A queer auto-narrative about longing in three acts that addresses seemingly chaotic but systemically functioning cycles of attraction and revulsion, fear and desire, consumption and withdrawal, ecstasy and regret. While the film creates a timeless immediacy, the first-person narrator's commentary, in contrast, sounds like overthinking rather than an unquestioned moment of just-being-there. Whether at the club, by the lake or in the student cafeteria – one’s own judgement is always quicker than the question of how one is actually doing at that moment. But gradually something begins to change: An initially barely perceptible frequency shift sets in. The fragmented staccato of the first comments gradually gives way to a tale that gently settles in the interstices between dune, dream and reality.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

“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

What does a person’s library say about them? James Paul Dallas doesn’t just create a portrait of a life, but also shows a present in which possession, memory and identity are all becoming shaky. In early 2025, the anonymous protagonist guides the director via mobile phone through his empty apartment in Brooklyn. What can stay and what can go in what was his home for 20 years? The kitchen crockery is first up, then the books. Giacometti and Basquiat can stay in New York. But please pack up everything between Lequeu and Brick. A course is thus tracked through an intimate microcosm. It’s not just one individual’s paths to wisdom that are being measured out here, but also his desires, preferences and guilty pleasures. The footage gives fragmentary glimpses into a private world, piquing the curiosity and sparking the imagination of all those watching: what were all the things that happened in this apartment? What sort of person lived here? And why does he have to give up all these things, and maybe even a part of himself?

Borjana Gaković

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

“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

The mother’s film archive raises questions. What did she see in the many doll’s faces staring at us through her camera? Why so many shots of flowers? When she herself is in the picture, she is always moving. Was she trying to get away from something? The narrator wants to find their own motifs. But where? It is easy for the mother to say: Film your own reality! Sounds great, but how, when you feel that you are different? As the material is questioned, more and more own images find their way into the film. Integrating themselves. Perhaps they ask the same questions of the world.

Jan Künemund

To simply dancefreely and confidently on stage … That is 12-year-old Jools’s dream. She learns to accept her physical handicaps and overcome her own limitations with the help of choreographer Yorrith. Very slowly, in one-to-one lessons, Yorrith encourages Jools to dance in her own way and gives her the strength not to be influenced by other people’s judgements. A captivating story about the fact that there is no right or wrong when it comes to dancing, and the impressive portrait of a girl who no longer wants to be merely looked at but truly seen.

Lina Dinkla

The screen is filled with the lightness of a summer’s day. A lake tempts people to swim and have fun, the sun sparkling on the water. A young woman is wavering on its banks, another reaches out her hand to her. The exuberant scenes are overlaid by the narrative of another woman recalling early, painful sexual experiences. At first, the words and the images seem to stand in contrast to each other. But the longer the sun shines, the more the narrative and the images overlap. The offscreen narrator speaks more and more freely, reporting how she suppressed the wishes and needs of her body at first. An encounter with a woman makes her discover her desire and pleasure. The impressions of the lake bring her increasingly beautiful descriptions to life – this day could not have a more romantic ending.

Anke Leweke