This detailed and sober look at the issue of nuclear power begins where Germany is currently standing: with shutting it off. It’s precisely because the film is anything but alarmist that the alarming aspect of the situation becomes clear. The nuclear nightmare is not over; a safe final nuclear waste repository is not in sight. And yet, boosted by the coal phase-out, many people seem to see “clean” nuclear energy as an option again. The terror of climate change trumps the terror of the nuclear worst case scenario. A zero sum game.

Carsten Rau succeeds masterfully in calmly probing the heated controversy. He talks to people who live with and off nuclear power. Engineer, scientist or innkeeper, he very deliberately frames them all with the same mixture of seriousness and nonchalance. The story is told without dramatisation, but with stunningly “beautiful” images that make the fascination with this technology quite comprehensible. When hip French nuclear engineers finally try to join the front line of climate protesters, we realise how false the talk of an “unavoidable option” is and always has been. The portrait of a society emerges that walked into a blind alley with open eyes and is slowly coming to realise that with every step it takes it is moving further away from the exit.

There are documentary heroes of such strength and vitality that you fall in love with their charm from the very first moments. As a viewer, you are ready to follow them through fire and water. Naima is exactly such a case – undoubtedly enhanced by the directorial talent and masterful dramatic work of Anna Thommen. Both fire and water will be present.
Naima’s story is the story of a migrant in Europe who has to start her life from scratch when she moves from Venezuela to Switzerland. She used to work in marketing for international companies, but now she ekes out a living with various service jobs. Naima does not give up and fights for the chance to be with her children again. Due to her financial difficulties, the two teenagers live with her ex-husband. When she is given the opportunity to undergo the desired training as a nurse and a preparatory internship in a psychiatric ward, Naima faces significant challenges. Her supervisor dislikes her, which practically leads to the internship not being credited. So there is no shortage of fire and water for our heroine. But Anna Thommen’s portrait is a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure and even overcome conflagration. It is a must-watch for anyone seeking an inspiring and emotionally touching documentary.

For eight months, Ole Jacobs’s and Arne Büttner’s film team followed the Afghan Nasim and her family in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, where at times 20,000 people had to live in a space designed for less than 3,000 people. This documentary observation shows with great empathy the daily life of the mother of two who time and again manages to deal impressively with the challenges of this unacceptable and extreme situation.

Nasim previously lived with her family in Iran, where she had already endured discrimination. Her marriage is broken; the camera gingerly captures the mute conflicts with her husband – glances tell everything. Nasim suffers from rheumatism and can hardly move her hands, but she finds loving words to explain this – to her own children and others from over the way. For a while, she even fills in for the school teacher who has left: “Today we will be painting …” She herself, however, is denied the understanding she always shows for others: Everyone around her thinks they know better what she needs. When the camp goes up in flames in September 2020, every hope of a better world seems lost. Nasim is left to fend for herself – but perhaps this new disaster is a chance in disguise.

Once upon a time there was a town on the banks of the Mississippi. The streets are still lined with neo-classicist Antebellum houses. Horse-drawn carriages full of tourists move through the streets, a travelling organist performs on a truck bed. Time seems to stand still in Natchez. But while the descendants of the European colonists, dressed up as “Southern Belles” in historical hoop skirts, welcome their guests and feed them Southern nostalgia, the façades are beginning to crumble. Built on the shoulders of children, women, and men in chains, the epicentre of cotton capitalism and the second-largest slave market in the US, with 750,000 Black exploited persons, emerged here in the mid-19th century.
This part of the former “Cotton Kingdom” is practically absent from the whitewashed version of history. On the contrary, it is dripping with romanticisation and racist clichés. But people like the Black pastor and tour guide Rev are breaking with this tradition and shattering the nostalgically glorified illusion of an ideal world. Suzannah Herbert directs the clash of different perspectives and characters with an unerring eye for direct and indirect contradictions. At the same time, she exposes a rift in society that extends far beyond the Natchez microcosm.

An escalating neighbourhood dispute as a pacifist parable on the Korean War. The pixilation, which Norman McLaren is said to have pioneered, makes plot and scenery look more and more absurd. The madness is heihgtened by frantic electronic sounds, which were also created by a special technique: McLaren drew optical sound signals in lines and dots by hand directly on the soundtrack.

On the balcony Nele is really close to the clouds, though it would be much nicer to take a balloon ride and be even closer. The plan isn’t easy to realise, as Nele’s mother has mobility problems. They need help with every activity and their daily life is co-organised by many other people. They are doing fine together, but a trip in a hot air balloon would be something else …

This story began seven years ago, when Brandon’s family wanted a pet and returned with a miniature pig. Over time, Nelson grew from a tiny piglet to a 500-kilo chunk in the backyard. The Verbeek family love him dearly, but the neighbourhood is getting restive. Brandon’s classmates are also beginning to mock him and he starts to have doubts. A solution is needed!

