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.

The vultures are circling over the Cevennes, the south-eastern part of the French Massif Central. They are part of the holistic cycle of becoming and passing away which shepherdess Nathalie seeks to come closer to. Because the vultures are gnawing at the remains of her beloved animals. She considers herself responsible not only for their lives, but also for their death. Elsa Maury’s film is an unequivocal testimony to what it means to wield the fatal knife oneself.

The sounds made by a ewe when a lamb is born seem almost human. And when a little later the newborn turns out to be unwilling to live it seems as if one could detect pain in the mother’s eyes. The shepherdess Nathalie’s empathic look at her flock was transferred directly to the viewer. Each animal here has its own name, each has a biography that Nathalie knows by heart. And it’s ultimately up to her to finally decide when the end of a sheep is near. In diary-like sequences we learn about her feelings, take part in a difficult process of development which results in new self-confidence, perhaps even new wisdom. Elsa Maury shows a perennial school of killing and death. She leaves the events uncommented, but achieves an intensity through images and editing that stays with us for a long time.

Lebanese filmmaker Dima El-Horr moved to Paris several years ago. Among the friends who stayed at home is the artist Sirvat Fazlian, whom she regularly visits in Beirut until the failed revolution of 2019, the COVID lockdown, the devastating port explosion and finally the dramatic economic crisis put a temporary end to their meetings. So the director decides to give her conversations with Siro a cinematic form.

Ever since the death of her husband, the well-known Armenian actor Berj Fazlian, Siro has lived alone in a flat filled with souvenirs and devoted most of her time to music and painting. In this film, footage from the years before 2019 blends with recorded phone calls between Siro and Dima and recent scenes from Paris, coming together in a densely woven portrait of life in exile. While snow falls in Paris, Siro talks about warm days on the Mediterranean coast and sings Armenian songs. She rails against the permanent crisis in Lebanon, but her nature is not affected. For one thing, Siro personifies the legendary Lebanese resilience. Yet for the filmmaker she represents that part of the heart that people in exile leave behind. So almost inevitably, “Conversations with Siro” becomes the director’s dialogue with herself.

Michèle Bokanowski’s sounds have been a distinct part of Patrick Bokanowski’s film images since 1972. The origin of her soundtracks often lies in noises that are quite unlike music. Thus, she uses the clacking of billiard balls to describe people working on a field in the distance. Between tape loops and electronic devices, the composer talks about her craft of shaping sonorous material.

How can we visualise the past without perceiving it too much as a historical fact? This film uses a clever combination of archival material and oral history to bring memories of a transgenerative trauma and the associated pain to the surface. What seems to be the past becomes visible in countless points of contact with the present. It’s a simple, touching treatment of the incomprehensible consequences of a historical crime.

A country that could be anywhere, not precisely localized and yet everywhere. It’s a beautiful summer’s day when the life of siblings Kyona and Adriel changes forever. Their village is raided, destroyed and set on fire. The whole family is forced to flee and experiences many real and surreal situations on their tracks across a whole continent to finally arrive, perhaps, at a more peaceful place.

At the start of the film, Kyona leafs through a sketchbook, takes stock of her life and talks about the end of her childhood. It is only later that the siblings even realize that they are refugees, that like many others they are making their way to the border for a variety of reasons: natural disasters, the consequences of climate change, war, persecution. The two children come across dangerous and helpful people, are separated and find each other again. This feature-length animation, realized in oil on glass, relies on the rapid interplay between fantasy and reality, taking us, on the one hand, into a fictitious, non-real world. But on the other hand, the places, names, situations remind us of familiar things. They show fleeing, exile, setting out as a universal experience.

In the summer of 2000 Ugandan and Rwandan troops fought a devastating battle in Kisangani. The International Court of Justice sentenced Uganda to pay one billion U.S. dollars to the civilian victims. After almost twenty years of waiting in vain, some of them set out for Kinshasa to enforce their legal claim. The physical and theatrical power of their mission both drives and radiates from this film.

Dieudo Hamadi has given the women and men he is about to follow down the Congo a visually confident and assured exposition. Gathered on an inky black stage, they look at us and sing: of blood spilled, of money forgotten. Then the march of the maimed sets itself in motion, on crutches, with prostheses, past the nearby pits of the dead and out into the country. Every metre covered is an act of rebellion. When the procession of beggars, who rightly won’t tolerate this designation, finally climbs the stairs of the National Parliament, iconic scenes of Soviet revolutionary cinema seem to shine through. But the crowd that is moving here is different. Its individual bodies push back with all their weight both against the casual shrug of the shoulders of political routine and the carelessly rounded calculations of loss and equivalent value of the arithmetic of war.

Dark percussive sounds call forth anthropomorphic creatures. They come to life in short dance etudes. Optically manipulated, they stretch into gaunt shapes, unfold in a thousand layers like exotic animals, dissolve into abstract paintings. They are pure creatures of light: fleeting, immaterial. The rhythmic sound motif colours their movements with sometimes pithy, sometimes breathy variations.

For many years, Amin was unable to speak about the experience of his flight. It is only now that he finds the courage to open up to his schoolmate, filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen. From earliest childhood Amin’s life was marked by political unrest in his native country of Afghanistan and soon by growing up without a permanent home. His painful memories are visualized in haunting animations, interwoven with documentary footage.

