Berlin Film Festival announces Panorama, Forum and Generation section line ups for 2024

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photos courtesy of Berlinale

VERDICT: Berlinale 74 takes place February 15 - 31

Berlin Film Festival has announed the films for the Panorama, Forum and Generation sections.


The 2024 Panorama: Bridges Between Lived Experiences and Cinematic Possibilities

Afterwar
by Birgitte Stærmose | with Gëzim Kelmendi, Xhevahire Abdullahu, Shpresim Azemi, Besnik Hyseni, Luan Jaha
Denmark / Kosovo / Sweden / Finland 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
The children transform into adults before our eyes. Yet they remain in limbo, haunted by memories of the war in Kosovo. Combining raw realism and staged performance, Afterwar is a meditation on the long-term repercussions of war.

Every You Every Me
by Michael Fetter Nathansky | with Aenne Schwarz, Carlo Ljubek, Youness Aabbaz, Sara Fazilat, Naila Schuberth
Germany / Spain 2024
Panorama | World premiere

All Shall Be Well
by Ray Yeung | with Patra Au Ga Man, Maggie Li Lin Lin, Tai Bo, Leung Chung Hang, Fish Liew Chi Yu
Hong Kong, China 2024
Panorama | World premiere
When her partner Pat unexpectedly dies, Angie is left to worry about the flat in which the couple lived together for over 30 years.
Supported by her chosen family, Angie begins a later-life journey into emancipation.

Andrea Gets a Divorce
by Josef Hader | with Birgit Minichmayr, Josef Hader, Thomas Schubert, Robert Stadlober, Thomas Stipsits
Austria 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Rural policewoman Andrea wants to end her marriage and become a detective inspector in the city. After a birthday party, her drunken soon-to-be ex-husband runs out in front of her car. In a state of shock, Andrea commits a hit-and-run.

Which Way Africa?
by David-Pierre Fila | with Samuel Fosso, Joseph Ki-zerbo, Simon Njami, Imam Souleymane
Republic of the Congo / Angola / Cameroon 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
The people of the forests pound their drums to keep their chants alive. Those of the city shriek of “Progress!” Still more rush in to seizethe treasures of the land, only to be met by new voices shouting in defiance.

Baldiga – Unlocked Heart
by Markus Stein | with Jürgen Baldiga, Timo Lewandovsky, Bernd Boßmann, Ulf Reimer, Birgit Baldiga
Germany 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
Using diary excerpts, photographs and memories from companions, the film paints the portrait of the artist Jürgen Baldiga who sensitively and authentically captured the West Berlin queer scene of the 1980s and early 1990s with his camera.

Betânia
by Marcelo Botta | with Diana Mattos, Tião Carvalho, Caçula Rodrigues, Nádia D’Cássia, Ulysses Azevedo
Brazil 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Debut film
After losing her husband, 65-year-old midwife Betânia is persuaded by her daughters to leave her remote village. She moves near thesand dunes of Lençóis Maranhenses in northern Brazil and ventures a new beginning.

Between the Temples
by Nathan Silver | with Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, Dolly de Leon, Caroline Aaron, Robert Smigel
USA 2024
Panorama | International premiere
The world of a Jewish cantor in the midst of a crisis of faith is turned completely upside down when his primary school music teacher comes back into his life as his new, later-life Bat Mitzvah student.

A Bit of a Stranger
by Svitlana Lishchynska | with Svitlana, Valentina, Alexandra, Stefania
Ukraine 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
Svitlana, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, examines the colonised part of her consciousness and tries to find answers to the question ofhow Soviet totalitarianism and Russification influenced the relationships within her family.

Crossing
by Levan Akin | with Mzia Arabuli, Lucas Kankava, Deniz Dumanl?
Sweden / Denmark / France / Turkey / Georgia 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Lia, a retired teacher, has promised to find her long-lost niece, Tekla. Her search takes her to Istanbul where she meets Evrim, a lawyer
fighting for trans rights, and Tekla starts to feel closer than ever.

