A bizarre still life. Everyday objects lie carefully lined-up around a bed: scissors, keys, audio cassettes. A dead fish on a plate is surrounded by lemons and tomatoes. A young man lies listlessly on the bed – he does not stir even when the telephone rings and the answering machine clicks on. A rigorously choreographed scenery meets the real voice of a father. He seems needy, absurdly asking for anchovies. Suddenly, the son’s body is wrapped in a bubbling bag, only the feet sticking out, a tube supplying water. The father fancies some Roquefort cheese, but the real thing. Personal overload and powerlessness take on an original shape here – and that is far from all.

Anke Leweke

The mother’s film archive raises questions. What did she see in the many doll’s faces staring at us through her camera? Why so many shots of flowers? When she herself is in the picture, she is always moving. Was she trying to get away from something? The narrator wants to find their own motifs. But where? It is easy for the mother to say: Film your own reality! Sounds great, but how, when you feel that you are different? As the material is questioned, more and more own images find their way into the film. Integrating themselves. Perhaps they ask the same questions of the world.

Jan Künemund

They develop software, work as lifestyle coaches, own marketing agencies or an Amazon shop, travel around the world without paying for accommodation: digital nomads for whom a laptop on a suitcase is sometimes enough of a workplace. Some of their aspirations fall by the wayside in the process and become the project of an enterprising Munich-based developer: Mathias is courting rootless individualists and clever investors to become backers of a project that is to turn a deserted former luxury hotel in the Bulgarian mountains into a hip coworking space. He promises a sense of community, intense human connections and few taxes, an outdoor pool and a campfire idyll. While the nomads who dream of home are waiting for the utopia to become reality, the residents of the surrounding villages sense a new “Wind of Change” with some scepticism. A brilliant structural analysis of a business model that capitalises on modern longings and knows how to carve out the necessary space.

Jan Künemund

Schnapps is carefully poured into hip flasks and handed to the men. Their faces are marked by the traces of homeless life. A housing project in Berlin Kreuzberg gives them more than a roof over their head. The people who work here listen to them, accompany them to the doctor and hand out controlled amounts of alcohol. The project’s approach is consistently addiction-accepting – without the enforcement of abstinence and with the goal of relieving the affected persons from existential pressure. In this protected space, the men can breathe freely again after many years of living in the streets, rediscover their own personality and dignity. The camera follows some of the residents and social workers over several years, always at eye-level, showing the work of this institution and leaving space for the men’s personal stories. A fragile community emerges in front of the lens.

Anke Leweke