With darkness comes fear, and with fear the light disappears. During a dive together, sunken memories rise in “him”. And just like the process of sedimentation, when the lake “rots”, the open water becomes a swamp. Growing anxiety accelerates the breath to the rhythm of the increasingly intense lyrical language. Meanwhile the power of the vortices and expressive Swiss-German tone serve to tint and shape this captivatingly graphical sand animation.

A visual artist all her life, Luchita Hurtado only reluctantly experienced her breakthrough at the age of 97. “Green Turns Brown” is a minimalist eulogy to the publicity-shy painter. Shot on Super 8 film stock during the last months of her life, this film, which revels in autumn colours, paints the portrait of a woman in tune with nature who sees death not as the end but as the crossing of a border. “Life goes on.”

A voice speaking the Aztec language Nahuatl and a ritual song accompany the children’s games in the Mayan rain forest. They put their ears to the trees which seem to speak to each other and to the universe. They listen to an ancient love story that continues today. A myth of Mesoamerican culture is invoked. Animated sequences and extreme backlighting visualize the tree’s inner life. What images may emerge in the children’s mind’s eyes?

She is the centre of attention, but exhausted by life. An old woman in her final days, bedridden and too weak to speak to her husband and daughter. Her selfhood fades away while in the care of her relatives, who have problems of their own. But Julia Orlik brings the woman back into the foreground with her minimalist concept and touching puppet design.

There is a house hanging from heavy ropes, firmly anchored to the rocks. Up there in the cliffs, far above the town below, a father lives with his son in the cold. In his 2D frame-by-frame animation, director João Gonzalez uses few colours, which makes the harsh shadows and extreme camera angles of his drawings all the more atmospheric. He has realised a metaphorical tale that can do without dialogue, relying on sound and images alone.

Marta Pajek (digitally) created a complex, atmospheric universe – with minimalist means and yet rich in detail. References to contemporary history meet visions of an intuited, dystopian future. We are made aware of (our own) transience in subtle, but almost brutal ways. Ageing bodies, ageing ideas. In the end, the grande dame of Polish cinema, actor Anna Polony, sings: “… when will we ever learn?”

In the blink of an eye – as the film is titled – 66 years pass by, seven centuries of stone crumble and a savings bank replaces a church. In six and two half chapters, Jorge Moneo Quintana succeeds in a feat of archival work, montage and sound design. The organic merging of images that show the site’s transformation submerge the audience into a pleasantly sober reflection on the beauty and sadness of decay.

Planes of all sizes, fun fairs, neon advertising, protesting people, men, women and children having fun, desert-like landscapes, urban views – the shimmering 8mm images develop a peculiar pull. They come from our present day but seem strangely distant, past. It’s the visual diary of I.O, a girl who lives in a future surveillance state and remembers the world before climate change.

The first animated film by visual artist Fransix Tenda Lomba is a kind of parcours through Congo’s historical education systems – and an analysis of the ideological function of the institution of the school. Using impressive collages and an always ironic commentary, the film – tellingly produced in Belgium – confronts its Western audience with their own ignorance about the region, challenging both their aesthetic and political thinking.

Click, click, she virtually recreates a cluttered, narrow kitchen on her computer. Lady Di smiles with creased photo edges from the refrigerator, a half-opened chocolate bar lies on the table. The technical-looking, detailed digital reconstruction runs like a fingertip along remembered images, tracing their nicks. The images feed off a blurred video in which the grandparents and their kitchen-cum-living-room live on – a nostalgic place in the distant Ukraine of childhood.

Witali and Łukasz have graduated from the Orthodox seminary. To take up priesthood, they must either start a family or become monks. But the two friends prefer to live for the moment, to muse, philosophize and sing. The camera looks on, full of empathy, giving the two men space and time to face their situation. A documentary observation turns into a thriller: Can their tender friendship withstand religious obligations and family expectations?

Since 1865, no cab driver in London has been able to omit “The Knowledge”. It requires the memorisation of 320 routes, an achievement that takes years, but has been made into a joke by the robot cars of the future. A flesh-and-blood cabby “interacts with people from all walks of life”, according to a brochure by Transport for London, and that’s “a lot more than just taking people from A to B”. Visually fascinating, Colson traces his interviewees’ mind maps of the city using the mapping technology of robot cars.

Enza, in her early twenties, is a singer and seeker studying the rhythms of life in Salento. She breathes music, collects old folksongs and thus connects the people, the present and the past. Rooted in Tarantism and in the tradition of the healers she uses singing as a means to fight alienation. Her portrait is a cinematic legacy vibrating with intensity. It reveals the thin line walked by those who refuse to be satisfied with relative freedom.

Cristobal, a young fisherman at work outside the Mexican port of Lázaro Cárdenas, shares his insights: Fishing is harder than working out. Also, he and the sea are connected by a progressing disease. At night he perceives what can only be grasped from the boat: the chemicals flowing into the water, the smell, the red lights of the steel mill. “Men of Salt” tells of a dilemma: What if you identify with an ecosystem that’s ceaselessly being abused?

A fly rotates around a lightbulb, a spoon turns in a cup. Everything moves in circles here, including the life of the couple. He looks at his mobile phone, she does the sun salutation. Even her somersaults don’t make him look up. The minimalist black and white animation begins to vibrate. The monotony gets out of rhythm. She imagines him as a fly and chases him. Scenes of a marriage, reflected in the yellow eyes of a gecko.

In rural northern Colombia, where the railway has long been discontinued, people help themselves with a fleet of “Motorrodillos” – motorcycle-driven miniature trains. Every day, Dolly and her colleagues take school kids, goods and travellers on rugged routes from village to village. If you meet oncoming traffic on the way, you get off the rails. If you find holes in the rails, you mend them yourself. The affectionate portrait of a self-organised transport system.