On the island of Palawan in the Philippine archipelago, more and more rainforest is falling victim to the saws. The clearances have long been illegal but are protected and even initiated by President Duterte’s corrupt regime. Local resistance is forming. A group of courageous men around a determined human rights lawyer decide to react. They sneak into the forests to take away the logging teams’ chainsaws, cars and boats. This exciting film, constructed like a thriller, follows them on their dangerous missions, which they call “meta-legal”. But the price is high: Some of the activists pay for their resistance with their lives.

An investigative examination of the colour spaces of the 100 Yuan note reveals a paradigm shift. Officially declared by the central bank to be red, the note bearing the portrait of Mao is, physically speaking, actually pink. This has consequences for China’s political narrative, as Tang Han’s uncompromisingly precise and refreshingly clever cinematic experimental setup illustrates.

A giant ginger mountain landscape that five cooks spent a week to make: Once magnificent culinary works of art were created in Chinese restaurants. Food was associated with a wealth of money and time. The world today is short-lived, customers have become few and far between. Chefs talk about the connection between food culture and socio-economic change in China.

Bizarre animations of strange beauty on a metal plate, set to Free Jazz. Light reflexes. Lines and circles that take on human or insect form, merge and dissolve. Sometimes a voice from offscreen gives directions, demands a new plate. Then everything starts again – but differently. The realization dawns slowly: This is an expedition to an underworld that generates silently communicating ghost lights.

The summer after graduation: Own life plans and expectations of the parents’ generation collide. While Shuli films his friends with a Super 8 camera, his mother wants nothing more than for him to get married. She resolutely refuses to speak about the fact that her son loves men and has been living with his boyfriend in Beijing for years. A deafening silence. Idyllic family pictures are overlaid by a long overdue confrontation.