In a cabin in the forest, Jean and Mana listen to various animal species and catalogue voice recordings. When they hear unfamiliar sounds, their curiosity to uncover a secret is aroused.
Jean lives as a hermit in a forest. From his cabin, he listens to and records the sounds of the animals that inhabit the surrounding area. One night, he hears the cry of an unknown animal. Along with Mana, a young girl who sings with the birds, he goes in search of the mysterious creature.
A ghostly search for traces, based on the 1965 U.S. embargo against “communist” real hair wigs from Asia. Is every wig inhabited by a ghost from the imperial past?
This film is about the haunting memories of Asia’s late-20th-century modernisation. The story departs from a 1965 United States embargo on the hair trade, known as the “Communist Hair Ban”. In every wig resides a ghost from the imperial past.
A shaman, half human, half animal, performs a breakneck dance in the jungle. Ingeniously, he tries to fool the crocodiles in the river to reach the other bank.
The film’s stop-motion animation puppets are made using Taiwan’s unique papermaking technique rooted in traditional funeral ceremonies. At the beginning of the film, a shadow puppet mirror transforms into a shaman-like animal dancer. The film uses the perspective of a fly to create a montage film language using the metaphor of the compound eye. Through the use of choreography in the style of the Taiwanese “yi zhen” folk dance, the film portrays the Southeast Asian folktale The Mousedeer Crossing the River through multiple perspectives, reinterpreting the story’s layered facets across cultures.
The audience views the narrative through the vision of the fly’s compound eye, where the folktale represents a form of container, filled with symbolic metaphors such as the mirror and shadows, reflecting the flow of cultural identity, ethnicity and the transitional nature of local and global contexts. The film interprets cultures from around the world and while seemingly different on the surface, they in fact reveal a similar structure at their core.
Design as a political act? In this animated collage, a contemporary advertising graphic designer explores the uncompromising work of the photomontage pioneer and anti-fascist John Heartfield.
The graphic designer Stefanie is in a creative crisis. Boring advertising assignments and a boss who does not value her work. On a visit to a museum, she is magically attracted by the satirical photomontages of the world-famous colleague and Nazi opponent John Heartfield. Then the miracle happens. She ends up in his studio, where she finally picks up scissors and paper again. An adventurous journey through Heartfield's extraordinary life 100 years ago begins.
The little beetle tries unsuccessfully to get out of the sink. When the tap is opened, the watery whirlpool takes him into the wide world. The beginning of a wonderful journey.
Little Beetle's attempt to escape from the sink has been unsuccessful, but the trouble that comes in the form of water will prove to be the beginning of a wonderful journey.
A storm of queer norm-busting archive images. The creative arrangement is as sensual as the material, including purple colour explosions and a jazz music leitmotif.
Between birth and death, is the power to love and live. Political rules, religious orders, social norms and cultural taboos control who we love and how we love. The right to love is controlled and regulated by how we live. But the erotic has the power to emancipate. With spoken word and archive sources, love is unboxed from categories in queer expression and a celebration of eros as the power to change our attitudes to life and to allow others to live their lives without judgment or prejudice.
How do you restitute self-images? A lucid, thought-provoking essay about the Congo, the far-reaching dimensions of colonial power and the (re-)privatisation of identity.
The film Lumène is based on in-depth research into photographic archives taken in the heart of the Belgian Congo between 1938 and 1939 by the German ethnographer and anthropologist Hans Himmelheber. These archives are kept at the Rietberg Museum in Zurich.
In this first part, Lumène: Privatisation, director David Shongo, in collaboration with the traditional chiefs of Lusanga, Mukedi and Feshi, analyses how photography was used as a tool of colonial domination and how it contributed to a process of privatisation of the imaginary, images, cultural heritage and spaces. These analyses raise current issues such as restitution, reparation and the domination of knowledge.
A woman lives alone with her cat in the city. The small miracles of life can be found in all kinds of everyday moments, and loneliness turns into a happy melody.
Tyrano and Brachi want to play tennis. The match doesn’t quite work out because Brachi keeps falling over. Tyrano tries everything so that Brachi doesn’t hurt himself.
Tyrano, who was playing tennis alone, meets Brachi. They try to play tennis together, but Brachi keeps falling while attempting to hit the ball. Tyrano tries everything he can to prevent Brachi from getting hurt. But the more Tyrano struggles, the less interested Brachi is in playing tennis. Will they be a good partner to each other?
A consensual union becomes a brutal assimilation that ends in death and a new beginning. Powerfully moving colours and fascinating sounds transport irritating emotions.
In this film, two individuals with strong personalities are ultimately driven to ruin by selfish possessiveness. But in the end, their death, and their rebirth after corruption is just a part of this continuum called natural life, no matter whether their behaviours should be morally criticised or introspected by us.
A religious statue comes alive and unites with a boneless girl. They leave the village together with many other figures that have stepped down from the altars.
One day, all the statues in the area come to life. They leave the roadside shrines and pedestals and calmly set off straight ahead, all in the same direction. They do not even stop for a moment. People watch the phenomenon with growing anxiety. None of them knows where they are going and why. Only a little girl with a boneless body marvels at the procession of the unusual figures with pure fascination. They walk without muscles, although they should not be able to walk. How strange!
Joan Tomàs Monfort, Carlos Pérez-Reche, Juanjo Sáez
Even Phil Collins cannot stop the development of a deep friendship between Juanjo and Miquel. The two teenage boys have bonded forever over Heavy Metal.
Joan Tomàs Monfort, Carlos Pérez-Reche, Juanjo Sáez
International Competition Animated Film
Animated Film
Spain
2023
80 minutes
Catalan
German premiere
Trailer
Synopsis
Juanjo is an asthmatic boy who has lived protected by his family to the point of drowning him. Miquel grows up in a family with an absent father. His mother tries to get on by herself, but she does not always succeed.
Tender Metalheads is a film about the relationship between Juanjo and Miquel, two teenage boys from Barcelona in 1991 who will take refuge from the grey world they live in in their friendship and heavy music.
Tubas are stolen from Californian schools. What does the lack of a particular sound do to our perception of music? An entertaining, multilayered reflection on hearing and not hearing.
When tubas are stolen from Los Angeles high schools, many questions remain unanswered. The Tuba Thieves is not about thieves or missing tubas. Instead, it asks what it means to listen.
DJ Vika is 84 and a star of Warsaw’s nightclubs. She refuses to grow old and sit at home. Instead, she wants to celebrate life, enjoy herself and music.
84-year-old Vika is a star of the Warsaw clubbing scene. A charismatic DJ and a colourful bird she surrounds herself with young people, repeating that age is just a number. But when her health suddenly begins to deteriorate, Vika can no longer deny the passing of time. Will she find meaning in sharing the joy of life with other seniors by encouraging them to live their lives to the fullest?
Vika! is a bittersweet portrait of a woman who intends to celebrate life to the very end, a true inspiration for both the silver generation and our future selves.
An empty paper depicts a struggle between artistic composition and decomposition as the voice of the narrator-protagonist reminisces about her tumultuous relationship with a former girlfriend.
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.