What is left when everything fades away? An old photographer tries to reconstruct people and events by means of old photographs, but they keep slipping away from him, vanishing in the dark, washed away by the waves. In his 2D animated film, rendered in black and white, Anton Dyakov not only shows how memories are lost, but also how they sometimes haunt and overwhelm us – for example in the shape of a disturbing archive fragment of blurred war photos. “Black Box” deals with loss and grief from a personal, yet universal perspective, while referencing the culture of remembrance in the digital age which is increasingly managing – or seeking to manage – without the haptic assurance of a printed photo.

Marie Ketzscher

Losing your hair through chemotherapy is a painful experience for many people, not least because a bald head displays one’s new vulnerability so blatantly. But Maja Arnekleiv, the daughter of Norwegian animation director Anita Killi, turns the steps of the transformation – the original mum’s hair, the near-baldness, the new growth which is so different from the pre-chemo hair – into a tribute to resilience, love and family solidarity even in difficult times of illness. In a pixilation documentary produced over a period of two years, she captures in 755 single frames (selected from more than 3,000) how she and her siblings comb, blow-dry, style, braid and spray Anita Killi’s hair, while Killi always has her eyes firmly on the viewers. Sometimes laughing, sometimes serious, always loving. In 2017, Marja Arnekleiv won the Golden Dove for this tender, very touching film which celebrates the mother of four, whatever she looks like.

Marie Ketzscher