In her documentary experiment, Yulia Lokshina addresses the issue of how the institution of school is used by the Russian state to justify its aggressive expansionist actions, either by exterior military violence or by interior ideological violence and persecution of dissidents. The story revolves around a young Russian teacher who speaks out against the war in class shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. A pupil secretly records her statement and denounces her. Soon afterwards, the young woman finds herself the focus of official investigations. She flees to Germany and begins to work as a teacher again. Together with her Berlin class, she reconstructs her own case to understand why this betrayal happened and what consequences censorship and persecution have for the individual, but also for communities.
What is the connection between school and politics, what should it be? How does political oppression feel, and what forms of resistance are possible? These are the questions the children in Berlin-Moabit grapple with. In addition to observations of the class, the film uses archive material, found footage, documentary scenes, and 3D animations to make the situation in Russia, characterised by fear and surveillance, tangible and comprehensible here as well.

In his early twenties, Mwita Mataro set himself three big goals: become a rock star, make a film, and then found an art school in Tanzania. He has already accomplished the rock star part – he is the frontman of a band. And this film is his directorial debut. There was a choice of many subjects, something beautiful like friendship, for example. But there is one thing that bothers him more than his white film colleagues, and that is the colour of his skin. So what does it mean to grow up as a Salzburg native with Tanzanian roots, as a Black Person of Colour in predominantly white Austria? To investigate this, he has teamed up with young BPoCs to create the animated fantasy world Greenland: a place where all the potato creatures are green except Bluekid and his blue family. They paint themselves green to be less conspicuous, but since this does not always work out, Bluekid experiences rejection and marginalisation.

In his documentary essay, Mataro reflects on a daily reality based on colours: racism, alien attributions, otherness, blues experiences in Greenland. He listens to children and adults, lets the audience participate in talks with pedagogues, psychologists and politicians and opens up in front of the camera at home. With “Austroschwarz”, Mataro also comes one step closer to his third goal.

Sardinia, 1940. The harmless term “horsing around” takes on a very serious and ultimately tragic meaning for 14-year-old Michele and his 11-year-old friend Ventura. When they learn that the peasants have sold their best horses for serious money to the state and thus to the military for the approaching war, the two boys take a decision that is as naïve as it is intuitive: They free the herd in a daring nighttime operation. Their happiness is short-lived. Betrayed by a villager, they are caught on the way home and Ventura is shot dead. A senseless death? Or a sign of special bravery, as the ambiguous Sardinian film title suggests?
Director Giovanni Columbu, a Sardinian himself, has dedicated his late animation debut to his grandmother who once told him the story. He took the liberty of adapting it with brushstrokes on paper, his style drawing primarily on the charms of historical painting schools, animation techniques and cinema genres. Columbu’s associative visual language, marked by shades of black, white, and grey, is animated by impulsive hatchings, countless dots, and generous elisions. The soundtrack, too, sets rather sparse nuances – subtle illustrations that draw on Sardinian cultural traditions while opening a space for universal metaphors.

In the evening of 9 February 2022, four young men sit around a table in Kyiv. The friends are discussing the situation: 120,000 Russian soldiers are stationed right at the Ukrainian border. What is going to happen? In “The Birds Are Silent”, director and cinematographer Leo Dzhyshyashvili captures an equally private and historical moment. What is striking is the clarity with which Andriy, Olexandr, Ivan and Sasha assess the consequences of the imminent attack: Potential decisions about their own future are mixed with concerns about relatives and the bewilderment at being thrown into a situation that provokes both helplessness and disgust. But there is a glimmer of hope – perhaps the imagined horror scenarios are nothing but a waste of energy? Cut. Some of the debaters have become soldiers; one has barricaded himself in the bathroom with a narrow mattress and a meal. Within eight minutes, Dzhyshyashvili has tied together a before and after that make you shudder.

