The end of real-socialist oppression, doomed love and tacit double morals unfold in colourful felt-pen images and clear lines. Leipzig, 1989. The city still belongs to the blue shirts of the Free German Youth, there is still talk of a flourishing country in festive speeches. Locked away in a mental hospital for belonging to the Leipzig punk scene and abused as “belonging to an enemy faction” that undermines the GDR from within: Margarethe can stand it. Ultimately, however, the lack of briquettes and the cold water in the communal shower make the young woman dream of being close to her boyfriend Heinrich. While the protests in the streets are growing, Heinrich and his band play church-organised punk concerts that hint at the prospect of freedom. But Stasi spies are more present than ever – until the newly gained freedom to travel scatters them to the winds along with the lights of the fireworks.

Lukas Marxt’s fourth film about the Salton Sea in Southern California focuses on 1944/45, when about 150 dummies, replicas of the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were dropped there for ballistic tests. “Marine Target” measures the remains of the wooden target platforms from up close and high above. The disconcerting soundtrack to this fascinating filmic study is provided by a swelling adaptation of the Nigerian hit “Atomic Bomb” by William Onyeabor.

A macabre Italian children’s song tells the story of Mario, a soldier who returns from war and must learn that his girlfriend has left him for another man. Mario decides to kill her. The film picks up on the ambivalent mood of the song and reinforces its vibration in the space between blithe children’s game and brutal murder.

Daily life at the tailor’s shop is so tumultuous that sometimes you need to cheat a little to cope. Imagination and spontaneity will not always be enough. When the tailer feels unobserved, he tends to let his brain do all the work. But what happens when love enters the scene and thoughts get out of control?

A washing machine less ordinary: The electronic music duo Matmos probes the music making capabilities of the “Ultimate Care II” by Whirlpool and weaves the sounds of its housing, laundry cycle and switches into a beat. Using animation, optical effects and advertising film quotes from the time when fully automatic machines had their breakthrough, a lively piece of music video is created that makes us forget all our laundry worries.

For his monumental study of displacement, Nikolaus Geyrhalter has travelled across continents, mapping a new kind of landscape that has become detached from geographical or climatic conditions under palm trees, on mountains, at rivers, in the snow. Washed up, blown in, piled up, caught or left somewhere – where once the forces of nature were at work, garbage now dominates the shape of things. It has even brought forth a new social type: the relocator.

As in all his films, Nikolaus Geyrhalter operates the camera himself. It stands still, often for minutes, as if it couldn’t believe what presents itself: plastic webs seemingly grown together with the scrawny branches on embankments, decaying newspapers and cocoa powder packaging in the excavated soil of a potato field in Switzerland, beaches seamed at the waterline by a carpet of Styrofoam and plastic containers. In equally delicately composed images, the filmmaker focuses on the machines and people who work away at these garbage landscapes. They excavate and compact, collect and sort, sweep and rake, move one thing this way and the other that way with grapplers or hands. Well-formed and without comment, the inner workings of a self-sustaining system are revealed in which a process of alienation is underway that causes problem and solution to drift apart.

In 1974, the mathematician Penrose discovered pairs of tiles that form an infinite plane without repeating patterns. Inspired by this, Max Cooper uses a rhythm fragment of one instrument to compose a percussion ensemble without a single identical loop. Jessica In contributes animated tile ornaments without symmetries that are reminiscent of a mandala and visualise the idea of infinity.

Maxim lives in St. Petersburg with his mother and sister. Like many other kids, he just loves skating. There’s one difference, though: Maxim has lost both his legs in an accident and lives his everyday life on a skateboard, too. One day he would like to take part in the Paralympics. When his coach has a surprise for him, he is uncertain whether it can be done without legs.

The director makes an attempt to locate herself, because historical erosions in society and politics have led to an identity crisis for Cléo Cohen, a young Frenchwoman. Is she Arab? Jewish? She struggles for clarification, aided by her grandparents, who all emigrated from the Maghreb to France as Jews. The questioning is playful, but determined. Cléo awakens memories, confronts, muses in the bathtub.

Cléo wants to find out from her grandmother Flavie whether she’s “sedje”, able to marry. Flavie reacts evasively. Her sister would definitely be, Flavie thinks, and Cléo, too, knows roughly how to go about things. But she doesn’t seem entirely convinced. Cléo Cohen is in the middle of a process of discovery. Her grandparents play a role in this. While some came to France as Algerian Jews, others relocated from the neighbouring country of Tunisia, also as Jews. Cléo is confused. Denise’s native tongue, for example, is Arabic, she knows Arabic cuisine, but she’s not an Arab? Cléo talks to everyone, shoulders her way briskly but warmly into the past. She reads the writings of Albert Memmi, who grew up in Tunis as the son of Jewish parents under French colonial rule; she listens to Philippe Katerine’s song “Juifs arabes”. She travels to Tunisia.

The mocking transvestite, the raging dog, the prophetic clown and the little girl are united inside the desperate protagonist. The longing to break free rises forcefully – like a pistol pressed against his chest. In humorous metaphors, Hakhyun Kim takes a crisis of disorientation to extremes, while his extraordinary stylistics lend it poetic dignity.

As a happily married manager of a department store, everything in the protagonist’s life is peaceful and orderly. But on his customary walk through the park one Sunday, he is suddenly confused by a sign marked with just one word: “Park”. The disturbance is so great that his everyday routine is thrown into chaos. Freely adapted from a story by Arthur Schnitzler.

A woman and a black cat live together in the city. They seem a little lonely but make the best of it. The small miracles of life can be found in all kinds of everyday moments, and their loneliness is transformed into a cheerful melody. A buoyant piece in black and white which does get a little colour in the end.

Dance is primarily physical. Smell, warmth, touch – “Meat Joy” presents their essence, set to a collage of ambiguous pop songs. Carolee Schneemann lets us experience from up close the unrestrained celebration of a physical, lubricious, erotic performance improvisation, using framing, montage and a visual aesthetic reminiscent of painting to dissolve the body shapes.

Sometimes it really takes only two minutes to see through life. In her minimalist animated film, Anne Isensee comes quickly and straightforwardly to the point. What the direct line sketches out as a concept of life looks alluring, too. It is a good thing that there are one or two kinks after all. Nonchalant, witty and profound – and awarded the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig in 2017.

Grandpa Günter is a retired circus elephant who takes his grandson Charlie on musical excursions. In this episode they are rudely woken because the usually quiet forest is suddenly full of noise. It’s Grandpa’s brother Karl-Heinz merrily setting up his forest cinema. Singing, Grandpa complains about the disturbance and explains what his brother is actually doing there.

Four kids aged 12 to 14 let us in on their secrets and desires. They talk about what shapes their lives: friendship, but also bullying and ostracism. Love, but also the struggle with prejudice. An imaginative, very musical film, created together with the children, which shows the world from their perspective – unadornedly beautiful, idealistic and radically honest.