In this unusual romance, hand-tinted sand becomes a metaphor for two souls as they join and separate. A lonely fish, hooked by an angler's line, encounters another in the same dire situation.

The lonely Elk Mountain is longing for a companion. It is home to abounding wildlife, but can only stiffly observe them in his rocky form until he finds a way to beckon an elk cow to wander inside his ear-cave. Inspired by Peter van Leeuwen’s song “Elk Grass”.

When the lights go out the monster with the big eyes rises. The little brother sees it; his sister thinks it’s childish. But not for long.

The Medora Hornets, a small town college basketball team in Indiana, haven’t won a match in ages. The state of the team reflects the state of the town, put in a nutshell by the owner of the last surviving grocery store: “We were left behind.” Until a few years ago, Medora was a flourishing rural community, boasting profitable farms, a car parts manufacturer, a brick factory, and a prosperous middle class. Today the factories are closed and the decline of the economy more or less killed off the pride of a still shrinking population. Alcohol and drug abuse are part of most residents’ lives and public and private poverty are the tough lot of those who still call Medora their home.
The film follows the 2011 basketball season, during which the Hornets once again race against the inevitable mockery of the other teams and, above all, against their own doom – perhaps like the scabby small town boys in some Bruce Springsteen songs, or as if those kids had listened across the Atlantic one day and caught Herbert Achternbusch’s aphorism: “We have no chance, but we take it.”

Ralph Eue

On 31 May 2008, a quiet and sunny Sunday, the staff of a heavy metal assembly plant in Milan-Lambrate met for a picnic. They had hardly unwrapped their sandwiches when a short message from the then current owner, who had bought the plant only in 2006, reached them: “We have decided to cease all activity as of 31 May 2008.”
Luca Bellino’s and Silvia Luzi’s film sheds light on the 50 workers’ long struggle, which started with the occupation of the facility on the same day, led to continued production under a worker’s management and, after the factory was cleared by the police for the first time, resulted in an open-ended strike in front of the factory gates to prevent the secret removal of the machinery. Finally, on 2 August 2009, a large number of police attacked the strikers in a civil war-like operation, upon which five of them seized an industrial crane on the grounds and occupied it for several weeks. The activists’ determination triggered a broad wave of international support and attracted a lot of media attention, which finally contributed to a long-term resolution of this conflict. Bellino and Luzi manage to create a complex cinematic investigation of an intense, real-life example of anarcho-syndicalist theory and practice in Italy, supremely balanced between hot agitation and cold analysis.

Ralph Eue

This time it’s not a Hollywood action movie with a president in the White House who singlehandedly protects the US-American democracy from terrorism with a bazooka, but an attempt to provide a collective coping therapy for the foot soldiers. The US has a long way to go yet in dealing with the trauma of September 11th, 2001, since wars are usually extraterritorial here. At the time, the major response to the attacks was the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security and a highly efficient surveillance apparatus working on all channels.
How touching the “September 11th Memorial Stair Climb” seems in comparison. Every year, volunteers in all Federal States simulate the worst case in a mixture of Memorial Day and fire drill, working through a simulated terror attack. The original intention of this Memorial Day, which was to remember the 343 FDNY firemen who lost their lives in the rescue operations at the World Trade Centre, is clearly relegated to second row, judging from the overacting of some of the participants of this re-enactment.

Cornelia Klauß

In 2010 reports of the so-called “Kill Team” shocked the world. A group of soldiers had faked Afghan attacks, deliberately killed at least three innocent people and defiled their bodies. Two years later, Dan Krauss follows the traces of this war crime and tries to reconstruct the circumstances under which the soldiers were capable of these acts.
His main focus is on the ambivalent case of Private Adam Winfield, who was allegedly the first to report these heinous crimes. He was not heard at first. until it was no longer possible to hide the outrageous conditions in this unit and an internal investigation was ordered. Back in the States, Winfield himself was accused of premeditated murder and conspiracy. Some doubts remain whether his behaviour in Afghanistan was as honourable as he himself claimed.
Interviews with other soldiers gradually coalesce into a disturbing but extremely fascinating image of US army missions, not just in Afghanistan, and of their arrogant self-image as saviours of the world: they sit in their quarters somewhere at the dusty end of the world, bored, angry and ready to lash out because they are not allowed to do what in their opinion they are there to do.

Lina Dinkla

Innocence is no guarantee of freedom. Three cases that are exemplary (not only) of the US system of justice: Edward Baker, sentenced to 24 years for murder, James Landano and Joyce Anne Brown, both sentenced to life for capital offences. There are hundreds of innocently condemned prisoners like them in the States – including death row inmates who have been waiting for their execution for years. James McCloskey and his “Centurion Ministries” organisation have taken up the task of re-opening cases, questioning trials, getting new results through DNS analysis, and even identifying those as murderers who once accused an innocent person of their own crime.
How a wrongfully imprisoned person who feels abandoned by justice, lawyers, families, and friends reflects this injustice is hard to put in words. So director Sheila M. Sofian has conjured up an inferno of expressive animations painted on glass, abstract re-enactments, and surrealist details, which condenses into a passionate appeal to politicians to abolish prejudgements and racial discrimination. “If they’re not doing time for this, then surely for something else.” This statement by a cop encapsulates the cynicism that’s part of the system.

Cornelia Klauß