Small and cu… No, not cute. This knee-high creature seems shy and in need of love instead. Until it comes snarling round the corner, chasing you on its short legs through the empty suburb. An uncomfortable lurking feeling spreads. With sparse drawing, mean sound bites and not-so-friendly characters, Malte Stein lays out the surgical instruments for a head game.

A nervously vibrating camera, a rubber duck being beheaded by algebra. In only one minute and with a vengeance, David Lynch lights a beacon against the school-inculcated view of the world. Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic – the three basic cultural techniques “drilled” into us turn out to be childhood traumas and opponents of the immeasurable, the mysterious and the indescribable.

She opens her arms wide: “I want to go home, do my dreaming.” Crossing from an unbearable reality to the world of magic sometimes takes only the snap of a finger, sometimes several press-ups. Gudrun Krebitz’s poetic combination of video and animation recommends pushing the gravestone aside and descending into one’s subconscious.

A girl affected by ostracism angrily creates a little demon that is to follow her forever from now on, comforting her in moments of disappointment, but also keeping her locked in her loneliness. In Budanova’s beautiful animation, mental pain takes the shape of an identity figure that seems impossible to get rid of.