Cu Li Never Cries
by Lân Ph?m Ng?c | with Minh Châu Nguy?n, Hà Hoàng, Xuân An Ngô, Hà Ph??ng Lê Th?
Vietnam / Philippines / France / Singapore / Norway 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Debut film
After inheriting a pygmy slow loris from her long-estranged husband, a woman clings to dwindling ties to her past while her niece prepares for her wedding and worries about the future

Diaries from Lebanon
by Myriam El Hajj | with Joumana Haddad, Perla Joe Maalouli, Georges Moufarrej
Lebanon / France / Qatar / Saudi Arabia 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
Lebanon, 2018. War, politics or revolution: these are the choices faced by Georges, Joumana and Perla Joe. Three destinies and ashared desire to rebuild a troubled country. How is it possible to continue to dream when everything around is falling apart

Faruk
by Asl? Özge | with Faruk Özge, Derya Erkenci, Gönül Gezer
Germany / Turkey / France 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Faruk, who is over 90 years old, increasingly becomes the protagonist in the film his daughter is making about the impending demolition of his block of flats in Istanbul. A story about gentrification and a complex father-daughter relationship.

My New Friends
by André Téchiné | with Isabelle Huppert, Hafsia Herzi, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart
France 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Police officer Lucie’s solitary daily life is disturbed by the arrival of a young couple and their little girl who move in next door. As she grows fond of them, she discovers that the father is an anti-police activist…

I Saw the TV Glow
by Jane Schoenbrun | with Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine, Ian Foreman, Fred Durst, Danielle Deadwyler
USA 2024
Panorama | International premiere
Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV
show – a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the TV, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.

Janet Planet
by Annie Baker | with Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Will Patton, Sophie Okonedo
USA 2023
Panorama | International premiere | Debut film
Rural Massachusetts, 1991. Eleven-year-old Lacy spends the long summer at home with her mother, Janet. As Lacy fully immerses herself in her own world, she slowly begins to fall out of love with her mother.

I’m Not Everything I Want to Be
by Klára Tasovská | with Libuše Jarcovjáková
Czechia / Slovakia / Austria 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
After the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968, photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková strives to break free from the constraints of the repressive Czechoslovakian regime and embarks on a long journey towards freedom.

Brief History of a Family
by Lin Jianjie | with Zu Feng, Guo Keyu, Sun Xilun, Lin Muran
People’s Republic of China / France / Denmark / Qatar 2024
Panorama | European premiere | Debut film
The fate of a well-off family becomes mysteriously intertwined with that of their son’s enigmatic new friend in post one-child policyChina. Suppressed emotions, unmet expectations and unspoken secrets come to light.

Memories of a Burning Body
by Antonella Sudasassi Furniss | with Sol Carballo, Paulina Bernini, Juliana Filloy
Costa Rica / Spain 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Repression and taboos have shaped the image of womanhood for Ana (68), Patricia (69) and Mayela (71). Their stories poeticallycombine to form a kaleidoscope of memories, secrets and longings that are incarnated by another woman’s body.

No Other Land
by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Palestine / Norway 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form | Debut film
This film made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective shows the destruction of the West Bank’s Masafer Yatta by Israeli authorities and the unlikely friendship which develops between the Palestinian activist Basel and Israeli journalist Yuval.

The Outrun
by Nora Fingscheidt | with Saoirse Ronan, Paapa Essiedu, Stephen Dillane
United Kingdom / Germany 2024
Panorama | European premiere
After living life on the edge in London, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands – where she grew up – hoping to heal.

Paradises of Diane
by Carmen Jaquier, Jan Gassmann | with Dorothée de Koon, Aurore Clément, Roland Bonjour, Omar Ayuso
Switzerland 2024
Panorama | International premiere
Immediately after the birth of her child, Diane abandons her boyfriend and baby in a Zurich hospital and disappears into a Spanish city. She does not know on the Mediterranean. But the changes her body is going through remind her of what she is fleeing from.

