Audrius Mickevičius puts the horribly disfigured face of his murdered brother at the start of his film. He’s interested in the question of how someone atones for such an act. With regard to this particular crime one could say: far too short, because the murderer is released after only five years on the grounds that he proved himself to be an exemplary prisoner. Mickevičius doesn’t confine himself to this individual case, though, but raises his film to a more general level: “Exemplary Behaviour” is almost a meditation about the question whether a final act like murder can be atoned for in a temporal order – and whether the passing of time allows the victim’s family to forgive.

Mickevičius uses the example of two lifers (one of them gets married and wants to have children, the other pours his whole passion into an idea of craftsmanship) and a philosopher with prison experience (Bernhard Stiegler) to make that strange state of suspended life comprehensible. The elegiac undertone is finally reinforced by the information that Audrius Mickevičius fell ill and died during the production of “Exemplary Behaviour”. The film was completed by Nerijus Milerius.

Bert Rebhandl

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Awarded with a Golden Dove in the International Competition Long Film, with the Prize of the Interreligious Jury and with the FIPRESCI Prize.

Ever since Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden everyone knows what a whistleblower is. Betraying secrets for a good cause brings a lot of honour to those who dare expose criminal systems. But becoming a whistleblower also means you lose your (former) life, risk mobbing, persecution and exile.

Director Marco Ferrari talks to seven people from his home country Italy who took this decision, asking them about their motives and the consequences – on a personal level as well as with regard to the crimes they denounced. Even if each of the interviewees worked up the individual courage to denounce system failures, their stories are uncannily similar: Anyone who gets out and does the right thing is immediately faced with aggression, intimidation, corruption, harassment and isolation. The police and judiciary seem not even close to being able to protect whistleblowers adequately respectively deal with their information sensibly. Ferrari doesn’t emphasize the individual characteristics but shows, by means of deliberately exaggerated stagings, what universal patterns of intimidation, cover-ups and thoughtlessness corrupt organisations are founded on. An important, tense film, whose protagonists seem like a blueprint for more moral courage at the desk.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

An imaginary space that could be anything. Or nothing. A space that is everything one wants it to be. Dancers co-opt spaces and transform them into an irresistible pull – as does the American choreographer Joanna Kotze, for whom this essayistic score of words and images was written. Shelly Silver created a four-minute associative flow of consciousness that is an indictment of pollution in the Italian Mediterranean, too.

Julia Weigl

The Alps. Nowadays there’s hardly a mountain left untouched. We have long conquered the lofty peaks and developed even the high mountain ranges as recreational landscapes. The fact that there is practically no limit to exploiting the Alps should not be taken for granted: The whole region is covered by a nearly invisible safety system. Well-camouflaged protective precautions against falling rocks and avalanches are there to ensure accessibility and habitability without fear. On the other hand, concrete fortifications around isolated farms or sculptural curved walls on the slopes to secure a whole village look conspicuous and almost surreal.

“Safety123” captures these constructions and the work that’s usually done in the background in breathtaking images. Quiet sequences show impressively how many-layered this safety system is: The landscape is ceaselessly surveyed and emergencies are simulated, whether in computer models, test facilities or large-scale disaster exercises. This observational documentary attentively follows the sometimes mysterious-looking activities and preparations to portray the human struggle against the forces of nature which are unstoppable despite precision technology.

Annina Wettstein

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Awarded with a Golden Dove in the Next Masters Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film.

One nut alone doesn’t make a sound when you carry it in your pocket. But many nuts clatter. And so the small community where nine-year-old Siddharta lives with his 65-year-old father Fabrizio calls itself “Noci Sonanti”, the “Ringing Nuts”. The two of them live without electricity or any of the comforts of civilisation in a house situated in a remote Italian region. Occasionally people arrive who become part of the tribe for a while before they move on. Like Erica, who we sometimes see absorbed in meditation with Fabrizio. But Siddharta and Fabrizio aren’t completely isolated. There’s a change every month when Siddharta moves in with his mother Sofia and her new family. The boy also maintains a friendship with a girl from the village, near his father’s house, where he gets in contact with things Fabrizio has ruled out a long time ago: highly sweetened ice tea, for example. Or remedies for lice.

Damiano Giacomelli and Lorenzo Raponi observe the life of the “Noci Sonanti” over one summer marked by sun-drenched days and newborn cats. The directors eschew any pointed judgement, but still skilfully edit together the different models of life between which Siddharta moves and quite often mediates.

Carolin Weidner

To become a hotel clerk you need one thing above all else: discipline. Of course that’s not so easy for an adolescent. Shy, fourteen-year-old Luca finds it especially difficult. He can neither stand still nor wants to have his shaggy red hair cut. He’d rather flirt with his teacher during French lessons or go hunting in the lonely forest. He’s bored by the equally renowned and stuffy hotel management school, whose perpetual routines get on his nerves: folding napkins, polishing glasses, listening. The problem, though, is that his family have great expectations of him.

Having grown up in a tiny Alpine mountain village, the boy of course knows how his way around the cows on the farm back home. The surrounding forests were his territory where he could let off steam. Now school is supposed to tame him, teach him self-discipline and ultimately help him find a decent job. In restful vintage images the Italian director Davide Maldi illustrates the tight corset of a training institution that seems to have fallen out of time. Antique wooden furniture, lemon-yellow walls, young gentlemen in black waistcoats and buttoned-up white shirts. They provide the costumes and setting of an intimate coming-of-age story which revolves around a sacrifice: Must Luca give up his free spirit to become “something”?

Julia Weigl