In the north of Georgia, twelve kilometres from the Russian-influenced region of Abkhazia, a family are realising their dream. Under the optimistic motto “Plant the Future,” the Georgian government has launched a funding programme that enabled the people in this state which has been shaken by wars and crises for years to make a fresh start on their own farmland. With this support Soso, a retired engineer, took the big step in 2021 with his wife and two young sons and began growing blueberries.
Director Elene Mikaberidze and a dynamic camera follow the bold endeavour of the greenhorn farmers as they settle into their unfamiliar new life month by month. In the evenings, they pass the time with games and conversations, while the television is on in the background: images of a Ukraine under attack, news of the escalation in the Middle East remind the adults of the Russo-Georgian War sixteen years ago. Soso, the head of the family, contemplates his homeland in the midst of an escalating global situation. What dreams will still find a place there? Mother Nino is worried about her children’s future. She wants them to have the freedom to go their own way, to travel abroad and leave Georgia behind. Whether these ideas correspond with Soso’s remains to be seen.

Bobby’s stomach is upset. She is ravenous. Normally, dinner should be on the table by now. But today everything is different. Mum lures her teenage daughter out of the house with a lie and takes her to hospital, where her relatives are already waiting. All dressed in black, with tears in their eyes, expressing their sympathy. But sympathy for what? Before Bobby realises what is going on, she is dragged into the endless corridors of the clinic by rude nurses, undressed and prepared for an operation she knew nothing about and never consented to.
Behind the scenes of this nocturnal horror trip, a disturbing tale about the relationship of trust between parents and children is revealed. Mansi Maheshwari’s genre mix of thriller, scary vision and educational satire is fascinating. Its dynamic design, dramatic animation and mesmerising soundtrack send us deep into a terrifyingly exquisite nightmare that lingers on.

Poland, 1981. Six friends squeeze into an old car that is far too small and set out for the Polish Baltic coast, fuelled by their longing for freedom. The further they come, the clearer the decrepit state of their country emerges. The pension where they spend the night has nothing that could be served for breakfast. Food and fuel are also in short supply elsewhere. There is a shortage of everything. The only thing one can buy anytime and anywhere is booze, which is plentiful. Just like the country, the car also falls apart piece by piece. But the trip continues, past demonstrating crowds, tanks, barricades and armed policemen.
Singing, laughing and carefree, Leszek and his companions finally make it to the sea. Is this the end of their journey? Or should they join the hundreds of thousands who have already left Poland? The borders of the frame, at least, are open. The sparse, fragmented graphic elements on the empty white background hardly seem an incentive to stay. There is no obstacle that could keep the friends from setting off for new shores.

Eleven-year-old Karin is spending the summer in the country, where she makes friends with a giant talking cat. So far, so cute. But there is more to come. Her father has run up debts with gangsters who will beat him half to death. The god of poverty stalks Karin. He will take her to hell, where her deceased mother is spending eternity as a cleaning lady. Does this still sound cute? If “Ghost Cat Anzu” is meant to be a children’s film, it is the most merciless one you can imagine.
The cat demon, or Bakeneko, is a well-known character in Japanese mythology. And there are other familiar patterns in Takashi Imashiro’s manga on which this film is based: the portal to a parallel world, the mythical creatures in the forest … But the devil is in the details, for comic and adaptation handle the traditions with an astonishing degree of irreverence; humans and ghosts often behave like unmitigated louts, and the entrance to hell is through a toilet bowl. First-time director Yôko Kuno and the renowned Nobuhiro Yamashita, who has co-directed an animated film for the first time here, work with rotoscoping. The quirky, cartoon-like figures and painterly backgrounds contrast so harmoniously, the highlights are so lovingly placed that one can feel, taste, smell and grasp the sultry summer atmosphere.