Meanwhile on Earth
by Jérémy Clapin | with Megan Northam, Catherine Salée, Sam Louwyck, Roman Williams, Sofia Lesaffre
France 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Siblings Elsa and Franck were very close. Since Franck disappeared during a space mission three years ago, Elsa has struggled to move on with her life. Until one day she is contacted by an unidentified life form. But there is a price to pay …

My Stolen Planet
by Farahnaz Sharifi | with Farahnaz Sharifi
Germany / Iran 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
Farah, an Iranian woman, is forced to migrate to her private planet to be free. She buys other people’s memories in form of Super 8films and records and archives her own to create an alternative history of Iran.

Sex
by Dag Johan Haugerud | with Jan Gunnar Røise, Thorbjørn Harr
Norway 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Two chimney sweeps living in monogamous, heterosexual marriages both end up in situations that challenge their views on sexuality and gender roles.

Teaches of Peaches
by Judy Landkammer, Philipp Fussenegger | with Peaches, Leslie Feist, Chilly Gonzales, Shirley Manson, Charlie Le Mindu
Germany 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form
Seamlessly weaving together exclusive archival gems with dynamic tour footage, this documentary captures the transformative journey of Canadian Merrill Nisker into the internationally acclaimed cultural powerhouse that is Peaches.

Rising Up at Night
by Nelson Makengo
Democratic Republic of the Congo / Belgium / Germany / Burkina Faso / Qatar 2024
Panorama Dokumente | World premiere | Documentary Form | Debut film
Tongo Saa is a sensitive portrait of the residents of Kinshasa with their hopes, faith and ways of dealing with life’s challenges, immersed in the beauty of the nights in the capital of the Democratic Republic of rthe Congo.

Scorched Earth
by Thomas Arslan | with Mišel Mati?evi?, Marie Leuenberger, Alexander Fehling
Germany 2024
Panorama | World premiere
Twelve years after he fled, career criminal Trojan returns to Berlin. A valuable painting is set to be stolen in the city. But the meticulously planned heist soon runs out of control.

The Visitor
by Bruce LaBruce | with Bishop Black, Macklin Kowal, Amy Kingsmill, Kurtis Lincoln, Ray Filar
United Kingdom 2024
Panorama | World premiere
A black refugee washes up in a small suitcase on the banks of the River Thames in London. Arriving at the house of an upper-classfamily, he seduces each and every family member, depicted in explicit sex scenes. A reinterpretation of Pasolini’s Teorema.

I Saw Three Black Lights
by Santiago Lozano Álvarez | with Jesús María Mina, Julián Ramirez, Carol Hurtado, John Alex Castillo
Colombia / Mexico / France / Germany 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Debut film
A wise old man embarks on his final journey, entering the Colombian jungle to find a place to die. But the illegal army groups who control the area endanger his peaceful transition to the realm of the dead.

Zeit Verbrechen 1: Dezember
by Mariko Minoguchi | with Samuel Benito, Lisa Hagmeister, Kailas Mahadevan, Sebastian Zimmler, Aljoscha Stadelmann
Germany 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Series
After a wild night out clubbing with friends, Tim is unable to find his way home. He rings on strangers’ doorbells until the police come and pick him up. The following morning, the 18-year-old is found dead on a country road.

Zeit Verbrechen 2: Der Panther
by Jan Bonny | with Lars Eidinger, Anna Bederke, Marc Poersken, Sahin Eryilmaz, Magdalena Laubisch
Germany 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Series
Johnny is a gambler and gangster who fills his pockets as a confidential informant. But then he is threatened with being exposed.

Zeit Verbrechen 3: Deine Brüder
by Helene Hegemann | with Zethphan Smith-Gneist, Lavinia Wilson, Luna Wedler, Eren M. Güvercin, Adrian Vasile But
Germany 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Series
Cem and his five friends have formed a close-knit group since childhood. But Cem is changing: he is becoming tougher and threatening
those closest to him. At some point, the others’ fear of him grows so great that it erupts into an act of brutal vigilantism.

