In the small Sicilian town Siculiana, a statue of a black Jesus has been venerated for centuries. In May, the crucifix is carried on the shoulders of the devotees in a procession through the crowded streets. The Siculianesi, who have always been a population of emigrants, have to deal with the exodus of young people and therefore with the lack of workforce. One possible answer to the town’s problems could be the migrants: their willingness to undertake any honest work could revive the town’s fate. But their status as asylum seekers makes it impossible for them to work. Siculianesi and migrants remain divided, not speaking with each other out of fear, but also because the Italian government has not attempted to create a fruitful dialogue between the two different faces of the same poverty.
The drowsy stagnancy of Siculiana is stirred up by the arrival of Edward from Ghana. Immediately fascinated by the figure of the black Jesus, Edward decides to challenge the indifference and fear of the Siculianesi and asks them to participate as a carrier of the crucifix.
His very personal battle is the central column of the film, a dramaturgical trunk from which different characters and stories branch out and intertwine, creating a multi-layered portrayal of a divided community.

Meet AIVA. She is in her mid-thirties, young and beautiful. Not only that, but she is also unbelievably creative. The cis-male constructed female AI artist has the task to contribute to more diversity in the art world and to show a female perspective on things.
AIVA is studying the male nude, getting ready for preliminary sketches for her next masterpiece. She is preparing the final painting, which will be exhibited at her upcoming show. Exploring different postures in nude painting, she is examining masculinity in its diverse forms and shapes.
Using the format of a TV-report, the film introduces us to the female AI artist AIVA. The viewer has the extraordinary opportunity to take a look inside her studio and to observe her working process. The report ends with the opening of AIVA’s solo exhibition. She is surrounded by her gallerist and the engineering team that created her. The works of the first female AI artist have all been sold, bringing in over 1.2 million dollars for her creator. What an incredible success?

Appropriation Takes You on a Weird Ride investigates the strange German enthusiasm for Native Americans in relation to contemporary racism and its deep colonial roots. This fascination, especially with regard to the construction of a German identity, has a frightening, rather than impressive, chronology: It begins with the first-century Germanic Cherusci chieftain Arminius and stretches to the adventure novels of Karl May and the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows in the 1800s, through the ethnographic exhibitions (Völkerschauen) in zoos and circuses and the founding of “Indian clubs” at the turn of the twentieth century, onward to the appropriation of Indigenous identities by Nazi ideologists, up until the present day, when new rightwing groups have developed an unsettling identification with the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

Arshan loves opera. He does whatever he can to become a professional opera singer. Despite him being only 10 years old, he wants to perform in the lead role in the youth opera of his hometown Ojai in California. While contributing to the daily tasks of the family’s farm together with his 5 siblings, he is also practicing his high notes.

Germany is turning away from nuclear power once and for all in 2022. The risk is too high, the technology unmanageable. Yet the nuclear nightmare goes on: with umpteen thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste, the storage of which isn’t the least bit clear; with the hazardous dismantling of power plants which will take decades and gobble up many billions of euros; and with neighbours who firmly hold on to mankind’s dream of atomic energy – 13 of the 27 nations in the EU operate nuclear power plants and the development thereof continues.
The feature-length documentary film Atomkraft Forever by Carsten Rau takes a profound as well as alarming look at the nuclear nightmare. In grand scenes unprecedentedly portrayed, and in six interwoven episodes: about the absurd amount of effort involved in demolishing a gigantic nuclear power plant; about the quest for a final repository that is supposed to weather a million years and the next ten ice ages; into the heart of the French atomic industry that ridicules the German opt-out as “ludicrous” and wants even more power plants.
Atomkraft Forever doesn’t leave any arguments out, even though they may be unpopular. In the end, the viewer can and must form their own impression of the mania called nuclear power. That has no end.

A trace of regularly ordered mounds of earth. In the twilight, a dump truck is being loaded. A thick veil of mist hangs over the tops of the trees. Dark earth is excavated, loaded, and transported off the scenery. In Dark Matter, via the situative arrangement of different picture elements, a visual friction surface is created, which is shaped by the figurations of a post-apocalyptic landscape. The images are determined by the processes of extracting raw materials. Without the mineral resources from the numerous diamond and gold mines in the so-called Russian Federation subject Yakutia, the Soviet Union would never have been able to exist until the 1990s. Technology and ideology go hand in hand and leave their mark. Military and economic efforts to secure power are inscribed in this landscape. The extraction of raw materials and the exploitation of nature show their planned economic and geopolitical consequences, which make up the character of the “subjects of the Federation”. Their designation as “subjects” was introduced in the USSR in order to equip and administer different categories of territorial units with different degrees of autonomy.

Elise is scared of everything – spiders, people, even trees. So she never goes out, night or day. One day a strange thing flies in through the window and lands at her feet. And then there comes a knock at the door. Elise has a visitor.

A chimney sweeper describes his everyday routine of forcing young kids to become workers. While we observe a kid cleaning a chimney, the master’s statement gets more and more personal with each sentence until it becomes clear that he is speaking about his own past. Being locked in a vicious circle, there seems to be no exit.

For 18 years, the Syrian Orthodox nun Dayrayto lives on the grounds of a church in Zaz, a dilapidated and abandoned Aramaic village in southeastern Turkey. Together with the monk Abuja, she cared for the church for fourteen years. Ever since the monk died four years ago, Dayrayto lives alone with her two dogs, a cow, chickens, and three cats. She is vulnerable to multiple threats. Her presence in the region is a thorn in the side of many local actors. There have always been hostilities from the Muslim side, and little support from her own community. Lately, the situation has gotten worse and Dayrayto fears for her dog’s life, which she believes has been deliberately poisoned. The film accompanies Dayrayto, observing her everyday life, her struggle for survival, her worries and hardships as fear and loneliness are her constant companions. Nevertheless, Dayrayto is a courageous and fearless woman – she promised Abuja to never leave this holy place and to protect the church, no matter what.

This film begins with a long title and then moves swiftly to search for a good ending. A lot in between seems familiar. And yet it takes the world and its inhabitants quite seriously – in a humorous manner. An animated “Lehrstück” in black and white.

Loneliness. A feeling that takes hold of more and more people. In a world in which professional flexibility, growing self-centeredness and the loss of social liabilities have become increasingly common, this diffuse feeling seems to have settled. Berlin is symptomatic of this: in the same place at the same time, the documentary tells stories of people in different realities. They all share the experience of loneliness. The capital itself becomes a symbol, the backdrop for observations of being alone in society.

Based on the biography of “maladjusted elephant Bibi”, a wild-caught elephant from Zimbabwe who was imported to the Zoo of East Berlin in 1989, the film questions our colonialism-influenced thinking in dealing with the “foreign”.
An essayistic search that blends the story of an animal body with reflections on the social body.