Mount Sinai Hospital in New York is one of the largest and oldest hospitals in the United States. Mati, an aspiring hospital chaplain, works here. She is about to complete her one-year residency in the department of “Spiritual Care,” a branch of palliative medicine. Patients struggling with insecurity, trauma and grief get emotional and spiritual support here. The film follows Mati and her colleagues through 2020 and 2021, the years with the highest number of deaths in the history of the USA. Mati herself must struggle daily to find her balance. Because, as her supervisor puts it, if one’s own bandwidth is used up, there is simply no room left for the tougher things. It is therefore an important part of the work of a counsellor to get support and guidance for oneself.

Luke Lorentzen observes this cosmos with great sensitivity and, despite being so close, with pleasant restraint. The calm camera often keeps its distance, especially in moments of doubt or when observing conflicts in the team. A film unafraid of intimacy that spans a thought-provoking arc: between questions of faith, loss and professional sustainability.

The people, among them an astonishing number of workers, react with visible anger to the sudden lack of matches – and threaten to go to the barricades. The problem is solved, of course. But does it mean the population’s anger is placated? Puppet animation director Johannes Hempel created this satire based on a draft by Wolfgang Kohlhaase – at the same time as the uprising of 17 June 1953.

From a distance, the glass greenhouse looks like a spaceship which could have landed decades or only minutes ago. In any case, the Botanical Garden in Berlin seems to belong to another era. A group of young people are exploring, feeling plants, trees, and the building according to their very own criteria. Are they aliens? Are they imitating the expeditions of German explorers from the colonial period?

The commentary muses on the history of the place: at the end of the 19th century, work began on the construction of the new greenhouses of the Botanical Garden in Dahlem to bring the world to one garden. This idea formulated a claim of omnipotence, too. In the rambling park, the camera comes across the naturalistic statue of a semi-nude man sowing seeds. It was created by the sculptor Hermann Joachim Pagels, who was very successful under the Nazis. The deeper the film penetrates the thickets of this garden, the more traces of imperial and colonialist thinking come to light. But the Botanical Garden is also a utopian place. What if this greenhouse-spaceship were to take off to distant spheres again? Could the plants guarantee the survival of our species on other planets? But perhaps they have a different plan, a life of their own?

A pair of socks used to be inseparable and lived as soulmates in their drawer. But they lose sight of each other during the spin cycle in the washing machine. How awful to be suddenly alone, one of the socks thinks. But for the first time it becomes aware of the other clothes around it. These new encounters put the socks’ friendship to a tough test.

Parts of the house director Anna Dziapshipa traces in her autobiographical roamings through the past look like straight out of a horror film: cobwebbed, dark, derelict. It is located in Abkhazia, the region officially off-limits to Georgians, protected by Russia and not recognised as an autonomous republic by the international community.

One half of Dziapshipa’s family comes from here, including a football player who once was a key player for Dinamo Tbilisi. The filmmaker edits footage of his sports activities into “Self-Portrait Along the Borderline,” but also shows the splendour of the former Soviet holiday paradise. It is a personal, associative approach in which Dziapshipa analyses and reflects on her own experiences as a child with both Georgian and Abkhazian family backgrounds. Discrimination plays a role, as do solemn and disturbing things. Time and again, spiders crawl through the frame, weaving their webs and thus connections.

The two main characters of this film seem made for each other. They literally fit together, merge into each other, melt into a colourful, psychedelic, swirling whole. They function together, until one of them disconnects. The madness of this riot of colours turns into a dark nightmare when the one left behind re-absorbs the other by force. Against her will, the renegade must now be sewn to her partner. The once flourishing relationship degenerates into an irritating visual and audio chaos of aggressively twitching drawings and shattered sounds. Impaled on a gnarly tree, the couple’s bodies decay. As they are dying away, darkness turns into light and fresh blossoms open on the pale bones.

In recent years, the number of diagnoses of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has skyrocketed. What are the reasons? Does a society geared towards efficiency use the label ADHS to weed out anyone who does not fit its frames? What are the consequences of the fact that medication treatment has become almost ubiquitous? Could Ritalin and the like have become the doping of the performance society?