Zeit Verbrechen 4: Love by Proxy
by Faraz Shariat | with Maja Simonsen, Fiifi Jefferson Pratt, Jan Henrik Stahlberg, Sandra Hüller, Briggitte Akosua Appiah
Germany 2024
Panorama | World premiere | Series
When Earlie Thomas travels to Ghana to inherit her murdered father’s legacy, her life is suddenly in danger. Ralf, her lover from
Germany, tries every means possible to bring her to safety.

Forum Special

Art Education
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1976
Forum Special
Scenes from the lives of the masters: Vermeer, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo. But what happened to the women? They become artworks, muses or secretaries. And having barely come into existence, Adam thus asks: “Why is she not God?”

Baroque Statues
by Maria Lassnig | with Lisbet Eberwein, Willy Gabriel
Austria / USA 1970
Forum Special
Nails painted in red polish, tender hands invite the saints to dance. Out in front of the church, feet in the grass. Close-up, wide shot,
doubling, solarisation. God-fearing folds of fabric get moving in earnest. A costume drama.

The Secret Drawer
by Costanza Quatriglio
Italy / Switzerland 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
As Sicilian journalist Giuseppe Quatriglio turns 90, his daughter starts filming him. When he dies, she keeps on filming. Boxes become archival materials, as journeys, women and post-war Europe come to the fore. And in the end, there is a father.

Chairs
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1971
Forum Special
A scrawny chair does gymnastic exercises, an upholstered one puffs and sweats. Hand-drawn animation, burlesque sketches. Early cinema. Then she enters the scene and sits on a chair. Everything is sitting well!

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, when Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward between 1953 and 1956
by Abdenour Zahzah | with Alexandre Desane, Gérard Dubouche, Nicolas Dromard, Omar Boulakirba, Amal Kateb
Algeria / France 2024
Forum | World premiere
Frantz Fanon is a renowned politician and decolonialisation activist. This feature focuses on his visionary social therapy methods during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1953 to 1956. A piece of sober anti-racism.

Couples
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1972
Forum Special
Scenes of men and women, sizing each other up. A match? Not if she earns more than he does. “You are not my universe”. A revue of misplaced lust. And at the end, a bleeding heart.

Mother and Daughter, or the Night is Never Complete
by Lana Gogoberidze
Georgia / France 2023
Forum Special | International premiere | Documentary Form
Greatness paired with modesty: 93 years old and a daughter, world-famous director Lana remembers her mother Nutsa, Georgia’s first female filmmaker. A cinema legacy that revolves around being human in dark times: feminist, loving, critical of violence.

Those Days in Terezín
by Sibylle Schönemann | with Victoria Hanna Gabbay, Manka Alter, Orni, Hanna Fialová-Malka, Irene Ravelová
Germany / Czechia 1997
Forum Special | Documentary Form
Looking for clues about the “Chaplin of Theresienstadt”, ghetto cabaret artist Karel Švenk, Schönemann meets his acquaintances and creates an inter-generative network of memory. Laughter was a form of defence. Resistance means commemoration.

Voices of the Silenced
by Park Soo-nam, Park Maeui | with Kim Seong-soo, Hirano Nobuto, Jeon Dong-rye, Lee Yong-im, Seo Jeong-woo
Japan / South Korea 2023
Forum Special | International premiere | Documentary Form
Now nearly 90 years of age, Park Soo-nam had already lived half her life when she swapped the pen for the camera to tell the story of Koreans in Japan: discrimination, forced labour, traces of the atomic bomb. “Beyond description” at every moment.

Encounter
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1970
Forum Special
“Ensoulment” was Lassnig’s term to describe how she made her own drawings move via stop-motion animation. Two figures, an encounter that begins as a confrontation before all differences are overcome. Her first animated film.

The Cats of Gokogu Shrine
by Kazuhiro Soda
Japan 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
An ample community of cats has set up home around the Shinto shrine in Ushimado. Some local residents take care of them, others are disturbed by their mess. Kazuhiro Soda observes their co-existence with kindness, precision and occasional involvement.

