Perhaps they should never have met, but fate wanted otherwise. Monika and Joseph. She is a curator, he is an immigrant from Congo, a businessman with an unclear past and present. They meet during a police raid at a bar, when the first of many sparks flies between them. An understated love story, a...
Neukölln, a trendy district in Berlin. Living space is scarce here. Without surety, proof of credit worthiness and salary there is no chance at all now. Thies knows this game; he works for a real estate management company and watches that the rules are upheld - until he meets Bruno and Sonja. He...
A character study as well as a meditation on communication, creativity, and physical space, Take What You Can Carry is a picture of a young woman seen through the interiors she occupies and the company she keeps. A North American living abroad, Lilly aspires to shape an intimate and private place...
Two boys from different worlds. Of all possible times, the start of summer vacation is when 10-year-old Jona has to move away from Berlin to the German-Czech border with his mother and new stepfather. He's lonely and angry as he inspects his new surroundings. Across the border, he meets Miro, a...
Loves are found and lost. Families disappear and start. Houses, denouements, solitude, friendship. All that we keep, and all that we leave behind. Shot on Super 8 film between 2010 and 2018 in Portugal, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Guinea-Bissau, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Chile,...
All of a sudden, 16-year-old Martha vanishes. Her father Lothar, who for years has had no contact with her or his ex-wife, sets off unwilling to find her. He soon realises other young people are also vanishing from the city inexplicably. Lothar follows their trail across the country. He meets the...
Jessi is eleven and longs to go back to the place where she spent her early childhood. She has an important role to play in the life of her mother, who has been in prison for several months. Since her older sister Bibi broke off all contact with their mother Jessi is now her mother’s only contact...
Jonasz studies insects and fishes, Signe leaves and herbs. After a day spent in gardens and libraries, they meet, take the train and leave the city, pitching their tent on the shores of a lake. As they read, eat fruit, wander the forest and swim in the cold water, the outside world feels further...
Borrowing its title from an experimental text by Walter Benjamin. Many years ago, the cities by the river were gripped by a contagion. Things started to change and everything slowly became something else. It was not clear if transformation was a symptom of the disease or a way to escape it. The...
We went to research the conditions of the students in the guerrilla schools in the mangroves. Instead, we soon became ourselves the learners and the first lesson was how to walk. In the mangrove school the learning happens with the whole body.
The first image is in black and white, upside down and projected into a black box that then becomes the frame. It now hovers like a time capsule near a man’s face. He looks down, listening in on a female guerrilla fighter and translating her words from Fulani. Within the capsule, money is counted...
Filipa César, in her films and installations, explores the post-colonial constellations that were spawned by the recent history of Portugal. Since 2011, her research is focused on the film production in Guinea-Bissau, the beginnings of which were closely linked to the struggle for liberation. In...
To take care of his father’s estate, Ulrich Meinert has to go to a trailer park where his father used to live. He finds himself in a camping colony in eastern Germany which stirs up mixed feelings. Although he felt a lot of resentment towards his father, days go by without him taking care of any...
Daniela is unsure about what to do next and where to live. Mia is finishing a master’s degree that she spontaneously started. Along with Natascha, another friend thinking of moving to Vienna, they wander around and talk.
With its image axis repeatedly tilting and tipping out of frame, Depth of Field examines three places in the German city of Nuremberg which are haunted by the memory of the racist murders committed there by the NSU far-right terrorist group between 2000 and 2005.
The film approaches the biographies of two women whose personalities were forcibly hidden behind their roles as wives and homemakers. They remained invisible until they themselves became the aggressors.