Rolf Jarschel’s passion are lighters of every kind. He owns the largest collection in Europe with over 3,000 items. From Phoenician oil lamps via Döbereiner’s tinderbox to a solar-powered mini-flamethrower for everyday use, he offers glimpses of his impressive repository which is also travelling the country in a touring exhibition.

With childlike ease, entertaining and touching, this colourful animation shows the transition of a woman who was born in the “wrong body”. With her family’s support and understanding, Ivan becomes Lada – a happy, content person. Based on a true individual story, this film is also a parable on the ingenuity of the transgender community who sometimes have to take unusual paths to establish a life worth living in an ignorant environment.

Valentyna and her bed-ridden mother live on a small farm surrounded by the evergreen, lush flora of the rain forest. The works and thoughts of the poet and the artist, though, are filled with the landscapes of their old home, Ukraine. Memories of snow and birch trees, thistles and orchids, vegetable gardens and their animal residents come to life in Tamara’s poems and Valentyna’s drawings.

Life flows quietly in the small house in the middle of nowhere. Valentyna takes care of the few animals, milks the cows, makes cheese, cares for her mother. The photos on the chest of drawers, the allusions to the Chernobyl disaster only hint at why the two left Ukraine a long time ago. But what they left behind still lives in exile. One wonders whether she, the celebrated poet, still remembers her writings? Mother and daughter are as gentle with each other as the film’s gaze on the two women, their animals and surroundings. Without a trace of nostalgia, cinematographer Mariano Maximovicz’s images let us see not only the beauty of the landscapes we live in but also of those that live on in our minds.

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.

The self-taught nature filmmaker Ingeborg Tölke uses quotes from literary encounters with the flora and fauna of the moor in a gentle approach to this landscape. With great empathy, she uncovers the often all-too-hastily overlooked beauties and cruelties of the place, using time-lapse and macro techniques. Her debut work, which was also amazing in terms of film craft, won several awards.

Some light relief in the form of a snappy dance number! In colourful rotoscoping, in movement sequences drawn frame by frame, the figures whirl across the screen. Students of the TecnoCampus in Mataró near Barcelona created this short film as a joint project. One can see the fun they had in the process in every scene. Let’s just join the dance!

Julie lost her parents when she was still very young. Now she is 13 and has long since settled in her new home, with a family who loves her. Over the years she has managed to accept her fate. “Light” follows Julie for a while and shows a girl who, despite immeasurable loss, faces the world with her arms wide open.

Misty-eyed and nostalgic, this film takes us into the past. The accomplished illustrator Milanka Fabjančič uses sepia and pastel-coloured drawings to bring to life the miraculous story of the industrious and meek factory worker Liliana. Every night she takes off a shining necklace, every morning she puts it back on. During the day, the secret of her meekness remains hidden in her heart.

Louise the crocodile lives in a pretty flat in the city. The elevated train rattles, the coffee hisses on the stove and the walk takes her to a green park. But what is this? When Louise sneezes, all the colours fade away one by one! The crocodile also seems to lose her mind, because suddenly Louise can’t do the simplest tasks. Who can help her?

“Imagine this camera is your mother”, a father tells his daughter. In the 1990s, scores of families from the Republic of Moldova began a ritualised mail exchange between the mothers, who had emigrated for economic reasons, and their relatives back home. The former sent money and goods; the latter sent videotapes. These amateur recordings are the material of this film. They testify to the painful gaps the absent persons left in the lives of those who stayed behind.

Migration is a big factor in post-socialist states buffeted by recession and inflation after the end of the Soviet Union – and in this case, also by the civil war over Transnistria. According to data from 2011/2012, about a third of Moldovan children had one parent abroad. In this small country between Romania and the Ukraine, too, a higher percentage of fathers choose work migration. Otilia Babara, however, is specifically interested in the consequences of long absent mothers, who work for nursing services in Italy, for example, to earn their family’s livelihood, and who express their love through care packages. The loss of connection to their mother – all of whom stay out of the frame –, which affects girls in particular, emerges in the cracks of the staged home videos, when wandering glances reveal that the children no longer believe in their return.

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.