Marlene lives with her teenage daughter Mona in Hamburg. Their relationship is close. Marlene, an orphan, just has Mona. Not least because Marlene’s worrying nightmares brings them closer together. Sleep for her is a ghostly demon that invades her and steels some of her memories, breath, and abilities. Her daughter Mona holds her mother tight in these moments, catches her, leads her out of it. Inhale, exhale. The roles, protector and protected, seem to be reversed. One image from Marlene’s dreams is a hotel which seems to recognize in a newspaper ad. It takes her there, to the Harz ... more

Sven and Lisa are twins – and theater people. He, the older one, is an actor. She, the “little sister,“ writes for the stage. They are well versed in words and emotions, However, they deal less well with Sven‘s cancer which they try to battle together. Sven, who lives in Berlin, has come to Switzerland to where the sister Lisa lives with her family in order to do that. Sven does better there for a short period of time and strongly believes in his big comeback and hopes to be able to perform as Hamlet on the Schaubühne very soon. But the bone marrow transplant that Sven received from ... more

Everything is on fire at Ema’s (Mariana Di Girolamo) – in the literal sense of the word. She gave back an orphaned boy which she recently adopted with her husband Gastón (Gael García Bernal) after he played with fire and severely injured his sister. Now she’s going around the city at night with a flamethrower to torch traffic lights and cars to can vent because Ema regrets her decision and wants her son back. But it’s too late for that. Everyone is making the professional dancer feel like she made a mistake and the already difficult marriage to Gastón seems to be over. But instead ... more

In her documentary OECONOMIA, Carmen Losmann has made it her lofty objective to understand the global financial system and make it understandable to others. The latter turns out to be quite difficult since the film‘s pace is fast and the amount of information is overwhelming. It would‘ve made sense to give the artistic side of OECONOMIA more space so that viewers had time to reflect on all the new ifnormation. The restrained camera angles of Losmann‘s cinematographer Dirk Lütter mirrors the slick aesthetic of the financial world in an appropriate way. The glass facades of EZB, BMW, and ... more

Daniel (Diarmaid Murtagh) spends his time in London without talking, because he has no one to talk to. He goes to the park with his dog during the day and is otherwise an onlooker of other people‘s communal activities. He has dinner with Bruno and repairs electrical appliances with the lights dimmed in his garage along the tracks. At nights he gets rid of the party trash on the playground so that the children can climb again the next day. We don‘t know anything about him besides how he lives now. But despite this, or perhaps because of it, we are close to him. The camera stays close ... more

SAG DU ES MIR, the debut film of Michael Fetter Nathansky, begins with a camera view on the train bridge of the Neustädter Havelbucht in Potsdam with renovated prefab buildings in the background. A woman comes on the bridge from the left, bending down over the railing, looking at the water. A man appears from the right and pushes her into the water. This act, which the entire film revolves around, is just seen from a distance at first, and the camera gets closer to the involved people only after. Silke (Gisa Flake) is the woman who is pushed to the water without getting seriously injured. ... more

It happens on platform 4: Milla’s painful first encounter with Moses. The 23 year old (Toby Wallace) carelessly bumps into the schoolgirl. But Milla (Eliza Scanlen, LITTLE WOMEN) is fascinated by Moses, who is – as we soon find out – a drug addict and looking for a place to stay. When Moses asks her for money, Milla wants to give him 50 dollars, but only if he cuts her hair – which isn’t a problem for the son of a dog hairdresser. From that point on a regular coming-of-age love story could develop if it weren’t for Milla’s illness. The 16 year old has cancer and is undergoing ... more