The outer layer consists of kissing and touching. A film wrapped in tenderness, surrounded by gestures of intimacy, sensitivity and warmth. Diego and his two brothers have returned to Colima in Western Mexico to take care of their 93-year-old grandmother. América is the name of this old woman with dreaming eyes and a warm smile, who is bedded and blanketed by the brothers at night, washed and dressed by them in the morning, cosseted, protected, surrounded by them at noon. The brothers’ father is in prison, their economic situation is precarious and the workload boundless. But human dignity and the law of responsibility are unquestionable, uncheatable. Never – whatever the cost, be it money, time, strength or a brawl – would Diego, Rodrigo and Bruno take their grandmother to a nursing home.

The US directors Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside followed the family for a period of three years and are now presenting an intimate debut film that is more than a document of the ethics of responsibility. It’s, and this is what one should call it, a piece of evidence for humanism.

Lukas Stern

You don’t get rich in the Appalachian Mountains. “They’re trying to get thataway, but they usually die before they do,” they say here. The end of coal mining left the inhabitants with its consequential problems, environmental destruction and unemployment. Making music together – if only with spoons – gives the people in one of the remotest spots of the US something to hold on to and some dignity.

Fabian Tietke

Everybody’s talking about the planned wall between the US and Mexico, but what’s often overlooked is that this borderline is in itself a construct. In the mid-19th century, Mexico had to accept a massive loss of territory to its powerful northern neighbour. The demarcation line has followed the Rio Grande ever since. A poetic and political film about border demarcations and their consequences, the struggle for survival of adobe brick makers in the Mexican-US border region and the magic of a river.

Annina Wettstein

Navigating between different forms of intimacy and gender took him longer: as a queer and coloured person one stands out even in Jordan Wong’s native city of San Francisco. Wong’s reflections about his and his mother’s life find a visual counterpoint in animated textiles. Soft, scratchy, thin, strong, flowery, plaid or printed with predators – dreams, self-knowledge and questions arise from these clothes.

Nadja Rademacher

Tim is 18 years old, wears sports clothes and has 3 million followers on Instagram. Not only is he a minor celebrity in digital space, he also finds a social stability there that he hasn’t known before. Ellie Wen’s and Barna Szász’s film is a compact interrogation of issues of identity, family and communication – and they understand that on- and offline are not simply a binary opposition but that in either space reality is real and nothing but real.

Lukas Stern

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Nominated for the Young Eyes Film Award