Toby Ashraf

Isn’t the trajectory of a shared life determined in advance? Get married, have kids, be like everyone else… According to Dietrich Brüggemann, who competed in Vary six years ago, 30-somethings conceivably have it all, yet they fail in their attempts to achieve their set ideals. Nö delivers a critique of contemporary values, while also highlighting the struggle to find and nurture love.

1977년, 통일 이전의 베를린. 정신과 의사 클램페러를 찾아온 패트리샤는 무용 아카데미에 마녀들이 산다는 이야기를 늘어놓는다. 의사는 진료 노트에 자신이 만든 괴담을 사실로 믿고 있다며 패트리샤의 이야기를 망상이라 기록한다. 한편 블랑 선생의 지도를 받기 위해 미국에서 베를린으로 건너온 무용수 수지는 무용 아카데미에 입단해 블랑의 마음을 사로잡는다. 선생들은 수지를 패트리샤, 올가에 이어 마녀 마르코스에게 바칠 제물로 여기지만 블랑은 수지가 범상치 않은 존재라는 걸 직감한다. 수지 역시 블랑에게 춤을 배우며 잠재된 내면의 능력을 일깨운다.

For her first television film, director Vera wants the perfect cast. But the first day of shooting is fast approaching and the numerous casting sessions have yet to find a suitable actress to play the leading role. Although the producer and crew are getting ever more exasperated with Vera, Gerwin is happy about the extra work, as he earns his money as an audition reader, delivering the lines of dialogue to the starry candidates at the various castings. When the male lead suddenly has to back out, Gerwin thinks that this might just be his chance.

Kôichi is a Japanese man living alone in Berlin. He has no job and hardly any friends. One night Kôichi meets Ryota at a bar which is also a sex club. Ryota came to Berlin to visit a German guy whom he had "met" on a dating app. His high hopes for romance (and marriage?) were quickly crushed since the German was only interested in sex, not even letting Ryota stay for the night. That is why Ryota ended up spending the night in the dark room of the sex club. Kôichi for some reason lets Ryota stay at his apartment. They have sex. Ryota goes out almost everyday to get laid by various local men and comes home to Kôichi's. Increasingly caught up with a strange feeling that is akin to but not quite frustration or curiosity (needless to say, it is not even close to love), Kôichi gradually gives himself up to sex with Ryota.

"What is to be done?" three women with artistic and creative professions in temporary living conditions are wondering. They are sharing a flat in an old building close to Berlin Central Station. The area is one of the city's last remaining gaps between buildings. They decide to end their flat share as soon as the first trenches will be dug. With mixed feelings they are heading towards the time when their spontaneous life comes to an end, which means they have to make one or more (life) decisions eventually. The current flat is a symbol for their own life scripts so far: unformed and all bets are off but it already starts to be uncomfortable. They spend the remaining days in their flat with friends, celebrations, discussions and the strong feeling for the dawning of a new era.

Theres and Kenneth are both young when they first meet whilst on holiday. They fall in love but are unable to prevent themselves from losing each other. Thirty years later, in another country, another couple: Ariane leaves her husband David because she no longer loves him. The paths they both take lead them to Kenneth and Theres.

The story of the dog from the title, who in a frame narrative explains how he came to be transformed from an unemployed communist filmmaker into a canine with a philosophical bent. Unable to finance his new project, young Berlin-based director Julian tells foreign exchange student Camille that his job in the countryside is research for an upcoming film. When Camille offers to help, he is forced to uphold the lie. The plantation isn’t the proletarian idyll he had hoped for, but fortunately the reincarnation of Francis of Assisi provides spiritual insight and a new aim in life.

A modern story of an actress that is in a theatre. In a place designed for representation, for daily reenactments of human passions, the film is focusing on the cruel awakening of the actress to her true self. More precisely to an “ancient self”. The one most people edit out of their lives: the garbage self.

Lost love, lost artistic collaboration, the two are meeting for one night as she briefly visits the city where he still lives.

It's a cold December night in Berlin. Once again, Hänsel and Gretel have lost their way. They stumble through the big city in search for warmth and company. An invitation to a night club ('Witch's night - couples welcome') looks like lucky turn...

Eleven moving dates, eight friends: Philipp, Wiebke, Jessica, Maria, Swantje, Michael, Thomas, Dina – all in their twenties and mutually lonesome. And always searching: For a new city, a new job, an own apartment, a new, or even an old love. The search is never-ending, and so they repeatedly find themselves at a ritual gathering: someone moving. Boxes are shifted from one side of Berlin to the other, or the length and breadth of Germany, from one abode to the next as one life is exchanged for another. In 3 ZIMMER/KÜCHE/BAD, director Dietrich Brüggemann portrays existences in which relationships, social networks and backdrops are in a constant state of flux; where best friends are the only, and therefore the most valuable constant. Humorous sketches of the self-conception of a generation for whom moving has become the symbol of a life on the go.

The latest episode continues to voyeuristically document what goes on in the minds and bedrooms of urban gays. In Berlin, Mathews lingers on the tension and circular nature between intimacy and loneliness by documenting a handful of Berliners -some single, some coupled, some hooking up- over the course of one day.

Simon, a young German doctor who lives and works in Marseille, goes missing. His appartment is empty. His mother Valérie is desperate. She doesn't understand the reason of his disappearance. Therefore she asks Jens, Simon's former boyfriend, to come to Marseille and help her find him.

What happens when two friends give in to their urges? "I Want Your Love", a new new short film by indie director Travis Matthews illustrates very explicitly what it could feel like to fuck a good friend after having a few glasses of wine together. Like the movies Mathews shot for his documentary series “In Their Room” the movie is very tenderly shot, and like other contemporary queer indie movies it combines both narrative and pornographic elements in a way that blurs the borders between a “feature film” and a “porn film”.