A Tangled Tale
Corrie Francis Parks
In this unusual romance, hand-tinted sand becomes a metaphor for two souls as they join and separate ...
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A Tangled Tale
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.
Ab Ovo
Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi
The film shows a new life waking up and the transformation of a female body which loses its former shape ...
Ab Ovo
Animated Film
Poland
2013
6 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
The film shows a new life waking up and the transformation of a female body which loses its former shape. The physical sensation becomes increasingly more distinct until the moment when the baby leaves the boundaries of the mothers body.
American Vagabond
Susanna Helke
After his coming-out, teenager James is disowned by his parents and lives in the streets of San Francisco – until everything turns out differently. A touching coming-of-age drama.
American Vagabond
Credits
Cilla Werning
Susanna Helke
Samuli Kosminen
Susanna Helke, Marko Luukkonen
Niels Pagh Andersen
It was never to be mentioned again, because if it wasn’t allowed it couldn’t be. But contrary to his father’s verdict, James did not become a “real” boy who loves hunting and fishing, but the worst this American middle-class family were able to imagine. So they threw their gay teenage son out of their home and left him to his fate as one of thousands of homeless adolescents in the States. Up to forty percent of them live on the streets because they belong to a “sexual minority”.
Susanne Helke accompanies James and Tyler, the love of his life, through the dirty streets and dark parks of San Francisco, the “gayest city in the world”. Instead of the hoped-for paradise they find themselves freezing, hungry, and marginalised, even by the established gay community. But things turn out differently: after the first part, where James tells his story from off screen, the second part is about his absence – he‘s behind bars as a “sexual offender”. Because while even his conservative family are now ready to reconsider their opinion, the “mother country of democracy” has nothing but severity against everything that’s different from the mainstream. This atmospheric and careful film is an equally tender and shocking coming-of-age story and at the same time a passionate plea to love your fellow human beings unconditionally.
Grit Lemke
Susanne Helke accompanies James and Tyler, the love of his life, through the dirty streets and dark parks of San Francisco, the “gayest city in the world”. Instead of the hoped-for paradise they find themselves freezing, hungry, and marginalised, even by the established gay community. But things turn out differently: after the first part, where James tells his story from off screen, the second part is about his absence – he‘s behind bars as a “sexual offender”. Because while even his conservative family are now ready to reconsider their opinion, the “mother country of democracy” has nothing but severity against everything that’s different from the mainstream. This atmospheric and careful film is an equally tender and shocking coming-of-age story and at the same time a passionate plea to love your fellow human beings unconditionally.
Grit Lemke
Among Women
Kim Brand
A Dutch woman goes through the initiation rites of young women preparing for marriage in Zambia. Sensual lessons in happiness and good sex, reflections on womanhood.
Among Women
Documentary Film
Netherlands
2012
52 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Hasse van Nunen
Kim Brand
Harry de Wit
Suzan van Steenwijk
Joël Hielckert
Hips move rhythmically, bodies become entwined, a sexual dance is practised which at some point leads to a climax that will transport the dancer to another level. We are not in some night club in a European metropolis; we are among women in Zambia preparing each other for marriage. This is where they learn how to stay in control during intercourse, which naturally includes women pleasuring themselves. This is also where women are familiarised with the sight of the blood of defloration by making them cut the throat of a chicken clamped between their thighs. But women are not to behave like chickens under any circumstances! At any rate, it is said that after completing this course the ladies are able to carry their marriage, including the husband involved, “like a burden on their heads”.
Kim Brand approaches the rituals and thinking of another culture, not least by reflecting on her own relationship back home in Holland, opening quite original perspectives on the experience of pride, freedom, and happiness. An instructive film from every angle. We’re welcome to applaud these women at the end, as they do only after completing the act with their husband.
Claudia Lehmann
Kim Brand approaches the rituals and thinking of another culture, not least by reflecting on her own relationship back home in Holland, opening quite original perspectives on the experience of pride, freedom, and happiness. An instructive film from every angle. We’re welcome to applaud these women at the end, as they do only after completing the act with their husband.
Claudia Lehmann
As You Like It
Paula Oneţ
In rural Romania, people take care of their graves while they’re still alive, especially the photo on the tombstone. Dressed to the nines forever!
As You Like It
There’s no time like the present, would be a good description of a phenomenon Paula Oneţ came across in the region of Cluj in Romania, which made her curious. Women and men in the second half of their lives but still quite hale and hearty are intensely concerned about the photo that’s to be mounted on their own headstone – not as a hypothetical issue, but as a very concrete undertaking.