Fanta is 14 years old and lives in Conakry, the capital of Guinea in West Africa. Besides school and her household chores, she spends every free minute training at the acrobatics circus. One day, the return of the country’s big star is announced. Balla Moussa Bangoura, founder of the Amoukanama Circus Company, is returning from an international tour and now plans to rehearse a new show with his troupe. Training gets harder, because only the best will be in it at the end.
Of course, Fanta is determined to give everything to be one of the few girls travelling the country with Balla Moussa Bangoura. Every day, she is torn between caring for her sick mother, housework, schoolwork and what she thinks she loves best. Supported by her family on the one hand, striving to fulfil all expectations on the other, Fanta begins to doubt: What does she really want? Marjolijn Prins delivers the atmospherically dense portrait of an extraordinary girl, connected by rousing musical numbers, spectacular acrobatics and dream-like acting sequences.

Karla is a dreamer, Karla is charismatic, and Karla is trans. She grows up with her parents in the small Mexican town of Tepoztlán. She loves to wear make-up and dress up. But sometimes, when the world is too much for her, she hides in her room for hours. Fortunately, Karla has friends and a family who support, often understand and sometimes challenge her.
Trans filmmaker Kani Lapuerta followed the daily life and transition of his protagonist over a period of eight years. The result is a colourful, playful and political coming-of-age story told from a trans perspective. Together, Karla and Kani create a cinematic space where their fantasy is as important as their identity – and where both flow into each other. The title of the film refers to a possible gender-neutral form of the Spanish term “niños” that also includes non-binary, trans and gender-fluid children. “Niñxs” is a touching, encouraging film about childhood, creativity and self-empowerment – and a compelling plea for a world in which everyone is simply allowed to be themselves.

There is no return to paradise. There is a rupture between now and then, the realisation that this place no longer exists. Our protagonist, too, must learn this when she lifts the green of the map beneath her like a blanket to crawl under it with a tomato in her hand – back to Sarajevo, to Yugoslavia. Initially, the strangeness of the return flight with its obligatory tomato juice is as nostalgically exciting as the smiley stickers that are everywhere. But by the time she reaches her parents’ home, the past catches up with her completely: In the corridor of the deserted flat, bullet holes cast cones of light on old family photos and when she opens the fridge, the sight of a single tomato suddenly triggers memories of bombs and explosions.
Matea Radic finds haunting and original images to visualise her own traumatic experience of the Bosnian War and its confusing entanglement with her haptic and sensual childhood memories – complete with Dadaistic advertisements for Šipad furniture and Bosnian melodies. Her generous and yet spare animation style brings out the childlike wonder of her protagonist beautifully. She stalks through the world with scraped knees in a babydoll dress. And she learns that it is sometimes okay not to stick a smiley on things but perhaps a band-aid.

A mud volcano in Akhtala, Georgia, constantly produces material for the local spa industry: Heated and spread on large linen cloths, the shimmering grey goo is believed to heal the sick. But not only the guests roam the bathhouse, but also five-year-old Tako in her summer dress, who is afraid of the so-called Mud Man. The place and its volcano are shrouded in legends – how much truth is behind them? Tako discusses this and other things with her grandmother, whose job it is to wash the used linen cloths and hang them up to dry in the sun. Together they animate this unadorned post-Soviet era building filled with constant spluttering and dripping, while a blubbering sound seems to be coming from the mud pit. Is the mud really whispering?

Like her previous film, “Elementary”, Claire Simon’s latest work pays homage to the educational process, once again opening the doors of school classrooms. This time, texts by Annie Ernaux – a French feminist, writer and Nobel Prize winner – are on the curriculum. Ernaux describes her concept of autosociobiography as “writing life, not mine, nor theirs, nor even one in particular. Life with situations that we all go through, but that we, as individuals, experience differently. Body image, education, the sense of belonging, sexual condition, social trajectory, the existence of others, disease, grief. […] I did not try to write about myself, to write a book about my life. I made use of my life, of the general, ordinary events of my life, of the situations and feelings I have experienced. As if it were material I needed to explore to grasp and uncover some kind of perceptible truth.”
The teachers create smart frameworks for discussions filled with freedom and dynamics, where the young people reveal themselves in all their beauty and vulnerability, extrapolating the author’s experiences to their own lives. And this is when Claire Simon’s “writing life camera” documents charming moments of how Ernaux’s texts empower and inspire them, as they passionately delve into her words.