Intelligent, confident, engaged young women like Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer don‘t just exist in Sweden and Germany. They take to the streets for more climate protection, justice, and democracy all over the worlf. Filmmaker Franz Böhm and his team followed three activists on three continents in DEAR FUTURE CHILDREN. In Santiago de Chile, 23 year old Rayen fights for more equality, also for her future children. Even though Chile is considered to be the richest country in Latin America, low wages and pensions create a huge gap between the poor and rich in a country with a constitution ... more

Sofia rents a dilapidated, unheated castle on the Welsh moors for a year with a bundle of cash. At the station, occultist Joseph, an internet blowhard with a shaved head and shaggy beard, waits for her. Sofia, who has depression which darkens her perspective, wants Joseph to conduct the “Abremalin Operation,“ a long process that is meant to end with her facing her guardian angel who will be able to fulfil any wish. Aleister Crowley allegedly tried to conduct this ritual, which stemmed from a magic book attributed to Abraham von Worms, but he stopped midway. This doesn‘t feature in the ... more

John (John Norton) looks like a tough guy with a scar on his nose, neck tattoo. He learned to hide his feelings, and this is very important to him in his current situation. The North Irish window cleaner is a single dad and is looking for adoptive parents for his young son Michael, because John knows he is going to die soon. Uberto Pasolini‘s sensitive, loving film NOWHERE SPECIAL takes us on a father and son journey with four different parents and a single woman who applied for adoption. It isn‘t the big moments that are the most moving. Neither the doctor‘s notification about John‘s ... more

TITANE won this year‘s Palme d‘Or at this year‘s Cannes. It seems unlikely for a more exciting film to arrive in cinemas this year.

Julia Ducournau‘s (RAW) sophomore film revolves around Alexia (Agathe Rouselle), a dancer who makes appearances at car shows. After almost getting raped, she escapes her old life, drastically changes her appearance, and pretends to be the missing son of a fire brigade commander. “Father“ Vincent (V. Lindon) defends “Adrien‘s“ identity so furiously that Alexia changes her original plan of continuing to flee. Vincent, who tries to save his strong ... more

Babtou (Farba Dieng) is such a mess: he was just released from prison and immediately gets in trouble with the police again without having any bad intentions. Since he has no German passport and is having to deal with racist bureacrats, he is under threat of being deported from his home town of Frankfurt to Senegal, a country his parents once escaped from. The search for a woman who would agree to enter a sham marriage isn‘t going well – so he unceremoniously marries his best friend Dennis.

There‘s so much to this premise: Chill gangster film? Deportation drama? Buddy comedy? The ... more

Maria Speth‘s observational documentary MR BACHMANN AND HIS CLASS is three and a half hours long. The film will probably be in cinemas for just a short amount of time – despite winning the Silver Bear at the Berlinale and being well worth seeing, not just because it‘s the most striking political criticsm of the German education system since Klaus Mann‘s “Der Untertan.“ But MR BACHMANN does take two programming slots. Cinemas can only grant this through good will and calculated loss.

The film itself does need this time, and it‘s important the dive into its universe that Maria ... more

The US likes to see themselves as number one, as a nation of doers, where problems are tackled and solved. Bill Baker (Matt Damon) is a man who perfectly embodies this ideal – and soon reaches his limits in Tom McCarthy‘s STILLWATER. Baker comes from Stillwater, Oklahoma, works in construction, wears sleeveless shirts and has a big eagle tattooed on his bicep. He regularly flies to Marseilles, where his daughter Allison (Abigail Breslin) has been imprisoned for several years for killing her friend. Her father believes she is innocent and does everything he can to prove it. When the lawyer ... more