Visits to the hairdresser are made, photo shootings scheduled, serious discussions had over headstones which, though the owner is still very much alive, are already standing on the graves, decorated with flowers and wreathes. The headstone, including a carefully produced and selected portrait, is a status symbol during one’s lifetime. And it’s the – evidently – vain attempt to determine how you want to be remembered by posterity. But what may seem an eccentric and possibly bothersome task at first glance actually shows a healthy, fear-free attitude to one’s own death.
“As You Like It” is an entertaining reflection about our earthly existence and the human need to understand one’s inevitable demise as a part of life.
Lina Dinkla
Visits to the hairdresser are made, photo shootings scheduled, serious discussions had over headstones which, though the owner is still very much alive, are already standing on the graves, decorated with flowers and wreathes. The headstone, including a carefully produced and selected portrait, is a status symbol during one’s lifetime. And it’s the – evidently – vain attempt to determine how you want to be remembered by posterity. But what may seem an eccentric and possibly bothersome task at first glance actually shows a healthy, fear-free attitude to one’s own death.
“As You Like It” is an entertaining reflection about our earthly existence and the human need to understand one’s inevitable demise as a part of life.
Lina Dinkla
Beyond the Wave
Kyoko Miyake
Aunt Kuniko from Fukushima must reclaim the meaning of her life: a very personal exploration of the path from humbleness to quiet rebellion.
Beyond the Wave
Documentary Film
Germany,
Japan
2013
83 minutes
subtitles:
English
Collapsed roofs, broken windowpanes, withered plants, dead animals – a deserted place. A grocery store looks almost exactly as it did on that day in March 2011. The few people one sees wear white paper suits and surgical masks. They are the ones who lost the world they lived in on that March day. One of them is aunt Kuniko. “It’s only natural to look for new sources of energy.” These words once advertised the construction of a nuclear plant in this now dead region. “Beyond the Wave” is a unique demonstration that after the disaster of Fukushima this sentence should become the leitmotif of our future. Caught between the grief of having lost their past and hopes of a personal perspective, the protagonists are forced to redefine themselves in their ruined home, this no-man’s country that many left long ago. Kyoko Miyake shows, not least through her personal voice-over, how a fairly atypical, albeit non-angry rebellion starts to germinate in the remaining Japanese citizens, and how her businesslike aunt and many others are ceaseless attempting to reclaim the meaning of their lives, against all prejudice and in the spirit of “I cannot let this disaster ruin all my efforts.”
Claudia Lehmann
Claudia Lehmann
Bianca läuft …
Tina Bara
A passionate runner who can hardly walk. A highly talented painter whose pictures tell a tale of self-destruction. A dark secret which the film approaches cautiously.
Bianca läuft …
Bianca, a young woman living in the Austrian province of Burgenland, is a mystery. She is a passionate runner, but when she walks her legs fail. She is a highly talented painter, who keeps sketching photorealistic images of herself that show her pierced, nailed, cut, in flowing robes, or tied to her running shoes. She talks about her diseases, the collapses happening at shorter and shorter intervals, and her passion for collecting dead animals, always with a smile on her ageless face.
The photographer and filmmaker Tina Bara respects her protagonist’s cocoon. She lets the paintings speak, which show cruel signs of self-destruction and self-hatred, screaming out for someone to probe the causes of this. At the same time, “Bianca Is Running” is a very quiet film whose strength lies in uncertainty. The director turns this cautious, gradual approach and her own doubts into the dramatic principle of her debut film, creating a structure that is open to interpretation. The encounters with Bianca take us into uncertain territory – neither she nor the film offer any footholds.
Cornelia Klauß
The photographer and filmmaker Tina Bara respects her protagonist’s cocoon. She lets the paintings speak, which show cruel signs of self-destruction and self-hatred, screaming out for someone to probe the causes of this. At the same time, “Bianca Is Running” is a very quiet film whose strength lies in uncertainty. The director turns this cautious, gradual approach and her own doubts into the dramatic principle of her debut film, creating a structure that is open to interpretation. The encounters with Bianca take us into uncertain territory – neither she nor the film offer any footholds.
Cornelia Klauß
Broken Record
Parine Jaddo
An old pop song, a family, and the history of a country – a personal search for traces in Iraq and a subtle observation of a lost community of religions and ethnic groups.
