After ten years in Germany, where he acquired “the beautiful language of the former arch enemy”, the filmmaker returns to Haifa and takes stock of the time spent between the rivers Rhine and Neisse, but also looks at his home from a changed perspective. The result is a complex montage of images from those years: conversations, landscapes and objects, sought and found in Germany, Poland and Israel.
Surrounded by high-rises, Natalia has created her own, not-so-small paradise: Goats roam free, shrubs and fruit trees bloom, the chickens busily lay eggs. Natalia meets repeated attempts to buy the plot with brusque derision. Even when the city and country are attacked by Russia in the wintry February of 2022, she retains her apparent carefree resistance: While all the lights around go out at night, there is a warm and cozy glow from Natalia’s house. Only Kitty, with whom she lives, expresses concern, organises his flight from Ukraine and prophylactically shows the spots that would be safest in an air raid.
Adelina Borets’ portrait of an incorruptible woman finds its own unique tone, shows a simple everyday life throughout the seasons that presents itself as self-determined and buoyant despite the worsening situation. Borets adopts Natalia’s manner as natural, gives her space. The dimensions of the war unfold step by step, at Natalia’s own pace and by skilful cuts and pans. “Flowers of Ukraine” is a film about a disaster. But it is also a love song to life – and pickled tomatoes.
Hunger and hardship ruled the Piemontese mountain village of Ughettera at the beginning of the 20th century. The meek peasants complained neither about the parasitic priests nor the tough seasonal winter work in neighbouring France – not even when the Italian state called them to arms and sent them first to Libya, then into the World War. Only when the Fascists arrive did the Ughetto family trade its home for new deprivations and new hopes across the border.
Inspired by the estate of a Romanian photographer in which 5,000 glass plate negatives from the 1930s to the 1950s survived undiscovered for a long time, a touching love story evolves. In 1939, Anna Florea meets the young soldier Jean Mihail in her home village in Bukovina. A moonshine kiss seals their affection. But all too soon, Jean is ordered to the frontline. His passionate letters keep the connection alive. But when Anna must flee the site, the contact breaks off.
Their great love is fragile, damaged by war and time – just like the old studio and everyday photographs this animated documentary uses to illustrate optimism and impending loss. Anna Florea herself narrates the film: in retrospect, at the age of 91. Her warm and gentle voice reanimates the memories seemingly stored in these pictures. Those “frozen” on the photographic plates begin to move, are made to glow in oil-on-glass overpaintings, blossom and take us with them into the past.
Light is a fascinating phenomenon. Without light, there would be no cinema, no film – and no life. So light is at the origin of everything, and yet it remains invisible to the eye until it hits matter. This moment is – quite literally – the starting point of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s latest work, for the springtime spectacle of rainbow shreds in the cinematographer and documentary filmmaker’s flat became the starting point of a search for the origin of the images we form of this world. For this quest he dived deep into two spheres that seem to follow different laws but always strive to fathom the magical: physics and art.
An intellectual and poetic ping pong game evolves between researchers from the Max Planck Institute in Erlangen and the “Extreme Light Group” of the University of Glasgow as well as internationally renowned artists such as Ruth Jarman, Joe Gerhardt, Julie Brook, Johannes Brunner and Raimund Ritz. In its course, the various perspectives on light lead to new insights on all sides that would hardly have been achieved without this methodical cross-over: about laser power and colour pigments, about black holes and floating sculptures. In brief moments, the uninitiated may even get some idea of the laws of quantum physics, generally considered impossible to visualise.
The small town of Marinka lies in the Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast. Almost 10,000 people lived there, even though the town was under constant attack by pro-Russian separatists since 2014. When the war escalated in the spring of 2022, however, Marinka came under heavy artillery fire and practically all residents had to leave the town by September. The local police helped get them out. One of the policemen is Vasyl, the protagonist of this film. In a white van, soon christened the “white angel” by the population, he and his colleagues pull civilians out of the line of fire, recover the wounded and the dead. Vasyl’s helmet camera records the dramatic events of their missions: evacuating scared people from their cellars, first aid for the seriously injured, the hasty gathering of personal belongings, the painful and permanent partings.
Six months after the end of Marinka, the Leipzig-based investigative journalist Arndt Ginzel and his crew return to eastern Ukraine. They find the survivors, rescued persons and rescuers, and let them comment the action cam images. They speak of losses, of pain and grief, but also of hopes and dreams. “White Angel – The End of Marinka” is more than a film about war. It is a document of humanity and the longing for peace.
Like her previous film, “Elementary”, Claire Simon’s latest work pays homage to the educational process, once again opening the doors of school classrooms. This time, texts by Annie Ernaux – a French feminist, writer and Nobel Prize winner – are on the curriculum. Ernaux describes her concept of autosociobiography as “writing life, not mine, nor theirs, nor even one in particular. Life with situations that we all go through, but that we, as individuals, experience differently. Body image, education, the sense of belonging, sexual condition, social trajectory, the existence of others, disease, grief. […] I did not try to write about myself, to write a book about my life. I made use of my life, of the general, ordinary events of my life, of the situations and feelings I have experienced. As if it were material I needed to explore to grasp and uncover some kind of perceptible truth.”
The teachers create smart frameworks for discussions filled with freedom and dynamics, where the young people reveal themselves in all their beauty and vulnerability, extrapolating the author’s experiences to their own lives. And this is when Claire Simon’s “writing life camera” documents charming moments of how Ernaux’s texts empower and inspire them, as they passionately delve into her words.
