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An old riddle to which many people cannot guess the answer. Let's see what Gil has to say.

Truck driver Abu Husain, like many guest workers in Qatar, spends endless hours in a self-contained world of standing, waiting, and tenaciously moving trucks on the fringes of society.

The second of a 7 part short anthology. This short movie handles the topic of everyday thoughts.

A shaman performs a rite of passage on a snow-covered mountaintop. She changes her shape and floats on bird wings into the valley. In a mystical forest, she contacts her non-human ancestors to calm the land which is infested with military conflicts.

The passions and pitfalls of a lifetime as actress and teacher, from the Russian Civil War through World War II, are shown from the exploits of Maria Ouspenskaya, who was born in Tula, Tsarist Russia in 1876 and died in Los Angeles, U.S. in 1949. Touched by her versatile performance of domination, care and otherness, my family and I unexpectedly find a new sense of belonging in Maria’s queer transcultural hybridity.

Despite the social and legislative progress of the last decades, hateful acts towards LGBTQIA+ people remain a sad reality, and are even on the rise with the trivialization of extreme right-wing discourses. Between France and Germany, this documentary compiles the testimonies of ordinary people who tell their often traumatic experiences: Charlotte and Linda, who were brutalized in broad daylight in front of their daughter's eyes; Max, a high school student targeted by an anonymous cyber-stalker; Arnaud, victim of a violent assault in the middle of Paris; Tessa Ganserer, elected to the Bundestag, exposed to transphobic hate campaigns on the Internet; Ria and Leo, confronted with "queerphobia" mixed with racism... Activists or not, they all aspire to normality, to safety and to have society stop turning a blind eye to what they suffer.

An analysis of space in the city of Tehran from the perspective of some of the cities’ vulnerable women.

This semi-fictional short film follows the protagonist to Prague and explores how the medium of film can access the memories of a city. The film is based on the family history of the director, who fled Czechoslovakia after the Warsaw Pact invasion of 1968.

With security camera footage obtained via data request, this short distorts reality to embody a missed connection for a lovelorn surveillance machine.

Insights focuses on the artistic aspect as well as the historical development of the Stuttgart trainwriting scene.

The film footage comes from the archive of the Odesa Film Studio. Numerous films were shot here that shaped the childhoods of millions of people. Today, the film studio is threatened with destruction by the Russian army. The appropriation of the film material serves to reclaim the common childhood of the two countries. In an act of collective memory, the video invites the audience to search for their own experiences in these images.

Now there is an end to the tootling with the poodle. And no more wiggling the dachshund. Bonnie & Clyde have had enough of the farm - they flee from there, dream of a juicy fish sandwich and race in a cardboard box to the Baltic Sea. There is black rain and it is overcrowded.

A surreal Lego stop-motion film (brickfilm) that blurs the boundaries between reality and dream. Join Poco on a fantastic journey through space and time!

A young girl's interpretation of war around her.

An escalating argument between girlfriend and boyfriend reveals deeper secrets.

It showcases stories of migrants and their descendants in Germany: a monument for a Pakistani poet, the payslips of a Turkish Gastarbeiter, three sisters turning a decolonial gaze on Bavarian history.

A fable, using song and text to tell the story of a present frozen in Medusa’s gaze. Human and non-human protagonists appear: a historian from Alexandria, Carbon 12 and Carbon 14, as well as a Gorgone, who roams a city, detecting pasts and futures.

Roya is an Iranian dancer and the main narrator of the film. She describes herself as “partly a sample consisting of different layers” and gives an intimate speech to the audience. Roya questions the exoticizing gaze of western viewers. A mysterious snail that is connected to Roya opens up a story within the story by telling us about a roadtrip from Isfahan to Sari (Iran). Meanwhile Roya’s lover, a fabulous alienesque being, lands on earth to build a lush, revolutionary garden of pleasure.

A live performance with the music by Fabian Neubauer, Duy Luong, Pablo Liebhaber and Super 8/8mm films by Franco Consales. Sound and images recorded in Loch (Wuppertal, Germany) on the 6th of May 2023. B-roll footage filmed by Oleg Stepanov.

Climb high and low stones and lie down on them; Climb into the thorny snow and lie on it until forget there's snow around her body.

In “Flesh of the World”, Elvo Axt takes a look into the complexity of human existence. Using contemporary dream-like pop-cultural elements, Axt works his way into an exploration of the depths of our society. Partly represented by the liminal nature of the vampire, the scope expands across queerness, loneliness, loss, isolation, mental illness, drugs and the troubling aspects of humanity.

A metal ballerina is standing on a turning platform supported by a frame inside a music box. But suddenly her support breaks, her music box closes and the ballerina finds herself in a strange world.

The video work centres the trans body as a surface of projection. Drawing upon the iconography of the mermaid as an inherently non-binary entity, the performance explores themes of disgust, objectification, rebirth, and metamorphosis.

As Mia Secreto (they/she) begins the ritual offering of their prostrated body, high priests Empress Wu (all pronouns) and Priestex (they/them) embrace the mortification of the flesh in a mouthy, wet, fisting, frenzy. Secreto’s siren call echoes from the depths, and Wu and Priestex are pulled to the limits of their self control as they consecrate Mia’s body in a ravenous frenzy with their fists, mouths, hands, and gaze. But who holds the power in this ritual? The apotheosis of the body reclaiming itself unlocks a force few mortals can withstand.

This poetic documentary follows a Japanese art of rope, Shibari. I reflect on the physical and emotional forms of pain. The film provides an intimate glimpse into the journey from the confrontation with pain to deal with it and finding its new meanings. Ultimately, it offers a window into the transformative power of physical practices and their potential for self-discovery and personal growth.

They may not be real brothers, but their cannoli are anything but fake.

Three directors prepare a film about the chemical factory in the Cologne district of Kalk, on whose former grounds a shopping mall has been built. With some self-mockery they talk about their investigation and search for sources, their capitulation to the resistance of the material. Meanwhile, an archivist struggles with a mis-spooled 16mm film. Historical images splutter across the monitor of his analogue editing table. The silhouette of the factory with its towering chimneys is discernible. Site plans are shown, chemicals are blithely mixed. In an album, the filmmakers discover faded photos of female forced labourers. Suddenly, questions arise: Which stories are kept, which forgotten? Throwing away is part of his job, after all, the archivist explains in the finest Rhenish accent. What does this statement mean for the directing trio?

Young and naive Olivia receives an offer from a friend to earn easy money: to go to a "girls-show" for a rich guy who is going to find a girl for various tasks and pay her. They go to his house, but they don't get what they expected.

Isolation leads to strange mental states. It's a journey through the circling thoughts of the lonely protagonist, which eventually merge with reality.

How has the life of European Union citizens changed since the Maastricht Treaty came into force thirty years ago, on 1 November 1993? Documentary filmmaker, David Holland, born the same year as Maastricht travels the length and breadth of the continent by rail to find out.