Broken Record
Documentary Film
Iraq
2012
75 minutes
subtitles:
English
You never know what a broken record that’s also hard to find for a long time may be good for … For many years, the Iraqi-Lebanese filmmaker Parine Jaddo led a cosmopolitan existence in and between different countries and cultures. But after her mother’s death she travels to Kirkuk, where her once upper class intellectual family’s roots are, for a research project that is an interesting tangle of private, local, and geo-political contexts. On the surface, Jaddo is looking for a recording from the 1960s of her mother with the musician Dr. Mustafa and the Turkmen Brothers – as the band is called in the English subtitles. Increasingly, the filmmaker’s quest seems more like a stroll over the ruins of a nearly vanished piece of world music – long before the term was used in the first place. Music of which, after no more than a few decades, almost no visible or audible evidence survives.
One senses that the private grief over lost family memorabilia is only a trigger: for the subtle exploration of a once multi-religious, multi-ethnic and overall extremely generous form of coexistence in this Northern Iraqi region.
Ralph Eue
One senses that the private grief over lost family memorabilia is only a trigger: for the subtle exploration of a once multi-religious, multi-ethnic and overall extremely generous form of coexistence in this Northern Iraqi region.
Ralph Eue
Children of Plain
Animadoc
Iran
2013
10 minutes
subtitles:
_without dialogue / subtitles
A beautiful and colourful ode to nature and the nomadic life of the Iranian tribe of the Lurs. An episode of the series “Whisperings from My Home”, which moves beyond the concept of linear storytelling.
Choir Tour
Edmunds Jansons
Even in a world-famous boys’ choir, boys are still curious and adventurous ...
Choir Tour
Animated Film
Latvia
2012
5 minutes
subtitles:
English
Even in a world-famous boys’ choir, boys are still curious and adventurous. When their supervisor gets stuck in an elevator, they discover the city on their own and have a lot of fun.
Chopper
Frederik Palmaers, Lars Damoiseaux
“Eat or be eaten”, people would have said in the past. Today we have a different, wider perspective on nature ...
Chopper
Animated Film
Netherlands
2012
2 minutes
subtitles:
English
“Eat or be eaten”, people would have said in the past. Today we have a different, wider perspective on nature. A whole life cycle is contained in the crocodile’s stomach: a stork who ate a frog who ate a praying mantis who …
Cornered
Dmytro Tiazhlov
The Ukrainian village of Panasivka has no public transport connection. A plucky citizen pits herself against the authorities ... An amusing lesson in democracy.
Cornered
Credits
Ella Shtyka
Dmytro Tiazhlov
Dmytro Tiazhlov
Dmytro Tyazhlov
Karim Fadl Naser
Panasivka, Ukraine, has about 50 residents left, most of them old. There used to be a pig farm here, a post office, a bank, and a thrice-daily bus service to the city. If you want to go shopping today, you have to toil along the dusty dirt-road through the forest in one of the cars (always in need of repairs) – the road was never finished. But the ingenious citizen Zoya Ivanivna Shulha remembers a decree once passed by Father Yanukovich that promised all residents public transport connection, and a second that promised transparency in all administrative decisions. So they put their noses to the grindstone: letters are written, signatures of either incredulous or amused peasants are collected (“What for? It’s no use anyway.”), and from time to time shots of vodka are poured for the fatherland. Finally, even the president is addressed and a neat trick is played on the privatisation of the public sector.
We are reminded of Zoshchenko’s satires: “Aviation, it’s making progress.” Democracy, it’s making progress, too.
Grit Lemke
We are reminded of Zoshchenko’s satires: “Aviation, it’s making progress.” Democracy, it’s making progress, too.
Grit Lemke
Cosmos Will Save the World
Patrick Lapierre
A barren field somewhere in Russia. This is where she spent her childhood. The woman is haunted by the ghosts of a long-gone age reminding her of ...
Cosmos Will Save the World
A barren field somewhere in Russia. This is where she spent her childhood. The woman is haunted by the ghosts of a long-gone age reminding her of once significant words and steps – too big for the little girl she once was and her grandmother.
Dance For Me
Katerine Philp
The teenagers Yegor and Mie are on their way to the international elite of Latin-American dancing. Glamour – and homesickness, sweat, pain, deprivations. What’s your dream worth to you?
Dance For Me
Rumba, Jive, and Paso doble. Everything in Mie’s and Yegor’s life revolves around dancing. The two teenagers are professional Latin American ballroom dancers and one hundred percent dedicated to being among the best one day and becoming unforgettable legends of the dance floor. Their circumstances of life, however, are anything but ordinary. Denmark, a country with a great dance tradition and ambitious dance schools, has an obvious problem with lack of young talents in this field. Russian Yegor, who came to Denmark as a teenager, lives with his dance partner’s family. His welfare and continued residence in the country depend entirely on his athletic success.
