A literal change of format. A car door is pushed open and the image follows. The narrow frame widens, the camera starts to fly, floating slowly high above the roofs of Mexico City. Then it starts to descend, sinks down into a narrow alley, finds its protagonist and rises again. It’s the shot that changes everything, that translates everything seen so far into a new order of seeing, a new form of perception.

So the question is: what exactly is director Javier Toscano documenting in his film “Potentiae”? Is it the routines of moving without legs – on steps, in the water, on the cinder track? The technique of brushing one’s teeth without arms? The skilled handling of the white stick? For a long time we watch a closely observing film about the various daily practices and techniques of handicapped people: documents of different concepts of self-determined life on the outskirts of a megacity. But is that all? How does this car door that opened the image affect our own vision? Is it shifted or freed from limitations? Is our perception expanded or even exploded? Can we still trust our eyes?

Lukas Stern

The boundary between the land and the sea is magic. When we see a few cows walking along the coast right at the start, it’s a picture of unity. Just like the bodies of mermaids who are said to look like fish from the belly down. There are many legends around these creatures. For example that people one of them falls in love with begin to stink of fish. Only special herbs can remove the smell, which makes locating the person impossible. Mermaids can cause pregnancies, too. And have huge banquets at the bottom of the sea. But the inhabitants of a Nicaraguan fishing village seem to have lost the local aquatic creatures’ favour: recently, incidents were observed where men returned paralysed from dives. Luis Rincón shows life on this boundary, the work above and below the water line. And he focuses on one paralysed man who almost never appears without his sunglasses. Once Rincón films him sitting at the window, so that the light playing on his skin looks like fish scales.

Carolin Weidner

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Nominated for Healthy Workplaces Film Award

Sometimes 13-year-old Rocío suddenly becomes an adult woman worried about the future. This is mostly due to the fact that, together with her 18-year-old brother Alejandro, she has to take care of two younger siblings while their mother is in prison. It’s been more than two years that the teenagers have been holding the family together. But the extreme situation is wearing them out and they quarrel more and more frequently. The battles they fight are both copies of classic arguments between couples (“I’m the only one who tidies the house here!”) and expressions of their inner conflicts. Both want to be capable of handling difficult situations and “carry their own weight”. But especially pubescent Rocío feels, that “my relationship with myself”, as she puts it, has been less than perfect for a while.

This detailed filmic observation shows a family microcosm marked by overextension, but also by great warmth. Both Rocío and Ale use the conversations on camera as moments of reflection – both analysing their own situation with breathtaking precision and realism. This film is also an emphatic declaration of love by director Paul Ortiz to his young protagonists that will stay with the viewer for a long time.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

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Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award