We all know photos with painted-over or cut-out faces. The repeatedly inserted hand that works on family pictures with pens and other utensils seems like a refrain. The attempts at eradication are audible. They are a dissonance transferred to the body. Scratch, distort, remove. Usually a woman’s head.
Even if the narrator speaks in the third person, even if the hand may not be his hand, these could be his own experiences. The fragmentary descriptions revolve around a mother who beats and tortures her children. It is a childhood in permanent fear. How do you deal with the memories and scars in adulthood? Can the experience be put into words at all? Why do you feel strangely alienated from your siblings who suffered the same? David Kind’s essayistic approach to the trauma of violence is questioning. The doors of the title are opened with extreme caution.

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.

19-year-old Maydegol fled from Afghanistan to Iran with her family. Here she tries to make her big dream come true: She wants to be a professional Muay Thai boxer. The sport not only gives her strength for her gruelling daily life, but is also meant to help her get out of this inhospitable exile at last and work towards social change in Afghanistan. In order to be able to afford the training, Maydegol works every spare minute without her parents’ knowledge, including on fruit and vegetable plantations. She reflects on her apparently hopeless situation with friends from her boxing club: stuck in a foreign country, without documents and without prospects. The young women do not give up, though; they state clearly what they think, what they demand and what they expect from life.
Maydegol’s expectations are as special as she is. The likeable, captivating protagonist not only impresses with her persistence, but also with her authentic personality, which shines through in this documentary – even in the dark moments.

There is something very subtle about the moment when children become adults that it can hardly be put into words. In fact, hidden, almost imperceptible changes suddenly appear that act like tectonic shifts in the human psyche. In her documentary debut, Marie-Magdalena Kochová has managed to capture this subtle move. She documents the life of 18-year-old Johana, who lives with her parents and her younger sister in a small town in the Czech Republic.
The sister has autism. Her health condition is severe and unpredictable. Her hysterical fits and aggressive outbursts dictate the life of the whole family. All the schedules are synchronised so that someone is always with the youngest. The well-practised routine is threatened when Johana decides to apply for a study programme in psychology at the university after her school exams. This means that she will soon have to move to another city, leaving the entire burden on the parents. Kochová shows us a transitional period in anticipation of massive changes, which requires everyone involved to have firm confidence in their own decisions. The mental tension is palpable, but the camera maintains an equalising distance. Step by step, the beauty of a challenged life unfolds, where courage becomes the only measure.

Jamila is nine, Rachel eleven and Faseeha twelve when they take their first steps into a new hip-hop culture. The Berlin girls meet at a rap project, become friends and take off with their Sisterqueens crew. This documentary follows them over four years through their daily life with parents, siblings and their unusual chosen hip-hop family, where they learn a lot about hook lines and even more about self-respect.
We watch the three at rehearsals, studio recordings and stage performances, where they counter the well-known gender clichés of rap with their own songs. They also discuss their experiences with racism and exclusion and turn what happens to them into rhymes. Faseeha tests the boundaries with other artistic forms of expression, Rachel thinks about what self-determination means to her, and Jamila witnesses a frightening incident that makes her doubt the sanity of the police. They formulate their ideas and questions about what it means to be themselves, always with humour and to the point.

The aeroplanes are stationary, nothing moves, nothing takes off at the US military airbase in Arizona – until a young woman in a white dress begins to jump on a trampoline outside the fence, framed by an idyllic sunset. She conveys her story from the silent offscreen – only through subtitles. Having come from Saudi Arabia, she is stuck in the US because her father stole her identity papers. So homesick that she is considering drastic measures to get back home, she almost enlists in the military. But the US Army is suspicious and would not station her, a risk factor, anywhere near the Middle East. But there is a Baghdad in Arizona, too …
Artist Samar Al Summary’s work is an investigation into systems of power. She does not only talk about herself, the prejudices and obstacles she faces as a Saudi woman, but also about the crash of two Iraqi air force pilots who were to be trained by the US Air Force but never made it home either. In her dramatically condensed film essay, she takes up the symbolic fight – both against gravity, which she can at least temporarily defy by using cinematic means, and against patriarchy. The latter, however, is not so easy to fight.