Anahita Nazemi

In the 1960s, a white couple living in East Germany tells their dark-skinned child that her skin color is merely a coincidence. As a teenager, she accidentally discovers the truth. Years before, a group of African men came to study in a village nearby. Sigrid, an East German woman, fell in love with Lucien from Togo and became pregnant. But she was already married to Armin. The child is Togolese-East German filmmaker Ines Johnson-Spain. In interviews with Armin and others from her childhood years, she tracks the astonishing strategies of denial her parents, striving for normality, developed following her birth. What sounds like fieldwork about social dislocation becomes an autobiographical essay film and a reflection on themes such as identity, social norms and family ties, viewed from a very personal perspective.

My mother googles the film hero of her youth: Helmut Berger. She is shocked: only an addicted shadow of the former icon seems to be left. She decides to halt the obvious catastrophic decline of the once “most handsome man in the world”. As a consequence, this one-time god of the screen is suddenly sitting on my mother’s sofa in Nordsehl in Lower Saxony. And he stays put - for several months. While he trustingly rolls out his whole life before us, the dividing lines between film team, world star and family intermingle. This is a film about ageing, rising and falling - and about the fact that it is sometimes possible to regain an element of dignity in life.

Virtually every woman who enters menopause has questions about what’s happening to her body and how to effectively deal with the changes. The broad availability of medicines, remedies and even hormones even conveys the concept that menopause as a curable “deficiency disorder”. This documentary takes a look at the scientific and medical contexts of menopause as well as the latest findings in international research. Are artificial hormones medically necessary or a seductive, supposed fountain of youth? Do they truly assist in alleviating the suffering of women, or are they lifestyle drugs reflecting a zeitgeist in which ageing is no longer acceptable and older people are seen as “flawed”? A visual and provoking science documentary about the hot time of menopause that also takes a look at whether and how the hormones in men likewise go crazy.

Это удивительное путешествие в мир великой немецкой танцовщицы и хореографа Пины Бауш. Нам удастся понаблюдать за её смелым и необычным экспериментом, для которого из обычных школ Вупперталя (город, известный своим подвесным трамвайчиком, где Пина руководила своей балетной труппой) отобрали 40 обычных школьников 14 до 18 без какого-либо актерского или танцевального опыта. Каждую субботу подростки приходят на репетиции спектакля-эксперимента Kontakthof, где происходит таинственное перевоплощение обычных людей в актеров театра Пины Бауш. Они демонстрируют невероятно мужество в исполнении этой постановки, в которой танцевальный класс превращается в настоящее поле битвы полов: вражда, флирт, мучительный и всегда запутанный поиск любви.