First we hear a crackling sound, then a diffuse orange light glows in the darkness. A siren growing louder and the sound of a helicopter instantly mark the scene as a place of danger. There is a fire. First in the distance, a moment later everywhere. Trees and palms go up in flames. The fire’s power is immense. The firefighters and everyone else who is fighting the wildfires around Los Angeles act with remarkable calm. Nobody is running, the communication chain is working smoothly, TV reporters are broadcasting live, helpers are setting up emergency shelters, taking care of injured animals, cutting fire lines in front of neighbours’ homes. A tried-and-tested routine, efficiency and a great willingness to help. The crisis seems to bring out the best in the people. This uncommented observation is also a tribute to their commitment. But the longer it goes on, the more the question arises why solidarity and sustainable action seem to work in emergencies, while it seems impossible to tackle the crisis before it becomes an inferno. The film’s cinematic meditation on pyropolitics takes a look at our age of multiple crises. The permanent global fire management makes it easy to forget that behind those fires lie geopolitical causes that must be dealt with – not with water, but with political decisions.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

It looks like business as usual deep in the jungle – until one night a lantern lights up and magically attracts countless insects. They fall into a strange trance; even the bat family wake up. While the adults use the bright commotion to hunt, the young bat saves a glowworm, a fly and a moth. The next night, the dangerous light returns. The small bat is determined to try to save her new friends from its spell. A small adventure about friendship and mutual help.

Lina Dinkla

Pesticides wipe out the insects, the oil spills into the ocean, the forests burn: In 1994, director Laila Rakvåg let a bird fly over and through the ecological, human-made hotspots that plague us even today to a far worse extent. Sometimes the bird is able to land in beautiful natural surroundings, but the rest is never permanent, paradise is always on the brink of the next hellish transformation. The further the bird flies, the more human its features become: It becomes a baby that is then actually born – and carries the memories of the bird in its newly opened eyes. We are inseparably linked to nature; what we do to it, we do to ourselves: Rakvåg’s film is an activist plea for more empathy with our planet and a change of thinking, told from the perspective of an expectant mother.

Marie Ketzscher

A tiny fish swims through a huge underwater world. It is loud and hectic at times. He would love nothing better than to hide behind the other fish. Is he too small to see the world as the big ones see it? Drawn in enchanting blue and green watercolours, this animation shows that there is no such thing as too big or too small. And wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all fly up to heaven in a big bubble in the end?

Lina Dinkla

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

An animated film made entirely out of black and white paper – and told backwards, too! A white she-dog lives in the root cavity of a mighty tree. But what connects the two? Step by step, the film takes us back to their first encounter, when the dog was still a puppy. An equally unusual and strong friendship that withstands even a massive storm.

Lina Dinkla

Anna is lured outside by a lively flurry of snow. As she wanders through the snow she comes across an unexpected playmate. A snow hare – or is it just her imagination after all? After playing, she settles down comfortably on the sofa with a hot cup of cocoa. A poetic film about the joys of winter, drawn in clear colours.

Lina Dinkla