Electromobility is a great promise of the future. The Democratic Republic of the Congo with its vast cobalt and lithium deposits supplies two of the essential building blocks for the necessary batteries. “Machini” focuses on the lives of those who bear the brunt of the exploitation of such dirty raw materials for our “clean” energy.
Sanjivani, a young woman from a rural area in the state of Maharashtra in central India, is a loving and tender mother. After her husband’s suicide, she lives with her brother-in-law who makes her work in the fields. She is now solely responsible for her two kids, faced with a mountain of debt left by her husband and the structures of a patriarchal society that incapacitates and renders invisible widows like her. It is only when she joins a group of women who suffered similar fates that she slowly gains some self-confidence. She is not alone with her despair and grief – the suicide rate among peasants who took their lives in the face of crop failures and dumping prices on the globalised market is harrowing: 400,000 in the last twenty years.
Kinshuk Surjan not only observes people and circumstances with compassion; he also stands for a cinema that makes a difference. The women’s group he follows here only came together as a result of his film project. In impressive images and with great empathy for the protagonists he portrays, he not only succeeds in producing a careful representation of highly complex contexts, but also a truly documentary intervention into unacceptable conditions – with the aim of improving them.
We are travelling back in time to the early 19th century on the south coast of England. This is where Mary Anning lives, a 12-year-old girl who is inquisitive, persistent and fascinated by fossils. She spends every free minute at the beach to look for the fossilised remains of long extinct animal species in the strata of her hometown’s coastal cliffs. Her father, too, is an enthusiast and earns a little extra for his family by selling fossils. When he disappears after the collapse of a cliff, Mary’s life is shaken. All that her father leaves behind is a mysterious drawing whose meaning Mary only gradually makes out. She is determined to uncover the secret together with unexpected allies. An entertaining and warm-hearted biopic about one of the first female palaeontologists.
A brilliant and highly poetic collection of tiny moving image moments which offers aesthetic delights through cleverly chosen camera angles, framing, lighting, montage and the materials used. This archive of trifles remains silent. The eyes begin to hear, the sound is generated in the mind. Simply enchanting.
Flocks of starlings are circling above the retirement home. These impressive natural spectacles are called murmurations because from a distance they sound like collective murmuring. Not everyone hears or sees them, but the old man notices. Sometimes the starlings send a single twittering messenger to his window. Often, the birds are more present to him than his fellow humans, more present than the old demented fellow resident who regularly waters a still life of flowers, more present than his neighbours in the amateur choir. And then it happens: The old man finds a first feather in his hair, then a second, then several. Soon he grows a beak so that instead of singing he can only caw.
The last phase of life we witness here is lovingly animated: The puppet animation was created with gauze bandages, a beautiful approach to the vulnerability that comes with aging. The farewell to life shown here is devoid of pathos, not even that over-produced grief we know from many narratives of dying. Even the retirement home is a completely mundane place, neutrally portrayed. Instead, we follow this feathered farewell as a quiet but growing alienation from the world, a no-longer-belonging. And one day we will all grow the wings that go with it.
Once again ten-year-old Romy must say goodbye to her school class to travel through Europe with her family. She pitches in at home because circus life makes children grow up quickly. This film lets us share in her everyday life and the passion for the grand performance. It talks about her longing for the familiar, but also the freedom of being on the road.
