Haiguang dreams. Of his dead grandmother, his birthplace Lěng Shuǐ Jiāng in China, his performances and art projects and his job at a wholesale warehouse in Leipzig. But Haiguang not only dreams, he also films. Himself and his surroundings. Persistent, stoical, sometimes with a handheld camera, sometimes using a tripod – knowing that there is another layer under one’s everyday life that can only be perceived if one dares to search for meaning beyond the visible. If you dare to lie down on a crossing in the park and wait for what happens. If you dare to address the pressure to perform in Chinese society through a performance dragging a car tyre through Beijing. If you dare acknowledge your own fears and doubts and reveal them. Stylistically confident and constantly shifting between places and levels of meaning, Haiguang interlaces his life and dream in eight vignettes in which emotions condense and take on a form that goes beyond the personal. He interweaves the elements of his everyday life between the art academy and his parents’ coal shop in Changsha with equally precise and poetic descriptions. Thus, a puddle by the roadside can become the very place that connects him with his granny across space and time.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

The stories, myths and reality of the Sámi people are always closely linked to reindeer: travelling with them, keeping them as livestock. Where does this close tie come from? Anita Killi takes up – or imagines – a creation myth: Alits, who roams the land and enjoys his idleness, is gifted the close tie to the reindeers in the shape of Joik (yodelling) by the daughter of the sun when she has to leave him again. The singing magically attracts the animals. Killi captures the yearning in these sounds with poetic imagery and in Sámi language: In the embraces of Alits and the daughter of the sun, but also in the moments when they roam the meadows. Everything is interconnected in this sensual and haptic concept of nature.

Marie Ketzscher

„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

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

In a large-scale operation, a group of homeless families occupy some wasteland on the outskirts of Santiago in March 1967. When the police attempt to evict them, a little girl, Herminda, dies in her mother’s arms. The eviction is called off, the people are allowed to stay and, without any existing infrastructure, build the settlement that exists to this day: Herminda de la Victoria. “Full of errors and mistakes, [the film] is my first approach to cinema, albeit to a ‘new cinema’, a Latin American cinema marked by underdevelopment. Nonetheless, the cinematic process, editing and sound represent a fully valid experience to me. ‘Herminda de la Victoria’ champions the interests of the homeless in Chile, suffers with them, is both testimony and a ‘document’ that forces you to take sides.” (Douglas Hübner)

Florian Wüst

Documentary films for children rarely venture to this place: prison. Four kids in Belgium take us there. They show us the way from the entrance to the visiting area, where they visit their mother or father, usually twice a week. Prisons are definitely not designed for children and yet there are many who regularly enter them. In Belgium alone, more than 16,000 children have a parent behind bars. This film gives a voice to children of prison inmates who tell us how they cope with a situation they did not choose.

Lina Dinkla

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

Schnapps is carefully poured into hip flasks and handed to the men. Their faces are marked by the traces of homeless life. A housing project in Berlin Kreuzberg gives them more than a roof over their head. The people who work here listen to them, accompany them to the doctor and hand out controlled amounts of alcohol. The project’s approach is consistently addiction-accepting – without the enforcement of abstinence and with the goal of relieving the affected persons from existential pressure. In this protected space, the men can breathe freely again after many years of living in the streets, rediscover their own personality and dignity. The camera follows some of the residents and social workers over several years, always at eye-level, showing the work of this institution and leaving space for the men’s personal stories. A fragile community emerges in front of the lens.

Anke Leweke