An overcrowded dog shelter in Serbia. It’s hard to see how many animals are kept here behind wire mesh in desolate kennels. They are cared for and trained by prison inmates who are shown doing their job without further comment or explanation. However, the camera never focuses on the men’s faces. Observations take place at eye-level with the dogs. Especially shaggy Vanja and his training progress are at the centre of Dejan Petrović’s short study of freedom. The uniform, concentrated shots leave plenty of space for questions, above all whether this (dog’s) life is really unfree or whether the desire for freedom must take a backseat under these circumstances, since there is a roof over one’s head and a task that fills the day. While we are still thinking about this, Vanja with his alert eyes and engaging nature has already found a place – not just in the heart of his initially rather dismissive trainer.

What do the Algerian war of liberation and Yugoslavia have in common? Stevan Labudović. In 1959, Tito himself sent his favourite cinematographer to Algeria. The resistance against the French colonial rule needed the eyes of the world, and the experienced partisan Labudović helped open them: His images gave the lie to the propaganda of the occupiers and their Western allies. This is a portrait of the man, the mission and the age – as film, ideological and personal history.

For three years, until the Democratic Republic of Algeria was proclaimed, Labudović put himself and his camera at the service of the people fighting for independence. Mila Turajlić found the newsreel footage shot at the time in the Filmske Novosti archive in Belgrade, got in touch with the aged pensioner and followed his trail. From a wealth of archive material, diary entries by and interviews with Labudović, with contemporary witnesses from Yugoslavia, Algeria and New York, where the young Maghreb state, like many other former colonies, struggled for admission to the United Nations, she distils the promising origins of an alliance that stood at the beginning of the Non-Aligned Movement, which was to oppose the dichotomy of the superpowers. Thus the bow to her compatriot also gains global political topicality.

To the film enthusiast Marshall Tito, who had his own projection room and employed a full-time projectionist, cinema was also a means to consolidate socialist Yugoslavia. Filmmaker Mila Turajlić, on the other hand, raised in a state that was falling apart, draws on the wealth and glamour of Yugoslavian cinematography in her first long film to better understand her own history. In a clever montage of interviews and film clips, she tells stories of nation-building and images of a nation, but also of how the collapse of the film industry after Tito’s death heralded the collapse of her country.

El Shatt in Egypt, in the middle of the desert, was both a haven and a projection. This is where in 1944, based on a deal between the Yugoslavian partisans led by Tito and the British allies, not only a refugee camp for the families of anti-fascist fighters from Dalmatia was built. This is where a model was created for the future Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – a state that was to build its founding narrative on the people’s liberation fight against fascism and declare collectively organised self-administration its social ideal.

Director Ivan Ramljak offers us multifaceted insights into this long-forgotten piece of primordial communist history spelled out in reality. After painstaking research, he combines hundreds of historical photographs and some (few) film recordings of interviews with contemporary witnesses. The lively voices of those who were children back then and are over 80 today tell their stories offscreen: of the struggle for survival, solidarity and lived ideology, in short, of a daily life that included self-organised schools, workshops, canteen kitchens, even a newspaper. Ramljak, tongue firmly in cheek, takes up the thread of history and juxtaposes his skilfully arranged archive material with staged scenes played by the ensemble of a theatre that was founded in El Shatt at the time.

It begins like a classic “girl meets boy” story: Faith, a charismatic accordion player from Great Britain, travels to Serbia to learn about Roma folk music. She meets the violinist Branko, who is instantly smitten. They quickly marry and form a band. But with musical success their love dwindles. A turbulent story of expectations, disappointments and the dream of happiness.

Faith enters into Branko’s life in an almost disturbingly casual way. She doesn’t seem to be bothered by the new country, the sceptical family and the cultural differences. Branko on the other hand adores his new wife and boldly enters a new world. They are a big hit as a duo – travelling around the world and playing bigger and bigger venues. But while Faith feels as happy as a lark, Branko seems like an uprooted tree. Instead of dealing with their differences they keep moving on rapidly, until one ruthless step follows the next. Catherine Harte has produced a captivating and very intimate portrait of this contradictory couple. Relentlessly close and yet compassionate, the film develops an impressive pull you don’t want to resist.

The small recording device named REC lives all alone in an abandoned attic when a bird appears at the window. REC is really excited and wants to talk to it. But when the bird hears REC’s “voice” it flies away in terror. Now REC tries everything to record the bird’s beautiful song. Time is running out, because its battery will soon be exhausted.

Director Nikola Spasić explains in an interview that in this film he was interested in the fluid boundaries between documentary and fiction, and that he found the perfect protagonist in Kristina: someone with an interesting personal story who can also act. And so she plays herself, Kristina, a transsexual sex worker in Serbia. She lives alone with her cat in a beautiful old house, collects antiques and practices ikebana on the terrace of her garden. She meets friends, visits a cloister, lives her religion, arranges a crucifix.

This idyll is regularly interrupted by the obtrusive ringtone of her work mobile. But the meeting with the client who appears at her door a short while later is well-orchestrated and no contradiction to Kristina’s elegant, graceful and serene existence, which she shapes according to her own ideas. All in all, these flawlessly framed and composed tableaus have an element of transcendence. But with his aesthetic directing, Spasić emphasises the incontrovertible freedom of this modern woman whom he captures in a portrait that is both intimate and daring.

In Hamsterland, everybody is 100 percent happy. Their religion is statistics and the perfect employee is young, a team player and stress-resistant. Even the most mindless computer jobs and piece work drudgery are fun, without exception. Until one day something goes wrong after all and the mantras “think positive” and “follow your dreams” are temporarily silenced. An entertaining polemic on hyper capitalist, neoliberal societies that makes you smile.

Dragica does not lack for work. The house and cattle in western Serbia demand toil from dawn to dusk. She milks, harvests, prepares porridge for her handicapped daughter. Her own mother recently passed away. Now Dragica wears black and shaves her old father. Can there be an alternative to this daily self-sacrifice? Almost casually, Isaac Knights-Washbourn leaves space for such reflections: While chopping tomatoes, the woman opens up to a guest from town.

András and his daughter Zsófia enjoy a relaxed Sunday in their stately city mansion, just before the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. But soon the silence in the house is disturbed by an escaped pig, closely followed by an unexpected visit: András’ brother, his large family and lots of luggage barge in through the front door. Running children and garrulous relatives bring noise and bedlam to all floors. Art objects are handled without permission, furniture is moved, objects fall to the ground. The visitors have brought chaos. Zsófia’s father and the maid try in vain to restore calm and order. Though András and his brother get closer to each other, the old house is not up to the changed circumstances. A leaking water pipe heralds a finale that at least makes them all stand still together.

A door that has been closed for seventy years serves as a MacGuffin in Mila Turajlić’s double portrait of her mother and her mother country of Yugoslavia. That very door has divided the bourgeois family apartment ever since Tito’s communists assigned several rooms to proletarians in need of shelter. Srbijanka Turajlić never cared a fig for her neighbours. But when Serbian nationalists began to threaten the unity of her country, she turned into a fierce opponent of the Milošević regime. In a virtuoso montage of archive material and conversations with her mother, the filmmaker recaps the latter’s development while gaining a new perspective on the time of her own youth.