In 1944, the French resistance fighter Robert Antelme was captured by the Germans. He was taken to Gandersheim, a satellite camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. In the last months of the Second World War, Antelme got to experience the whole extent of dehumanisation under National Socialist tyranny. Soon after his liberation he wrote the book “The Human Race” about it, which today is a classic of coming to terms with the past.

Stefan Hayn already dealt with Antelme in his film “Straub” (2014). Now he examines in more detail a series of texts which contributed to the post-war debate about how to deal with German guilt. Hayn calls his film a “lecture filmée” in the opening credits, a “filmed reading”. It is of crucial importance that the texts (including reflections on a theft of bread among prisoners) are present in the French original, even if recited by German native speakers. Different forms of “reading” that culminate in a sketch-like scenic re-enactment are interlaced with contemporary shots of memorial sites today to form a multi-layered film essay, historical-political in the best sense.

Bert Rebhandl

Marona-Sara-Ana-the-Ninth may be of noble descent from her father’s side, graceful and beautiful, but she is no princess. She braves many an adventure in her short life: She learns acrobatics and magic tricks, temporarily ends up on the streets and even becomes a saviour in need. She is a bitch. Her names were given to her by a number of masters and mistresses. Anca Damian tells a touching story with imagination and humour.

An original, surrealist and childlike aesthetics, the combination of different animation techniques, strong stylisation and the gay colour palette make the protagonists particularly expressive. The striking backgrounds resemble witty and artistic wimmelbook pictures. The unusual angles make us discover the urban hustle and bustle from many perspectives simultaneously – with all senses. At the heart of the film, a realistic and critical portrait of urban society emerges that does not shy away from questioning our relationship to animals and thus to our values. Joy and sadness, farewells and beginnings are mutually dependent – even death is sensitively addressed. Damian’s modern fairytale is about identity and belonging. Full of musical and visual poetry and philosophical esprit, it celebrates – equally simply and extravagantly – the complexity of existence and the simplicity of happiness.

Nadja Rademacher

They and all the others will continue to inspire life, Dina Naser writes at the end of her film about three children of war in Syria. They grow up in a refugee camp in Jordan: Marwa is the eldest, then there’s her sister Ayah and finally Mahmoud, the youngest. They have seven other siblings, but the family was torn apart when one brother in Syria no longer wanted to serve in the army and thus the dictator Assad. Marwa is the heroine of the film. She will soon be grown-up or at least considered almost of marriageable age by her parents. Her mother and father now make sure she doesn’t go out any more. But she already has a boyfriend.

Dina Naser follows the three children’s fate and everyday life over an extended period of time, starting in 2014. The filmmaker even hands the camera temporarily over to her protagonists – for the time when she can’t be with them. This can and should be compared to the situation of Palestinian refugees in 1948, among them Dina Naser’s father, whose experiences are referenced by the director. This opens up a larger context for this story which is profoundly and universally human but at the same time linked closely to the complicated Syria and Middle East conflict by its wealth of detail.

Bert Rebhandl

It’s the women who rule this Armenian village. They plough, harvest, and drive the tractors. They cook, eat together, laugh and sing. Life runs in a smooth rhythm, although melancholy seems to overshadow many conversations. The absence of men in the village is borne like a phenomenon of nature. The women have learned to adapt, solving problems together. All male villagers, except for a few old men, spend nine months of every year in Russia to work there. There are no jobs in Armenia. The families are complete only in winter. As soon as autumn begins to fade, the mood in the village begins to change. The return of the men brings excitement and joy, but also insecurity and changes. After the exuberant welcome celebrations, a new daily routine begins where couples are suddenly together again, children play with their fathers and the women finally know that a part of their workload is in other hands. But responsibilities must be redistributed every year.

Director Tamara Stepanyan has achieved a warm-hearted, stylistically assured portrait of a female community of fate who bear their difficult circumstances with lots of humour, warmth and a generous measure of lived feminism.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Without solidarity, hope would long since have died. The borders in the Italian-French Roya valley have been closed since 2015. Countless refugees try in vain to leave the Italian town of Ventimiglia for France and are sent back again and again. But the liberal inhabitants of this stubborn region refuse to settle for this. Together they oppose the law, shelter young migrants, provide them with bread behind the backs of the police – plainly doing everything to give these people a future. So in the foggy gorges far from the great European metropolises there is a community that stands together and just wants to help, resists – out of love of their homeland, out of human kindness, out of the shared belief in a world where we can live together peacefully and which is worth fighting for. “Words of Bandits” shows an oasis of hope. A film about arriving, progressing and approaching each other.

Julia Weigl

Fiction or document? Perhaps both, or something monstrous in-between. An old man is kidnapped and interrogated by his kidnappers. The old man is the actor who plays the mass murderer he is himself. The film not only lays bare the protagonist’s biography but weaves connections from National Socialism to the death of the RAF prisoners in Stammheim. Contagious in every respect!

Ralph Eue