Stefan Neuberger

Director Thomas Heise picks up the biographical pieces left by his family, and composes an epic picture of four generations of his family, of a country, of a century.

A young couple with an open, long-term relationship, engage in a three-way relationship with Chloe in the free-spirited city of Berlin.

When first viewing Zustand und Gelände, we might be under the impression it belongs to a well-known tradition of historical documentaries. Long shots, extremely slow all-round views, steady panning: the image patiently describes a series of urban sites and landscapes of the former German Democratic Republic (Saxony and Thuringia). Through highly elaborate arrangements of archives from different sources (police reports, survivors’ testimonies, administrative correspondence, and more), an o -screen voice establishes what these places set the stage for in March 1933: the Nazi concentration system and an elimination regime of all political opposition. Especially noteworthy, in this film, is the extremely attentive channelling towards still unknown times and geographies of the horror Hitler inflicted on the first victims: people with sympathies for communism, activists, trade unionists, socio-democratic journalists, and so on.

Set against the raucous backdrop of the 2010 World Cup, MEANWHILE IN MAMELODI is a beautifully crafted portrait of a place and one family’s daily life inside it. The Mtsweni family lives in the Pretoria Township of the title, in the district known as Extension 11. Their world is a ramshackle collection of corrugated tin dwellings and makeshift shops, open sewers littered with debris and red-earth rectangles filled with soccer-playing children and teens. Seventeen-year-old Mosquito is one of those kids. As she studies for math tests, flirts with boys and shops with her best friend, her father Steven prepares his "tuck shop" for the promise of cash-flush tourists. Meanwhile, his wife struggles with mental illness. The Mtswenis' lives unfold as the Cup brings new hope to the ravaged town. Despite the poverty around her, Mosquito insists this is not her parents' country. She is the face of South Africa's future - part of "a new generation free to do all things."

An angry punk in Berlin or a pilgrim in Lourdes, a woman with a disability in the 19th century or a film director wallowing in his self-pity, the film embraces different identities, jumping through centuries and landscapes. Until the adventure takes a new turn and unfolds as a mysterious crime thriller with YouTubers, confined to a castle in France.