Henry Fonda for President
by Alexander Horwath
Austria / Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
“The United States of Fonda” is the motto of this three-hour autobiofilmographical monument, put together with cinematic passion and editing verve for a president that will only ever have existed on the big screen: Henry Fonda.

The Undergrowth
by Macu Machín | with Carmen Machín, Elsa Machín, Maura Pérez
Spain 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form | Debut film
Three sisters on the Canary Islands, their everyday lives infused with a magical, meditative lyricism. Three life strategies without a breadwinner, narrated via the body, a mix of staging, observation and memory. Before the volcano, serenity arrives.

Holy Week
by Andrei Cohn | with Doru Nicolae Bem, Corneliu Ciprian Chiriche?, Mario Gheorghe Dinu, Nicoleta Lefter
Romania / Switzerland 2024
Forum | World premiere
A painterly Romanian landscape around 1900. A Jewish man named Leiba runs the village inn, a meeting point for Christians and Jews
alike, although the conviviality masks racism and anti-Semitism. Between Passover and Easter, a spark.

L’ homme-vertige : Tales of a City
by Malaury Eloi Paisley
France 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form | Debut film
Apartment blocks with no future are being torn down in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Malaury Eloi-Paisley follows those lost in the city through the empty streets. Their accounts form a valuable commodity, circulating in carefully developed relationships.

The Human Hibernation
by Anna Cornudella | with Clara Muck Dietrich, Brian Stevens, Jane Hubbell, Neil O’Neil
Spain 2024
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
A brother and sister are hibernating. Only the sister wakes up. Human hibernation blurs the boundary between people and animals. A thought experiment equal parts sci-fi and meditation shot in searing images.

Well Ordered Nature
by Eva C. Heldmann
Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
Free-floating yet rigorously structured, this essay film presents botanist and educationalist Catharina Helena Dörrien and her time in Orange-Nassau in the 18th century. Via regulations and floral formulas, nature philosophy and social policy converge.

Intercepted
by Oksana Karpovych
Canada / France / Ukraine 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
The destruction caused by the war against Ukraine is shown in lengthy tableaux. Intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families set up a shocking parallel world. Sound and image stare each other in the face, stunned.

In the Belly of a Tiger
by Siddartha Jatla | with Lawrence Francis, Poonam Tiwari, Sorabh Jaiswar, Pooja Pallavi, Rosely Raj
India / USA / People’s Republic of China / Indonesia / Taiwan 2024
Forum | World premiere
Bhagole and Prabhata are an old couple, struggling with their farm’s debts. He decides to let himself be killed by a tiger to save hisfamily. Their last night becomes a surreal love story. A mythological, expressionistic and deeply moving film.

Iris
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1971
Forum Special
Stomach, legs, knees. The movement of the body parts collides with the movement of the film. A chin rises up from between two breasts. Iris looks at herself in a distorted mirror. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”
.
Letter from My Village
by Safi Faye | with Assane Faye, Maguette Gueye
Senegal 1975
Forum Special | Documentary Form
Ngor loves Coumba with shyness but also determination in this wonderful docufiction, just as Safi Faye, who died last year, loves the
Senegalese village that forms its central setting: its workers, millet and peanuts. A letter from the country.

The Adamant Girl
by Vinothraj PS | with Soori Muthuchamy, Anna Ben
India 2024
Forum | World premiere
Meena stubbornly refuses to speak. She loves a man from a lower caste. Her family thinks she is possessed and the spell is cast out of her. The day begins, a road movie starts, as religious fervour and insane misogyny are narrated in passing.

The Ballad of Maria Lassnig
by Maria Lassnig, Hubert Sielecki
Austria 1992
Forum Special
A life in fourteen verses: tragicomic horror stories drawn by Lassnig herself that take the form of a street ballad sung by Lassnig herself: “It’s art that always keeps me young, it makes the spirit hungry and then fills it up!”.