In their very personal documentary, Gitti Grüter, diagnosed with ADHS since puberty, sets out to find answers. Grüter talks to five women who have been officially diagnosed with this disorder about lack of concentration, impulsive behaviour, overstimulation, relationship problems, depression and insomnia. The open conversations gradually reveal how hard life can be for women with ADHS, because social stereotypes of femininity often prevent or delay the right diagnosis. Through the calculated use of filmic means, Grüter manages to convey to the audience a sense of the permanent and overpowering inner and outer chaos. Skilfully and with a generous dose of irony, they focus on how people suffering from ADHS are stigmatised – and not least on the role of gender stereotypes in this process. The conclusion is surprising and encouraging.

Alyona, Alik and Katya belong to a generation of young Russian women who demand what they are not allowed. They are part of a global youth that dreams of self-determination and freedom. Sybilla Tuxen followed her protagonists between 2018 and 2022, up to the time of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the three young women find themselves in a new reality. Now more than ever, they are rebelling against Putin’s state and have since lived life on the go.

One of them has made it to Georgia, another goes to Spain, while the third stays at home. They keep in touch by smartphone and social media. One hears from their conversations that they, like many others, don’t believe that political engagement can change anything. Their resistance rather consists in leading modern and western lives in which gender, sexuality, pop music and identity issues play important roles. Tuxen’s darkly poetic debut film is set in nocturnal cars, flats and backyards. The transit in which the three find themselves becomes physically tangible. Their stories allow us rare glimpses into an almost invisible side of today’s Russia and the complexity of lived contradiction.

A wall stands in a barren, inhospitable landscape, insurmountable. While the birds are flying unhindered through the air, a human being struggles in vain to open a door in the wall. First as a small child, then as an adult, finally as an old man. When the door at last unexpectedly gives way, it seems too late. A dark allegory by the Leipzig-based painter and graphic artist Rainer Schade.

Pippa and Victoria’s favourite pastime is skating. But there are new frustrating “NO SKATING” signs cropping up everywhere in the city. The two refuse to let this get them down and forge a plan to take back the city. They want to organise a street contest to find more allies – and to finally skate again!

A wonderful example of a TV documentary that transcends the limitations of the TV screen. “Slices of Time” tells the story of two women born during the First World War who saw the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy collapse and a new state form: Yugoslavia. The two grandmothers of the author Zemira Alajbegović Pečovnik lived in different cultural and religious spheres – one in predominantly Muslim Bosnia, the other in Christian-influenced Slovenia – and yet were connected through their children and grandchildren. Global and personal history, childhood, love and wars intertwine.

Learning a foreign language is like creating another self. How can you speak it without losing your own sound, without dissolving completely in it – and still be heard and noticed? This film is a charming and intellectually fastidious attempt to navigate the complexities of language, identity and trauma.

To do this, the filmmaker resorts to her own biography. Because Russia invaded Ukraine when Daryna Mamaisur, who comes from Kyiv, was in Portugal for a Doc Nomads graduate course. Home and the search for it became the defining factors of this work, as well as the traumatic situation of only being able to “witness” the difficult situation from a distance. She, the Ukrainian in Portugal, learns Portuguese. She lets the new words for “war,” “explosion” and “attack” roll off her tongue. She compares them with the soft, intimate sound of her native language, with the sound of Kyiv. Friends send audio and visual recordings from Ukraine which, combined with animations, become a multilayered essay and finally a testimony – for the resilience of language and culture, no matter where they are spoken and lived, and not least for the power of the artistic documentary, which can make speech and sound possible.

The sun is slowly setting in the jungle. The little monkey closes his eyes. He rocks and glides from one green leaf to the next, gently drifting off into sleep. But what is this? Suddenly the world of dreams becomes darker, more colourful and wilder. Mysterious plants, creatures and shapes are lining the path through the night … “Somni” is a filmic lullaby, though no one is likely to fall asleep here.

Prague in July 1968. The West German television magazine Panorama reports on the situation in the ČSSR, drawing parallels to the developments in Budapest in 1956. Curious and sceptical at the same time, the feature explores the possibilities of an independent reform movement, but also soberly concludes that the Soviet Union will not tolerate this. The tanks are already waiting at the border.

Saint Petersburg as the cradle of the 1917 October Revolution, Moscow as the birthplace of the Soviet Union in 1922: According to Lenin’s dictum “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country,” the mastery of the forces of nature and the exploitation of natural resources are demonstrated in impressive images – emphasising the independence and fraternity of all Soviet Republics.

A kitchen table with several objects on it stands still. But time provides movement. A candle burns down rapidly, a photo draped on the table comes to life. It shows a young woman making a cup of tea. Old hands approach the table to touch the letter lying there. Life on the photo stands still.