The cutting down of a cherry tree becomes the starting point of an intimate dialogue about transgenerational trauma between a mother and a daughter. The line between the need for investigation and the desire for healing becomes blurry when a persistent camera depicts the felling of the tree. The short documentary is an attempt to find a shared language for the unspeakable consequences of child sexual abuse within my own family. Content warning: The film contains descriptions of experiences of sexual violence.
An unpleasant examination by a meticulous doctor leads to a supposedly inevitable medical intervention that leaves the young patient scarred in body and soul.
She knew this day would come and the choice she'd have to make. But as it finally comes, Maya cannot wrap her head around it. A mole – it's so small, so insignificant, just a mark... How can it be so hard to part from it? Can Maya ever feel whole again when a bit of her is taken away?
I recently saw someone that looked like you. I realised quickly that he was not you – but he moved like you. Ran his hands through his hair like you. And had the same backpack in the same shabby state. So I decided to follow your not-you for a while.
News anchor Randi Isaksen struggles to help her sister navigate a broken mental health system in Recovery Channel. Told through the duelling prism of documentary and narrative storytelling, filmmaker Ellen Ugelstad exposes an oppressive system designed to control instead of heal the human condition. Informed by her own family experiences, Ugelstad creates a fictional TV channel to explore the injustices faced by those with mental health challenges and exposes the use of coercion in contemporary therapy.
Through a humanistic lens, she explores the negative impact of an oppressive system, while advocating for the recognition of mental health as a human right rather than an illness.
Is ADHS the fashionable diagnosis of a society geared towards efficiency and Ritalin the perfect doping agent? A personal journey to the heart of chaos and back – from a deliberately female perspective.
What does the rise in the diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and other mental illnesses since the 90s have to do with the efficiency-driven and dumbed-down civilisation in which the grid of normal is becoming ever narrower? Are ADHD drugs the doping of the performance society? And who actually determines what is normal and what is not?
With five different female ADHD sufferers, Sick Girls gets to the bottom of these questions and gives insight into the personal difficulties of living with ADHD. Director Gitti Grüter examines their own ADHD and interacts with their protagonists partly in front and partly from behind the camera, addressing chaos, lack of concentration, relationship problems, addiction, depression, insomnia and impulsivity. Gitti builds a bridge between the hardships and joys of the affected women and a society that blows back at them in the form of stigmatisation and stereotyping of the feminine and the desolate.
Through its cinematic devices, Sick Girls gives the audience a momentary sense of having ADHD and digs into the social contexts of this “anomaly”.
The sun is setting in the jungle. The little monkey rocks from leaf to leaf. His dreams are wild and colourful … A filmic lullaby that definitely won’t make anyone fall asleep.
The sun sets and the eyes are closing. Rocking from one green leaf to the next, the little monkey glides gently to sleep. Suddenly, the world of dreams gets darker, more colourful and wild. Mysterious plants, creatures and shapes line the trajectory through the night.
DOK Industry is realised with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a Decision of the German Bundestag.