Maria’s Silence
by D?vis S?manis | with Olga Šepicka, Art?rs Skrasti?š, Vilis Daudzi?š, ?irts ?esteris, Inese Ku?inska
Latvia / Lithuania 2024
Forum | World premiere
In 1937, the Moscow art scene is in free-floating accord with Soviet power. Latvian artist Maria Leiko believes she is untouchable and unwittingly plays the role of her life: that of an innocent victim. A hugely topical historical allegory.

Sleeping with a Tiger
by Anja Salomonowitz | with Birgit Minichmayr, Lukas Watzl, Oskar Haag, Johanna Orsini
Austria 2024
Forum | World premiere
Birgit Minichmayr plays avant-garde painter Maria Lassnig at all ages and in all mental states, giving access to internal and external perspectives alike in radical fashion. An unconventional biopic of a female artist in the midst of a man’s world.

The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder
by Inadelso Cossa | with Inadelso Cossa, Maria Estevão, Moises Langa, Macuacua, Zalina
Mozambique / Germany / France / Portugal / Netherlands / Norway 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
Inadelso Cossa visits his grandparents’ village in Mozambique, where he grew up during the civil war. Back then, his grandmother kept the war out of sight for him. Now the film shines a careful light into the darkness of the past.

Oasis
by Tamara Uribe, Felipe Morgado
Chile 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form | Debut film | A film by MAFI Collective
In 2019, a nationwide movement forms in Chile to create a new constitution. For three years, the film accompanies indigenous, feminist, militant, legalistic, anarchist and conservative activists. A timely large-scale canvas of democratic protest.

Oasis of Now
by Chee Sum Chia | with Thi Diu Ta, Aster Ee Yeow, Abd Manaf Bin Rejab
Malaysia / Singapore / France 2023
Forum | European premiere | Debut film
An apartment block in Kuala Lumpur that houses migrants. Hanh moves calmly, incessantly. She cleans, washes up, tidies, helping everyday life to function better for others. A somnambulant wander through the spaces of an existence denied rights.

Palmistry
by Maria Lassnig | with Dona Craig, George Heyward
Austria / USA 1973
Forum Special
Split screen: the drawing of a woman sitting at a real table perfectly decked out eats and eats and eats. Maria has her palm read; she
finds family photos between the lines of her hand. “Are you possessive?”

Exhuma
by Jang Jae-hyun | with Choi Min-sik, Kim Go-eun, Yoo Hai-jin, Lee Do-hyun
South Korea 2024
Forum | World premiere
A rich American-Korean family has been cursed. When their ancestral vault is opened, something is released. A pair of shamans, a geomancer and an undertaker try to tame the spirit with pig’s head and horse blood rituals in this horror mystery thriller.

Skin in spring
by Yennifer Uribe Alzate | with Alba Liliana Agudelo Posada, Eduardo Arango, Cristian López, Laura Zapata
Colombia / Chile 2024
Forum | World premiere | Debut film
Medellín. Bus 243 takes Sandra to work. She is a security guard at a mall, takes her job seriously. Her uniform fits, her son is already 15, time to start something new. A film about places, sounds, a woman, her body, the self and the world.

Reas
by Lola Arias | with Yoseli Arias, Ignacio Amador Rodriguez
Argentina / Germany / Switzerland 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
Gentle or rough, blonde or shaved, cis or trans, long term inmates or those newly admitted: women re-enact their lives in a Buenos Aires prison, in trance and balance, voguing and singing. A hybrid musical and charming piece of collective empowerment.

The Editorial Office
by Roman Bondarchuk | with Dmytro Bahnenko, Zhanna Ozirna, Rymma Ziubina, Andrii Kyrylchuk, Vasyl Kukharskyi
Ukraine / Germany / Slovakia / Czechia 2024
Forum | World premiere
Young biologist Jura still lives with his mum and witnesses arson while looking for marmots on the Cherson steppe. As he tries to make what happened public, he ends up entangled in deep state matters. A surreal, self-critical satire on media and politics.

Reproduction
by Katharina Pethke
Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.

