A journey back in time to 1915 Dresden, where Karlchen lives, who dreams of seeing the famous elephants of the Sarrasani Circus one day. To earn the ticket, he delivers potatoes. But his few coins are not enough for the visit. When Karlchen’s dream at last comes within reach, everything turns out different than expected.

The chalk chases the shadow. Once it is captured, only traces of the game remain. Drawing, erasing, drawing again on a porous surface. Like on a sloppily wiped blackboard, shades of images that have long ceased to exist shine through. Špela Čadež stages a race between fleeting and manifest forms that – at least in terms of film theory – knows no winner.

Captain Ramadan’s “gym” is located in a dusty residential area near the port of Alexandria. This is where the former professional athlete has coached young women in weightlifting for over twenty years – including his daughter Nahla, the first Egyptian world champion. An extraordinarily intimate portrait of this lone and fighter who raised Egypt’s young athletes to world class level with self-funding, which also puts the focus on a second protagonist: young Asmaa.

Mayye Zayed has followed the Captain’s student, who was fourteen at the start, for four years. Wearing a red Popeye t-shirt and backed by her coach, she fights her way to the global top league matches. The story of the inner highs and lows of the introverted young woman unfolds gently as the camera captures her emotional states precisely without many words. The dramaturgy of the chronological narrative follows the events in the best direct cinema manner, impressively adapting to the rhythm of life – and death. The result is the portrait of an unusual relationship and of a harsh environment that demands more than physical strength from the participants.

The curtain is up, the stage is clear, the microphone on: Let the show begin. The little singer steps forward and everyone is waiting with bated breath what singing talents are about to be heard. She clears her throat one more time and then it starts. But what is this? She’s not really going to lick the microphone like a popsicle, is she? Surely an idea we’ve all had at one time or another!

Almost every inhabitant of Fondo Negro has relatives abroad. Since the 1980s, job migration, meaning wages shared with the residents from afar, has been one of the most important sources of income in this region in the southwest of the Dominican Republic. Young women in particular go to Europe or the U.S. to support their families by unskilled labour. In her enchantingly beautiful film, director Anna-Sophia Richard shows how this affects the ones who stay behind.

When she set out on the journey to Europe, she didn’t know what to expect, says one of the seven people portrayed. It was as if she was going on a holiday: a holiday that’s now lasted more than thirty years. Others haven’t seen their families in over fifteen years, their only contact being by phone or video chat. The mayor of Fondo Negro, herself the first job migrant from the region, tries to keep the women in the village. But the pull of jobs elsewhere is powerful. What’s left are separated families, children who grow up without parents and couples who become estranged. Almost in passing, the director shows in colourful, dreamy images how provisional solutions manifest themselves and permanently shape the reality of people’s lives. Happiness is only an eight-hour flight away – and still unattainable.

A pain in the heart, never-drying tears and turned heads are hard to treat, but fortunately not incurable. In X-ray images and tissue samples, on examination couches and in waiting rooms, always under medical supervision, Špela Čadež’s puppet animation studies the difficult-to-diagnose lovesickness. An animated physiological case study.