Fünferfilm

1.6 million tons of unexploded military munition (UXO) were dumped into the Baltic and Northern Seas after the Second World War. A brooding and meditative cinematic journey observes the effects this has on nature and people around the Baltic.

Simon spends a summer day by the river with Enes's clique, whom he knows from the neighborhood. Between moments of uncertainty and sluggish conversations, the hours slip by. But then Marie shows up and Simon is suddenly wide awake.

Rio, an introverted young man, tries to make a living for himself by commiting petty theft in restaurants and resorts around the Croatian coast. His life, however, drastically changes when Andrea, a young Serbian part-time worker, enters his life, with the two becoming partners in crime, planning a major heist of two wealthy women staying at the hotel Andrea works at.

Amid German reunification in 1990, 50-year-old Patty first loses her job and then her friend Jelena. In a small East German town, she collects discarded objects and meets the younger Franz. When her flat becomes so full of belongings that she can no longer enter it, she sets out into a colorful forest. A journey through landscapes and history begins—carrying away more than just her.

The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.

The debut documentary by Bulgarian-born German resident and renowned photographer Pepa Hristova is set in the Strandzha mountains, the natural border between Bulgaria and Turkey. In that sparsely populated land and in one of the last primeval European forests is a crossroads between ancient rituals, nationalism, migration and anarchy, as the bleak past blends with modern-day threats in a terra incognita for the West.

Tells the story of mushroom pickers who, in the summer and autumn months head, to the southern Carpathians of Romania to begin their search. Far from being a leisure activity, for many of the pickers this is a main source of income which they and their families rely on to get by. In makeshift campsites, they spend months between dense coniferous forests and the Transalpina road, where they sell the gathered mushrooms to passing tourists or people on weekend breaks. The majority of their harvest is taken by intermediaries, who sell the mushrooms abroad for many times the price.

A life-threatening moment, staged as a joint reenactment on an ice rink: a moment in which "something is about to happen" – stretched out, slowed down, almost floating.

Ida lives on a sailing yacht with a crew of five men. While on shore leave in Marseilles, she becomes fascinated with the French Foreign Legion and decides to sail to Sidi Bel Abbès, the Legion's former headquarters in Algeria.

In south-western Texas, elongated mountain ranges, broad valleys, prairies and deserts pass by. At the Bottom of the Sea explores this imposing landscape and its many meanings, starting with its timeless beauty that has inspired many painters. Once, this part of the earth's crust was part of the ocean floor; the compressed skeletons of billions of sea creatures are now mined as limestone.

A man’s voice from offscreen. He lists individual words, has problems of articulation. At first these are abstract terms, the screen stays black. Sky, street, village and house, however, are accompanied by suitable images. They take us into the speaker’s life. It is his house. These are his automatic shutters. We look into the kitchen where his wife is preparing something. He exercises in a specially equipped room. Later he sits in front of the microphone again, obviously recording his voice to preserve it. Another dimension opens between the recorded words and sentences and beyond the images. There is an inevitability in the room – and a great love. The robot vacuum makes its rounds. Who will put the words stored on the computer into a meaningful context later?

A bear is hunted and caged. But he escapes again and again. He is loved as much as he is feared. A hybrid of wilderness and projection. The film PAPILLON follows his trail. And also becomes a hybrid. Of documentary and myth.