Republic
by Jin Jiang | with Li Eryang, Li, Bai, Jiaojiao, VT
Singapore / People’s Republic of China 2023
Forum | European premiere | Documentary Form
Eryang has turned his Beijing cave into a private micro-club with fine music and a mezzanine bed for love. No space at all, but lots of time to kill, with passion and psychedelics. They drink and ponder money, Communism and the cosmos.

Resonance Spiral
by Marinho de Pina, Filipa César | with Bedan na Onça, Cristina Mendes, Mû Mbana, Sana na N’Hada, Vanessa Fernandes
Portugal / Guinea-Bissau / Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
The Mediateca Onshore in Malafo, a village in Guinea-Bissau, is an archive and a club for agropoetic practices. As Amílcar Cabral talks feminism on tape, the directors speak in the mangroves about the contradictions of depicting the community.

Selfportrait
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1971
Forum Special
A self-portrait with a stick. This film was completed in the same year as the painting, the facial expressions are similar. “The face of phases”. What’s new are the lyrics and her voice: “Until you are gone with the wind, be aware”.

Shahid
by Narges Kalhor | with Baharak Abdolifard, Nima Nazarinia, Narges Kalhor, Thomas Sprekelsen, Carine Huber
Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere
Narges Shahid Kalhor is a director seeking to be rid of the “Shahid” (martyrs), who are too heavy a burden. From Bavarian bureaucracy and therapy to dancing with Iran’s past generations and their long shadows, she twirls through a heady autofiction.

Shapes
by Maria Lassnig
Austria / USA 1972
Forum Special
Physical poses are set in motion, like in many of Lassnig’s film works. Nudes. Engaged leg, free leg. A wild circular dance of silhouettes, templates and multiplications. And a game involving art historical platitudes to top it all off.

Traces of Movement before the Ice
by René Frölke
Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
Twenty years after Swiss publishing house Pendo closed its doors, the descendants of its founders repeatedly circle, examine and lose sight of its legacy. Frölke’s film gives structure to this archive via media experimentation.

Techqua Ikachi, Land – My Life
by Anka Schmid, James Danaqyumptewa, Agnes Barmettler | with Qomahoyngma, Sewemunewa, Qomayumptewa, Quavayma,
Dawangyawma
Federal Republic of Germany (historical) / Switzerland 1989
Forum Special
Invited by the then 74-year-old James Danaqyumptewa, two Swiss artists come to witness and document the non-violent resistance of the Hopi in Arizona, combining sketches, photography and animation. At once a message in a bottle and a cry for help.

The Invisible Zoo
by Romuald Karmakar
Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form
Across the seasons, the film gives an account of life and work and the animals and visitors at Zurich Zoo, an institution that is one of the leading zoological gardens in Europe. Animals in their cages, humans in the cinema. What lies between them?

What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov?
by Faraz Fesharaki | with Mitra Kia, Hasan Fesharaki, Rahi Sinaki, Faraz Fesharaki
Germany 2024
Forum | World premiere | Documentary Form | Debut film
A webcam dialogue between Berlin and Isfahan: Faraz Fesharaki documents conversations with his family over 10 years. This debut film blends recordings, text and VHS memories into a warm, melancholy intergenerational portrait. Intimacy is also work.

The Wrong Movie
by Keren Cytter | with Laura Hajek, Ashby Bland, Elijah Lajmer, Jordan Raf, Edward Baker
USA / Belgium 2024
Forum | World premiere
Chilling as the stuff of existential tragedy. Ex-lover Alex becomes a mini drone, the new lover is a stuntman; Timur can’t escape his mother and his drug problem, nor can Nicole her father’s ashes. An urban indie chamber drama with delicate synth sounds.

All the Long Nights
by Shô Miyake | with Hokuto Matsumura, Mone Kamishiraishi, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Ryo, Ken Mitsuishi
Japan 2024
Forum | International premiere
Two work colleagues: he suffers from panic attacks, she has extreme PMS. Their company distributes toy planetariums. What may notsound like Ozu Yasujir? is actually precisely that: people are attentive and do each other good, without even realizing

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