of association in ways that make ephemeral memories and emotions visible. The poem at the beginning tells us how soothing and at the same time brutal her protagonist – light – can be. Like children in a playground, we are seduced by and forever searching for the dance of lights. Flower patterns on the dishes in the sink begin to spin when our eyelids grow heavy and sleep is approaching. Everything moves. In the transitory state between waking and dreaming, a different kind of life stirs in the prefabricated building estate: The stars of the restaurant leap from the sign and scratch traces into the wall. Or are these scars that must still heal? Perhaps scars from the Soviet era?
Again and again, well-known fragments are re-assembled. This non-narrative animated documentary takes us on a spiral of remembrance to an untraceable origin, building a bridge to our childhood ability to find magic in the most mundane things.

Misty-eyed and nostalgic, this film takes us into the past. The accomplished illustrator Milanka Fabjančič uses sepia and pastel-coloured drawings to bring to life the miraculous story of the industrious and meek factory worker Liliana. Every night she takes off a shining necklace, every morning she puts it back on. During the day, the secret of her meekness remains hidden in her heart.

“Apparently, it had to happen to me before I learned it was ‘normal’.” This statement by a protagonist sums up how our society deals with stillborn children or children who die young: Star children are omnipresent (one in four mothers has lost a child) and yet absent. We lack the vocabulary, the sensitivity, and the tranquillity to enable parents to mourn.
Remo Rauscher’s animated documentary confronts us with this inability, letting twenty people in mourning or who deal with mourning speak: Thinking out loud, struggling for words, regarding the pain from different perspectives, discovering dignity and strength in it and helping us to overcome the taboo. They object to being an “error in the system”, to accepting the speechlessness. In Rauscher’s film, the darkness is ambivalent and palpable on all levels: It is absorbing and caring. It is generous and gives us moments of beauty, humility, and hope. The 2D animations in muted colours on a dark background are always abstract, sketchy, and restrained – an expression of tact and respect. They draw attention to themselves only once in a while, while the voices are given a lot of space and can unfold without fear. This film opens a space to mourn that society is unable to offer yet.

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.

When Mizu discovers a small plant in the forest, she goes there every day to water it. The years pass by, the little seedling becomes a big tree, Mizu a big girl, and one day they are both grown-up. But then a big rain comes that seems to go on forever. When the forest is flooded, Mizu must save herself. She takes refuge in her tree.

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!

The summer holidays are over, the new school year has started, suddenly everything and everyone is different. Ben, twelve years old, is just entering puberty and learns that he, too, has changed somehow. All of a sudden, his weight appears to be a problem – for him and for everyone around him. The kids at school start bullying him, his divorced parents are at a loss, even the school nurse is worried about him. So despite his love of eating and cooking, Ben decides to take drastic measures and prescribes himself a diet. Fortunately, the boy can count on the support of his crazy family and his friends Erik and Sonia. And perhaps he does stand a chance with his crush Klara after all. In the end, Ben will learn that it is not so much about the way you look but about the way you feel. An endearing clay animation with a happy ending.

Loosely based on Raymond Roussel’s novel “Locus Solus”, we explore the world of the inventor Martial Canterel. His estate is a place of innovation, a space for experiments that elude ethical responsibility. All its guests become objects of research – and must ask themselves whether scientific progress justifies every sacrifice.

Since 1865, no cab driver in London has been able to omit “The Knowledge”. It requires the memorisation of 320 routes, an achievement that takes years, but has been made into a joke by the robot cars of the future. A flesh-and-blood cabby “interacts with people from all walks of life”, according to a brochure by Transport for London, and that’s “a lot more than just taking people from A to B”. Visually fascinating, Colson traces his interviewees’ mind maps of the city using the mapping technology of robot cars.

Rosemarie has defeated cancer as a small child. Now she’s fourteen and the disease is back. Though her mother supports Rose, her anxiety makes it hard to get along with her. Their relationship is complicated and so is being a teenager with cancer. Rose looks ahead: new school, new haircut, new image. She wants to move on – and she wants her mother to do the same.

Two men by themselves: Zdravko, a war veteran with a hearing impairment who lives as a fisherman in the wilderness, and Stefan, a director with Bosnian roots who has forgotten his mother tongue. The unlikely friendship develops against a both sparse and mysterious background. For while Stefan superimposes his thoughts in text form on the shots, Zdravko sends sounds into the depth with a wooden stick. They are meant to attract catfish that make their rounds in a lake. In the process, the two men summon each other, so to speak, bring to light what was buried, fraternize, overcome inner barriers.