A visit to the place of one’s childhood, where love and hope seem to have made off long ago and mining parades, booze-ups and helpless adolescent rebellion with techno music around the campfire have become ritualized. With an unerring gift for observation and structure, Fidel Sievering and Bennet Staack convey the worn-out quality and smell of a Rhenish town that used to live on mining and where successful structural change refuses to move in. Here, time stood still a long time ago. The people move awkwardly through the narrow streets and corridors, like digital puppets with glitchy motor functions. The only ray of light is the old, discarded plans for the future of the place that are unearthed from a sealed mineshaft as a test of courage. Working with sometimes off-kilter scenes and sounds, found audio-testimonies and an uncompromising digital design, “Glaube, Sitte, Heimat” speaks honestly about decorative wall plates and suppressed pain, but also about an unshakeable belief in the “New Dream”.

André Eckardt

What starts as affectionate cuddling, hugging and strokes soon morphs into uneasy closeness and ultimately panic. The shift takes place gradually. Some gentle tickling marks the point where a boundary is approached, which is soon crossed. The playful exchange between these two fluffy characters transforms inexorably into a free for all that’s no longer funny. The puppet design, the precise animation, the lighting and the camerawork make intimacy tangible in all its facets, from pleasant to repulsive. A film that gets under the skin.

Franka Sachse

At the Kikomera home for girls, the mood is relaxed. Everyone is looking forward to the holidays. Babura is feverishly awaiting her trip to the hairdresser, but her plans are scuppered by her friend Njuki, who attracts chaos like a magnet. Director Maria Byoma also took on the role of screenwriter, animator and producer for this film and has created a humorous, energetic study for a future series in which African stories of striking visual identities will be told with creative freedom and local voices.

Franka Sachse

Son of the local brothel owner, Ismael lives in the small town of Vereda. He leaves his home town in search of two things that he’s never set eyes on – his father and the sea. Together with his idiosyncratic, yet loyal dog Bacalhau, he wanders through the parched Brazilian hinterland, heading towards greater experience and a sense of himself that goes beyond the label “son of a bitch”. Its design recalling a graphic novel, this road movie on foot is at once raw and crude, tender and profound and above all a lot of fun.

Franka Sachse

Some childhood wounds never heal. Once primary school boy Tsubasa and Kyotaro make friends, their dreary existences as outsiders finally come to an end: they see each other, they understand each other. Tsubasa actually prefers origami to pursuing dreams of being a football star and is under a lot of pressure to excel by his mum, who barely gives him any affection at all. Kyotaro lives with his old, impoverished grandmother and likes nothing more than drawing dinosaurs. Together, they wander through the neighbourhood, they play, they are inseparable. Yet Kyotaro’s impulsive, nerdy manner and the other children’s mean tongues sow the seeds of mistrust in Tsubasa – is his best friend perhaps an alien? One little misunderstanding and a bigger confrontation lead to everything falling apart. Kohei Kadowaki’s debut takes its time in crafting the perspectives of both children: the camera often lingers close to stunned, horrified or crying faces that sometimes morph into aliens – the director uses rotoscoping to make the emotions particularly tangible. This empathetic emotionality is also a distinguishing feature of the narration, which seems to be pushing the “coming of age” principle to the realm of absurdity: trapped by society’s masculinity conventions, both protagonists are condemned to grow up eternally wounded, perhaps never to fully arrive in the here and now.

Marie Ketzscher