A black chicken and a white chicken are sitting in their living room when the door bell rings. It’s the fox with a raised gun – and a black/white vision deficiency.

These days there is a lot of hullabaloo about what belongs to Europe. The Euro (essential core...), Islam (a bit anyway...), freedom of movement (a human right...) – but one thing we haven’t heard so far is that the Roma, who have been living among us for more than 600 years, belong to Europe. Which is why they are marginalised in most countries, down and out, living in seedy barracks. Fortunately the Spanish director Milena Bochet spares us the well-meaning images of victims from this world. Her film about four women from a Slovak Roma family takes us into the mysterious reality of a different culture, untainted by social exotism but rich in identity, confidence, and the knowledge which, like their fate, is handed down from mother to daughter. Someone is always talking in this film and there are always children who are listening. The point of reference of all stories is their ancestor, old Vozarania who refused to die. She appeared to her great-granddaughter one night. She is a Mulo, a spirit with two souls. In its most intense moments the film links this mysterious ghost world to its protagonists’ attitude towards the outside, the Gadje, the non-Roma. The hastile attitude of the latter can't rally damage them. Nor the forced sterilisations of the past, nor the prison into which their men disappear regularly, nor the poverty they are condemned to. These experiences reach far back into their past and are no more than building blocks in the long story of their people.
– Matthias Heeder

While others are thinking about alternative energy concepts, this remote Moroccan Atlas mountain range has no electricity at all. The life of the clan is ruled by hard work, bitter poverty and a deadly cough. They only get news from the world outside and food supplies when the narrow path to the village is negotiable. There is no street, let alone a school. One day two employees of an energy company turn up and promise to build a power line that will change the villagers’ lives...
Jerôme le Maire follows this adventurous and arduous undertaking over three years: how all the men in the village must pitch in to heave the heavy compressor up the mountain, how the parts are delivered by donkey and the villagers must first apply for identity cards in town before the switches up the mountain can finally be turned on. Because he looks closely, this tragicomic tale gains most of its depth from the conflicts set in motion by the advent of the modern age in the village community. While some illuminate their premises as bright as daylight, others have barely enough for a dim bulb to light their hut.
The first moving images that arrive on the dusty village square via the new television set – a nod to film history – finally serve as messages from a radiant consumer world. One gets an idea where the path out of the Middle Ages is going to lead straightaway.
– Grit Lemke

Eva is a tiny little mermaid. One day she has a crush on Emile, a single fisherman, and jumps in his fishing net. Emile finds Eva in a sardine tin.