Jonathan Schorr

A film that depicts the young Ukrainian generation scarred by war and political breakthroughs. The film's starting point is the preparation for a play based on the motifs of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which, combined with an intense glimpse into the lives of the characters, creates a powerful portrait of a generation having to confront their war trauma and tackle the painful past, which now after the Russia's invasion of Ukraine becomes their present and future alike.

Jan Gerdes is a third-generation dairy farmer, but he struggles with his conscience when the milk yield decreases and he has to sell his cows to the slaughterhouse. After suffering a burn-out, he decides to give up his farm. On the day his last cows are due to be transported to the slaughterhouse, he finds that there's no room for twelve of the cows. Instead of ordering another transport, he and his partner Karin Mück decide to keep them. This is the birth of 'Hof Butenland' - the first cow retirement home in Germany.

Jan Gerdes is a third-generation dairy farmer, but he struggles with his conscience when the milk yield decreases and he has to sell his cows to the slaughterhouse. After suffering a burn-out, he decides to give up his farm. On the day his last cows are due to be transported to the slaughterhouse, he finds that there's no room for twelve of the cows. Instead of ordering another transport, he and his partner Karin Mück decide to keep them. This is the birth of 'Hof Butenland' - the first cow retirement home in Germany.

In times of rampant populism and increasing distrust of the elite, the filmmaker accompanies the 81-year-old founder of the controversial World Economic Forum over the period of one year in his efforts to implement his leitmotif: to improve the state of the world. Can the WEF contribute to solving global problems? Or is it rather an integral part of the problem?

On her wild quest for love, 9-year-old Benni's untamed energy drives everyone around her to despair.

Laika, a stray dog, was the first living being to be sent into space and thus to a certain death. A legend says that she returned to Earth as a ghost and still roams the streets of Moscow alongside her free-drifting descendants. While shooting this film, the directors little by little realised that they knew the street dogs only as part of our human world; they have never looked at humans as a part of the dogs’ world.

3 a.m., Zhongzheng Street, Taipei. The traffic roars constantly through the metropolis. Bordered by a multi-lane street and overlooked by a big freeway lies “Little Plates with Rice”, a late-night eatery where Mr. Kuo and his wife, Mrs. Lin, cook for the night owls. For the taxi drivers, the shop owners, the tattoo artist next door, for families and young lovers and even for the street dog still waiting for his owner’s return, this eatery is a refuge, a promise of a warm bowl of rice. One morning, riding back from the market, Mr. Kuo takes a different exit on the highway and goes to the sea.

3 a.m., Zhongzheng Street, Taipei. The traffic roars constantly through the metropolis. Bordered by a multi-lane street and overlooked by a big freeway lies “Little Plates with Rice”, a late-night eatery where Mr. Kuo and his wife, Mrs. Lin, cook for the night owls. For the taxi drivers, the shop owners, the tattoo artist next door, for families and young lovers and even for the street dog still waiting for his owner’s return, this eatery is a refuge, a promise of a warm bowl of rice. One morning, riding back from the market, Mr. Kuo takes a different exit on the highway and goes to the sea.

Natura Urbana: The Brachen of Berlin tells the post-war history of Berlin through its plants. The film takes us from the Trümmerlandschaften and their unique ecologies to the abandoned roofs of the Friedrichshagen Waterworks on the edge of the city. Encountering an extraordinary variety of spontaneous vegetation from all over the world that has sprouted along railway lines, street corners, and in the distinctive Brachen of Berlin. In Natura Urbana the changing vegetation of Berlin serves as a parallel history to war-time destruction, geo-political division, and the newest phase of urban transformation. Natura Urbana takes us on a unique journey through Berlin ranging from the botanical microcosm of cracked paving stones to elaborate attempts to map the entire city in terms of its distinctive ecological zones.

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."