What is behind the fetishisation of Asian women? This is the question which Kiriko Mechanicus uses to structure her intense, hyper-referential essay film, taking up a criminal case at the start: Robert Aaron Long shot and killed a series of women, primarily of Asian origin, in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2001. She starts writing letters to him in prison: “Maybe in some way you remind me of many of my ex-boyfriends.” By weaving together sexuality, projection and performance, the director sets off down an uncomfortable path, which simultaneously becomes a process of self-interrogation: to what extent did she slip into the role of the submissive Japanese woman in the past? Or “When was the last time I didn’t pretend to be your prey and you weren’t trying to hunt me down?” “How to Catch a Butterfly” examines the pins holding the director’s wings in place – and removes them in a charged act of self-empowerment.

Carolin Weidner

As Ollie’s desire to transition grows, his girlfriend Sterre is at his side. First taking the form of a jokey “lesbo-vlog”, the process of filming it soon morphs into a dialogue spanning several years. In it, Ollie asks Sterre to affirm her love for him, which he struggles to believe; feeling love for himself is an even greater struggle. At the same time, the testosterone injections and the mastectomy demand both strength and presence. Through interviews, texts, home videos and photographs, “kiss kiss bang bang” reveals the emotional world of two people, showing them grappling to understand what’s happening as well as the mutual care they have for one another. The insights are radically honest, vulnerable and brave. As they willingly reveal numerous puzzle pieces of a most personal nature, the image of a long-term relationship and the work that goes along with it comes into view. Ollie Launspach’s debut film is a gift – and an appeal to keep going.

Carolin Weidner

An institutional portrait in the form of an elegy: after more than sixty years, the fate of the Les Lilas maternity clinic already seems sealed. Having not worked in a profitable enough manner, this private institution is now to have the subsidies it relies on withdrawn. Alain Kassanda’s film accompanies the clinic’s last flicker of resistance, showing heated internal meetings and the public protests aimed at saving it. The interactions between the purple-uniformed staff and their patients come to the fore at the same time: offering caring guidance across the entire birth process, precisely explaining the specifics of an imminent abortion or advising a young couple confronted with an unplanned pregnancy. Everyday life in the Maternité des Lilas is both eventful and moving. And it can look back on a long tradition: deeply anchored in the second wave of the women’s movement, the clinic made history for its progressive approach. Everyone was supposed be able to give birth in the way they saw fit, the patriarchy was banished from the delivery room and operating theatre – “mon corps, mon choix”. This inconspicuous place retained this forward-looking approach to the last. Alain Kassanda’s lament is far from maudlin. It is the unsentimental depiction of a loss only justifiable on paper.

Carolin Weidner

Jimena is in her twenties, a young woman who goes by the nickname La Pichi and grew up on the edge of Buenos Aires close to the port, the other side of the invisible line that separates centre from periphery. These are not mere descriptions, but rather how she tells it herself – her garrulousness knows no bounds, which makes her the perfect storyteller. Like a Scheherazade porteña, La Pichi tells a new story each night and there are so many it’s easy to lose count. With their extravagant titles, her stories of relationships, family, body issues and class might seem like tall tales, but they are all plucked from her everyday reality, the same reality lived on the fringes that we see in velvety nocturnal images during and in between her voiceover monologues, which are narrated with an infectious enthusiasm and humour that belies their ambivalent undercurrents: the tale of the boyfriend who didn’t want to be seen with her, the tale of the transvestite-loving grandmother who cooked glorious food she wasn’t supposed to eat, the tale of the father with vitiligo who at one point was no longer there. Yet this is no narrative of hardship and suffering, but rather one of irrepressible, inspirational joy, for what can be more empowering than being given space to chronicle your own biography on your own terms? As La Pichi herself says, “I wasn’t one word, I was many.”

James Lattimer