It’s a well-known fact that flight does not lead from point A to point B and then simply ends. Amin’s story, though, shows how rocky and tortuous it can really be, leading from Afghanistan via Russia, Estonia and a few other stations to Denmark. Only when his life is on a safe track with an upcoming wedding and a good career does he find the strength to talk about what he had to go through to be where he is today. In an almost psychoanalytical setting, the protagonist – lying down – talks about his past. The narrative moves in a spiral between then and now, allowing for frequent respites between the traumatic impressions that the poignant animation makes almost physically tangible. It’s no coincidence that “Flee” has already won multiple awards and is considered an “instant classic” even now.

In Belgium and France, the documentary series “Strip-Tease” is real cult viewing. The creators of the TV production have now used more than twenty-year-old material to make a crime documentary in dirty black and white. The Brussels CID are investigating a murder case: A casual prostitute was killed in her flat. The discovery of a few French fries enables them to track down the perpetrator. True Crime.

The dead woman’s name was Kalima Sissou. Very quickly, the investigation focuses on her former boyfriend Alain, and so, in authentic, raw images, we watch Inspector Lemoine and his colleagues at work: at the crime scene, interrogating witnesses and, naturally, cross-examining the main suspect. Despite the serious character of the events, Jean Libon and Yves Hinant’s offbeat mixture of dark thriller and absurd reality comedy does not lack (black) humour. Shot in a simple cinéma-vérité style, the film does not embellish on what it shows. The creative and conceptual model is, of course, the series “Strip-Tease”, co-developed by Libon in 1985 and widely known for the unconventional, blunt and politically incorrect manner in which it tackled even delicate subjects. “For a Fistful of Fries” continues in this vein and takes us very close to the often incredibly profane action.

Mady and Merouane are two eleven-year-olds who grow up as best friends in the north-east of Paris. They live right next door to each other and that’s more important to them than anything else. And anyway, they feel so at home in their neighbourhood that they can’t think of a more perfect place to practice adulthood. When some other boys turn up, their friendship is briefly put to the test …

Michelle, 86 years old, is an equally obstinate and touching widow and filmmaker Amélie Cabocel’s grandmother. Michelle lives alone in a big house in a lonely area of Lorraine and is probably completely unaware that with every fibre of her existence she bears witness to a vanishing age. But when Amélie tries to persuade her to take part in a photographic and exhibition project, she resolutely makes it her own.

Michelle spends her leisurely days reading the obituaries in the local weekly regularly and with great concentration, making long phone calls to the few surviving “cousins” and leafing patiently through the carefully guarded photo albums in which her memories are preserved. Beyond her private life, these albums and folders are also an eloquent fund of an everyday culture about to disappear. When Michelle’s granddaughter wants to produce a film and an exhibition based on this material, the old lady catches the bug and, with her headstrong personality, adds fuel to an already challenging enterprise. “Forgotten Lands” is the moving portrait of a grandmother from the familiar perspective of her granddaughter, but also an intelligent reflection on the unique ability of photography to record echoes of a life lived.

In the midst of the Moroccan desert, characterised by rocks, scrubs and immeasurable expanse, two men are looking for celestial bodies. Pacing out this weathered ground is a downright gargantuan task. Both have great hopes tied to the meteorite fragments: While one of them is looking for knowledge, the other longs for a better life. Adnane Baraka’s impressive directing debut traces existential questions in powerful images.

The barren landscapes of south-eastern Morocco are known for frequent meteorite impacts. Mohamed, a nomad who lives with his family in a tent in the desert, decides to start searching. Like the other men who scour the terrain with him he hopes to find a valuable rock from space that would mean his escape from poverty. On the other side of the country, scientist Abderrahmane analyses meteorites for enclaves of long-dead celestial bodies. To reach the origin of our life, we have to look at the stars.

Franzy is an extraterrestrial cook who lives alone and also feels a little lonely. She loves to season her dishes with a special pink ingredient that makes everything taste extra delicious. But when the spice tin is empty, Franzy must go in search of new supplies. She reaches a planet full of hungry creatures delighted with her culinary skills.

Life without a car has become unthinkable in the country. This also goes for the sleepy village of Claviers in Provence, where Claire Simon went to school and her daughter experienced her first love with the baker’s son. Pensioners and tourists dominate the place today, and the bakery has long since given up. But the heart of the village continues to beat: in the garage. This is where the day-to-day dramas take place, where the weal and woe of its citizens are decided.

Christophe Scalia’s empire is one of men who accept women only as bystanders. Nevertheless, the mechanic and his apprentice, Romaric Rousselle, are quite willing to allow Claire Simon to watch their every move as they handle shock absorbers, spark plugs and brake pads, to listen to their every bantering conversation. They are completely absorbed in their role, turning into superheroes responsible not just for the proper functioning of all the two- and four-wheel vehicles that are so important in the country, but also of the entire village. This is where local politics and family planning, generational conflicts and the economy are discussed, occasionally accompanied by music from Coppola’s “The Godfather” which Christophe has set as his mobile phone ringtone. To make everyday life look more exciting than any fiction through patient observation, that is the miracle of Claire Simon’s documentary work.

In this animation-documentary hybrid, four older women reflect on their memories of the old times when they were young and relations between the sexes were completely different. Their many voices merge into one: Grandmother Vera speaks. She tells her story in precise detail, gives insight into the turbulence of her youth and shares memories of her intimate life. She speaks as a representative of Slovenian women in the first half of the 20th century and illustrates their status in the gender and social hierarchies of that era.