The biggest gold deposit in Europe is located underneath Roșia Montană, Romania. The ancient Romans dug shafts with hammers and chisels, later gunpowder and dynamite were used to mine the precious metal. But when the possibilities of traditional mining methods seem exhausted in the early 2000s, a Canadian company enters the scene, planning to pulverise the whole village and the four neighbouring mountains – and to use highly toxic hydrocyanic acid to extract the gold from the rock. Tibor Kocsis observes over several years how the corporation is trying to drive out the inhabitants of the village, and how a resistance is forming that lasts until today.

Amid Russia’s escalating war on Ukraine, the cheerleading team „Nice Ladies,“composed of women over 50, faces a tough test. Team-member Sveta flees to the Netherlands with her family, while her friends Valia and Nadia remain in Kharkiv. The film shows how war permeates everything, yet sport and their sisterhood continue to connect them.

Cutout animation in limbo: crafted meticulously and in great detail, but at the same time as if dabbed from the unconscious. In Csanád Baksa-Soós’s work, butterflies land on ladies’ shoes and fly away with them, a river of headlines flows through a city, a violet, swirling solar eclipse makes glowing knives shoot out of the earth to the sky, stone lips disgorge a ball of light. The images do not follow a fixed order – each of them opens a new world, takes a deep breath, moves on. Leitmotifs appear and disappear. What’s left are enchanting colours and textures which extend even to the soundtrack: The scratching of a maltreated cello, nocturnal saxophone sounds from the barely soundproofed neighbouring flat, eery clarinet etudes in an echoing rehearsal room nestle congenially against the images.

A drunken drive through the night with a badger at the wheel. The car radio is a crooning, rhythmic companion and rhythm generator to the reeling road, the will-o’-the-wisp headlights of oncoming cars. The beginning becomes the end of a bizarre journey that turns our heads not by speed but by narrative sophistication in visually magnificent concentration.

Director Nora Rosenthal brings a very specific focus to this portrait of her parents, Heidi and Alan: She shows them dancing. But these are far from “easy dances.” Rosenthal realises quickly that her own inflated expectations threaten to make her ambitious project fail. She hires two professional dancers – mirror images and, as it were, interaction partners for Heidi and Alan – to spread the enormous pressure on robust shoulders and with whom they can waltz or even do a disco number.
Abstractly playful, yet empathetic, “Nine Easy Dances” addresses heavyweight subjects like transience and illness, opens the door to the family archive and tries to tell a story whose end already hangs in the air. A multilayered endeavour, associative, free and intelligent.

Gruesome grimaces, craftsmen at work, running animals, wild fountains of colours – the “not yet films” from the prehistory of cinema were only sixteen animation images long, but they left people amazed and satisfied the sensation-seekers. Parisian artist Dominique Willoughby has retrieved some 19th century wonder discs from the archives and re-animated them in a variety of ways to minimalist music.

Karla is a dreamer, Karla is charismatic, and Karla is trans. She grows up with her parents in the small Mexican town of Tepoztlán. She loves to wear make-up and dress up. But sometimes, when the world is too much for her, she hides in her room for hours. Fortunately, Karla has friends and a family who support, often understand and sometimes challenge her.
Trans filmmaker Kani Lapuerta followed the daily life and transition of his protagonist over a period of eight years. The result is a colourful, playful and political coming-of-age story told from a trans perspective. Together, Karla and Kani create a cinematic space where their fantasy is as important as their identity – and where both flow into each other. The title of the film refers to a possible gender-neutral form of the Spanish term “niños” that also includes non-binary, trans and gender-fluid children. “Niñxs” is a touching, encouraging film about childhood, creativity and self-empowerment – and a compelling plea for a world in which everyone is simply allowed to be themselves.

Manuela lives in Cameroon and was four years old when her parents went abroad to work. She’s eleven now and preparing for her first graduation. She is growing up with her grandparents and, despite leading a good life, had to struggle with grief for a long time. Now she has learned how to cope with absence and how to be together despite the long distance.

After the graduation ceremony, Ba, a young musician, leaves the hall with his tuba over the shoulder. At the door he meets his teacher who makes him promise something: report back as soon as he has found a job. As nobody picks him up at the student residence, Ba makes his own way through the barren rural area. Home at last, he discovers that his father has found a new wife who now lives with him. There is no more room for Ba. He leaves his former home and sets out to look for a job. Various futile attempts to find employment follow, first as a musician, then unrelated to his training. All efforts fail in the face of the absurd requirements of potential employers. Ba would first have to buy an expensive suit and could expect to get wages only after an unpaid initial phase, as he was still a beginner. Ba can only fend off his teacher’s intrusive questions by inventing white lies.

This world, where there is not a shred of green landscape left, where the plaster crumbles from the walls, where everything is falling apart, has no use for the musician Ba. His daily expenses consume his last bit of money. Hopes of happiness and being able to earn his living fade away. Ba’s tuba falls silent.