At first the two seem like the perfect couple on the dance floor. But Yegor is struggling with homesickness and has great difficulties finding his way around the new environment, language and culture. Mie in turn is suffering from Yegor’s taciturnity and the distance between the two begins to emerge in training sessions and performances. After a while they find a way to open up to each other and understand what it really means to dance as a couple. Katrine Philp paints a highly sensitive portrait of an unusual family and work relationship, capturing the highly artificial and styled world of ballroom dancing in aesthetic images.
Lina Dinkla
At first the two seem like the perfect couple on the dance floor. But Yegor is struggling with homesickness and has great difficulties finding his way around the new environment, language and culture. Mie in turn is suffering from Yegor’s taciturnity and the distance between the two begins to emerge in training sessions and performances. After a while they find a way to open up to each other and understand what it really means to dance as a couple. Katrine Philp paints a highly sensitive portrait of an unusual family and work relationship, capturing the highly artificial and styled world of ballroom dancing in aesthetic images.
Lina Dinkla
De que vuelan, vuelan
Myriam Bou-Saha, Ananda Henry-Biabaud
Two women searching for spiritual healing in the world of the Venezuelan warlocks, shamans and soothsayers. Lots of black magic and even blacker humour.
De que vuelan, vuelan
Documentary Film
France
2013
53 minutes
subtitles:
English
Spanish
French
Credits
Alexis Taillant
Myriam Bou-Saha, Ananda Henry-Biabaud
Yannis Dumoutiers, Antony Antcliff, Julien Beaugé
Myriam Bou-Saha, Ananda Henry-Biabaud
Mélanie Brun
Sidonie Garnier, Myriam Bou-Saha, Ananda Henry-Biabaud
Capucine Caro, Thomas Prulière
Spiritism is rampant in Venezuela. All kinds of warlocks, shamans, priests, soothsayers offer their services in labyrinthine alleys. They evoke their African ancestors to fall into a trance, smoke fat cigars in whose ashes they read the future, occasionally spit heartily and perform ritual protective ablutions with chicken blood. The catholic cult of saints and Voodoo have formed a strange alliance on their altars and shrines. Healer or shaman? Whatever – many people who feel lost depend on them, including the two protagonists. One of them can’t get over the violent death of her son 16 years ago. Was it murder or suicide – or maybe even her own fault, as her sister claims? The other feels haunted by an evil spirit who forces her to thrash about, curse, and drink alcohol.
Their desperate search for the truth drives them from one redemptive ritual to the next. Through them, we take part in this sometimes shimmering, sometimes bizarre world of occultism. But where black magic is a natural part of life, there also seems to be black humour. Which is what the two women never lose despite all setbacks, and which gives the film a tongue-in-cheek quality.
Lars Meyer
Their desperate search for the truth drives them from one redemptive ritual to the next. Through them, we take part in this sometimes shimmering, sometimes bizarre world of occultism. But where black magic is a natural part of life, there also seems to be black humour. Which is what the two women never lose despite all setbacks, and which gives the film a tongue-in-cheek quality.
Lars Meyer
Diary From the Revolution
Nizam Najjar
A year among the Libyan rebels: skirmishes, provisional camp life, a charismatic patriarch. A rare insight into structures and the people behind them.
Diary From the Revolution
Documentary Film
Norway
2012
79 minutes
subtitles:
English
The first image: a reminiscence of Western movies – the director Nizam Najjar in a dusty landscape. But he can’t keep up this kind of cool for long; in Tripoli he is not deceived by the paroxysms of joy. Parts of the country are still occupied by Gaddafi’s troops; the front lines in Libya are confusing. He has spent the last ten years in the safety of exile in Oslo. Now that his country is in upheaval, nothing will keep him there. “Armed” with his camera he joins the rebels at Misrata, not concealing his fear. He is allowed to live among the irregular troops lead by Haj Siddiq as “one of them” for more than a year. He records skirmishes, problems with arms supplies and the provisional camp life in a video diary. His observations of the Al Gabra Brigade themselves are equally enlightening. What is its structure, how do the characters change? Even though they might die as heroes, all these young rebels have plans for a life on earth. The call for a “martyr’s death” sounds more and more like a hollow phrase. The charismatic figure of Haj Siddiq is at the centre of the filmmaker’s focus. Like a patriarch the former developer has gathered his family and former employees around him and made them his loyal followers. His smug style of leadership already contains calculations for the assumption of power after victory.
Cornelia Klauß
Cornelia Klauß
