“I remember everything”, says Mohammed Imrani, who is hardly seen in Florinda Ciucio’s short film. But we hear him. And we follow Imrani’s hand, which draws a version of a Gaza in full knowledge of the fact that it only still exists in his memory. Ciucio’s setting is pared down to the greatest possible degree: a light pad, a few sheets of white paper, a pencil. Streets and buildings start to appear already, the famous “Al-Baqa” bar, where Imrani kissed his girlfriend for the first time and where drinks made from mangos and strawberries are served alongside coffee. There is the sea and the statue of a phoenix, which means a lot to the people of Gaza because “it doesn’t die”. Imrani’s sketches are at once detailed and abstract. In quick, tender movements, his drawings open up a space that doesn’t just come across as a personal portal but also as an invitation to us: to not forget.

Carolin Weidner

Information only trickles out sporadically from isolated Belarus. And those held in Belarusian custody seem almost out of reach. Having fled to Poland himself in the wake of state repression, Andrei Kutsila brings the fates of three detainees to light in this film testimony, which is polyphonic at both a narrative and visual level. They represent the more than 65,000 people who have been criminalised and detained since Alexander Lukashenko’s controversial re-election in 2020. There is Kasia, a student who uses her art to find a way to cope with everyday life in captivity. Rendered in dark tones, her drawings offer insights into a harrowing situation, while simultaneously serving to guide the viewer through “Letters from the Silenced Country” in animated form. Then there is the activist Witold Aschurak, who receives photographs from a friend while in prison. Footage from surveillance cameras documents his mistreatment before his eventual death in custody. Meanwhile, former detective Andrei Astapovich is in Poland investigating the crimes committed in his former homeland and compiling evidence for the Belarusian opposition organisation BYPOL. An anonymous man also gets his say; he lives in constant fear of being arrested. Andrei Kutsila’s film is a compilation of true horrors – right in the midst of Europe.

Carolin Weidner

Snow, seen for the first time, comes together with hard labour and homesickness. A Kosovo-Bangladeshi directorial duo offers a raw, immediate glimpse into the limbo of a group of Bangladeshi construction workers in Kosovo, building houses while stranded far from their own homes. In a foreign country itself plagued by economic migration, fragments of the workers’ lives emerge through footage shot on their mobile phones: family faces on the screen, dangerous heights at work and dreams of a better future. A quiet reclaiming of their humanity beyond exploitation and invisibility. For some, this is Europe, too…

Anca Păunescu

Ibrahim is back in the village he once left behind. He wants to show films. But “cinema is banned here, Ibrahim – they like playing football here,” reads the text in blue above the arid landscape. So the Sudan Film Institute organises a football match featuring four teams named after Elia Suleiman, Abbas Kiarostami, Ousmane Sembène and Abderrahmane Sissako. The winner gets to decide which film will be shown that evening. Before then, local peculiarities and bureaucracy must be overcome. And then war breaks out. “Nothing Happens After Your Absence” is the final part of Omer’s trilogy “After the Event or Post-Trauma”, which views Sudan as if suspended in time, keeping the war outside the frame. It appears in on-screen text, in children’s games and in conversations. With humour and satire, Omer gives an account of the violence that intrudes on everyday life and of cinema as a place of resistance and community.

Seggen Mikael

Minneapolis has become a battlefield: clouds of poisonous green billow over the wintry streets, there are wounded people, screams, vehicles that resemble tanks. Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller capture the work of the immigration authority ICE and its paramilitary operations from different perspectives and combine them into a horror film. Parts of the population organise themselves in order to stand up against and protocol the illegal actions of the perpetrators, most them in masks. Gradually, a network of gigantic dimension is revealed, which extends to the kidnapping of minors, secret scouting trips and a steady stream of deportation flights. “They’re Here” is a genre-fluid documentary dystopia, whose darkness is only heightened by the score by Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails).

Carolin Weidner