A public swimming pool complex in the middle of a forest which is soon to be renovated: between water slides, French fries, TikTok and sun cream, six teenagers spend the long summer days in the “Badi”, as outdoor pools are called in Swiss German. It is a place to discuss, laugh, try things out and simply hang out together. Whether on the grass, in the water or between the different pools, their conversations revolve around everything that currently moves them. This sun-kissed film accompanies these adolescents at a moment of transition. They talk about the past, think about the future and try to find out who they are and how they will find their place in a changing world. The film stays close to their glances, conversations and encounters, taking an unvarnished look into the inner world of these adolescents – their curiosities, their humour, their contradictions and their insecurities. For one summer long, the Badi becomes a place where childhood and future can exist alongside each other. And while the orange slide is dismantled, the question of what will remain of this summer bubbles up through the water.

Lina Dinkla

Pioneering multimedia artist and computer animator Lillian Schwartz created “Galaxies” during the early period of her 33-year tenure as artist-in-residence at renowned North American research facility Bell Labs. The piece draws on modeled simulations of galaxies from NASA’s Langley Research Center, which were rendered on a powerful mainframe computer and given to Schwartz to turn into a complete film. Schwartz, who had a background in Japanese calligraphy and painting and whose work often intersects art and technology, approached the material creatively, layering, distorting and colourising the images to breathe new life into the scientific data, with visually striking effect.

Ben Sassen

„A little flame that lit up and inspired people to tell different stories about the GDR.” This is how a protagonist describes the 1977 book “Guten Morgen, du Schöne” (Good morning, beautiful) by the writer Maxie Wander, a collection of records in which a wide variety of women talk about themselves. One of the most successful books in the GDR and one of the most influential in German literary history: It affected generations of women (and men!) and encouraged them to question their own lives – ample reason for the director to let a few of the women look back on the book and their lives today. It is about equal rights and emancipation, life plans and rebellion, dreams and failure, love and sexuality, mothers and fathers, men and women, happiness and loneliness, death and, above all, the hunger for life. With respect and great tenderness, Susanne Schüle films faces and bodies on which time has left its mark. Age and beauty, fragility and strength. On the visual level, the stories are subtly commented on by amateur footage: bodies marching in step to the ideologies, Hitler salutes and mass rallies. Again and again contrasted with naked bodies, the wild and non-conformist life beyond the dictatorships. War, peeling potatoes, kisses, children. This is how it was. This is how it is. In the end, the monologues of the past lead up to a contemporary dialogue between the sexes and generations. A flame.

Grit Lemke

The RK12 galaxy is twenty-eight billion kilometres away from earth and contains a sandy desert planet inhabited by an extraterrestrial species. Without sunlight, these creatures live off the energy of movement itself. They produce time, love music and push their mortal gods back into space when they are tired of them. A fictitious reportage that showcases Piotr Kamler’s extraordinary skill. In addition to a feature-length sci-fi film, the Polish avant-garde film artist created a number of original and technically outstanding short films. “Green Planet” is a masterful stop motion animation in which Kamler brings delicate shapes made of fine sand to life. Carefully directed lighting, contrasts and focus create a fantastical world whose spatial depth is impressive. The music by Ivo Malec, a pioneer of electro-acoustic and New Music, reinforces the otherworldly atmosphere of the distant setting.

Franka Sachse

“How long have you known each other?” – “Six funerals.” Having grown old as a gay man is a privilege in the wake of the Aids crisis. At “Lebensort Vielfalt”, a Berlin housing project for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual persons, lived experiences are exchanged among three generations. They used to be pigeonholed, today children might just be allowed to learn to speak before they define themselves. A wild kind of growing up and ageing. All residents share the desire to be safe, even from having-to-explain-themselves. The camera roams the house, crosses the corridor, moves from one balcony to another, looks out of the window onto the street, develops new perspectives. Social backsliding is registered; sometimes new happiness is found. On deceased persons’ birthdays, the raspberry cake is cut. Falling asleep, the sound of riot rises again.

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