“My life is a prison”, Adelina says. The young woman is smoking and looking into the camera, her parents sitting on the sofa to her right and left. In black and white and the narrow 4:3 ratio, this family scene feels oppressive: Adeline spent eleven years under house arrest here, with a father who refuses to accept her identity and a mother who seems loving but powerless. In Georgia, there is neither freedom nor security for trans persons like Adelina. Anti-queer attacks happen in broad daylight; the legal situation of the LGBTQ community has recently deteriorated further. When the protagonist at last leaves her parents’ village to go to Vienna, the style of Rati Tsiteladze’s debut film also changes. The lipstick glows red, the lights of the big city neon yellow. A different, freer life seems possible. But the freedom brings new challenges: financial and health problems, communicating in a foreign language – and loneliness. “A Song Without Home” is the intimate, impressionistic long-term portrait of a person who wants to define herself and clings to an unshakeable conviction: “No law can erase who we are.”

Jan-Philipp Kohlmann

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

Camille, a very small girl, and the Chameleon who is afraid of heights are inseparable and love to play hide-and-seek in the forest. Camille loves to literally call the tune with her whistling. But one day she becomes too cocky and gives Chameleon an idea that will upset everything. Now they are lost in the green thicket. Can they get over their pride and find each other again?

Lina Dinkla

Anne (36) lives in Halle (Saale) and her life is in chaos. An apartment full of moving boxes, a yapping dog. She tells her mother on the phone that the electricity is about to be cut off again. Sometimes her daughter Leonie (14) drops by. Like her mother, she is at risk of slipping into drug addiction. Anne has already lost custody of her two younger children, too. The camera stays purely observational, captures loose scenes from the life of a woman who wants to take responsibility again. The film does not look for psychological explanations but shows Anne as she is. On her drives through the prefabricated housing estate, she seems isolated from her surroundings. Mother and daughter grow closer over an ice cream in a public square. Anne’s visit to her mother provides support but creates pressure, too. We grow ever closer to Anne, sharing her wish that she can become a role model for her daughter.

Anke Leweke

A Palestinian woman, Hind Mashahra, longs for motherhood, but this seems hardly possible as her husband is serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison and is barred from marital visits. Smuggling her husband’s sperm out of prison may be the only chance for her to become a mother again. The documentary follows Hind as she sets out on a risky mission to obtain and deliver her husband’s sample to a fertility clinic. Her repeated attempts are hampered by the traffic, checkpoints, and the short life of semen, perishing within just hours. Unadorned in its language, the film stays close to Hind’s inner experience in the throes of drama, shaped by the reality in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as in quieter moments of waiting that are no less charged. Weaving in accounts of other prisoners’ wives, the documentary chronicles a Palestinian woman’s journey as she pursues motherhood at an extraordinary cost.

Sevara Pan

Abtin, a young anarchist from Iran, now lives in Greece after fleeing his own country. Back home he managed an underground library of banned books and was reportedly arrested, detained and tortured because he took part in protests. He continues his political struggle in Athen’s Exarchia district – a place of left-wing utopias and a fiercely contested site of gentrification: He joins the movement for refugees, squats in houses, protests against illegal pushbacks and fights for alternative ways of living, though his own situation is highly precarious, because every contact with the state can jeopardise his residence status. Director Jasmine Alakari follows Abtin over the course of a year, experiences his rage, hope and powerlessness, but also euphoria and solidarity. Time and again, the film returns to the question of how much political activism should be allowed to shape one’s life and what role violence plays in this. Meanwhile, the conflict with the police comes to a head in the street and Abtin finds himself in the crosshairs of the state. Alakari keeps filming but realises that she must also examine her own role. What does it mean to be an observer? How far can a film visualise the fears and hopes of a person who does not have the freedom to escape this situation? “Free Zone” has no easy answer to this question but passes it on. To us – the audience.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Łukasz dreams of becoming a professional boxer. His mother Monika supports him as much as she can. But the fact that this means he has to move to a sport boarding school over 500 kilometres away is something she can’t fathom. For who will do his washing there and make sure that he turns up to training on time? For Łukasz, the move is a step towards independence, but also a test of his abilities among like-minded people. Between hard training, new friendships and first love, the boarding school doesn’t just become a springboard for his sporting career, but also the place where he comes of age. Over five years, Adam Roszkowski accompanies his taciturn protagonist on his way to the Polish junior championships. In a blend of observation and discreet staging, everyday training routines, family moments and a first date come together to form a narrative that is so close to its characters that the documentary format almost melts into the background. Entirely indebted to the principle of show, don’t tell, “Growing Up” also gives an account of the dedication needed for competitive sport and the price it carries as well as of the silent battles needed to go one’s own way.

Tina Jany

Thick smoke clouds rise at the horizon. Oil bubbles from the ground. The gills of a dead fish are black. A sonorous voice recites a poem about blood, anger and the oil-contaminated landscape of the Niger Delta. A crowd of people join in for the refrain. Writer and activist Nnimmo Bassey has been protesting for decades again the oil extraction in the south of Nigeria and its consequences for humans, nature and agriculture. The Ogoni, an ethnic minority from the region, are particularly affected, with their whole basis for life under existential threat as a result. In the 1990s, they organised a powerful political movement, which was violently put down by the military government – also in the interest of Western oil concerns. How is it possible to put up political resistance in such circumstances? “Hope Is a Word” is the portrait of a man who believes in the power of poetic language. With his workshops, Nnimmo Bassey manages to mobilise a new generation of rhetorically and literarily gifted activists. When they read, rap or recite, the film puts their words into the frame in demonstrative fashion. Poetry becomes a political tool here. For a call can come from a verse, a call that others then follow.

Jan-Philipp Kohlmann