Amerikafilm

2021, Afghanistan right before the Taliban’s return. Naru, the only camerawoman at Kabul’s main TV station, struggles to keep custody of her three-year-old son after leaving her serial cheater husband. Convinced no good men exist in her country, Naru is caught off guard when Qodrat, Kabul TV’s most important journalist, gives her a career opportunity. As the two crisscross the city reporting on its last days of freedom, sparks fly and Naru starts to doubt herself: could there actually be a good man out there?

Phoebe Phaidon works as a climatologist at an institute of cybernetics which is about to be shut down. So there has to be a solution in the form of a successful evaluation. The strategy consultants now work against the student movement in a virtual reality. Turmoils start.

The director turns the diary of his sexual adventures into a serial narrative in the style of “One Thousand and One Nights”. This polyamorously-minded queer musical applies the same playful approach to folk tales as it does to Egyptian pop music.

A couple refuses to accept that summer is over. For a last time, they head to the coast with the intention of spending two afternoons together between sand dunes and sea water. The temperatures have long been too cold for sandals and shorts; the blustery autumn wind is no substitute for cosy rays of summer sun. On the way to the beach, they cross paths with a woman they know loosely. Upon arrival, they look in vain for a dune to take shelter from the wind; a small dam is built and defended hard against the tide, an attempt to erect a windbreak is made. These desperate struggles against the encroaching elements are merely a brief interlude before the situation unravels into a disaster of an entirely different magnitude. A contemporary cosmic catastrophe.

At first calm, even dreamy, the film takes the viewer into the quiet of the seaside and undersea landscape somewhere in Italy. They are soon shaken awake from these blissful images by footage of traces of today's global industrial world, as an increasing part of the sea is polluted by wastewater from factories, destroying the natural beauty.

Paul (23) and Radu (53) are a couple in crisis. They are visited every day in their home by a small film crew. Together with the filmmaker, they go through a “deconstruction of memory” process, via procedures such as intimate video diaries, exercises inspired from family constellations, re-enactments of key memories and dreams, in an attempt to make sense of their explosive relationship.

A hearse cruises the streets of Medellín, while a young director tells his story in this city marked by conflicts, violence and paradoxes. He remembers his childhood and the discovery of his sexuality.

The film is set in a modern day 'Berlin Republic' liberated from all irrelevancies. It's about artistic production, the creative industries and above all film and cinema - a political manifesto in feature film format. It centres on Asta, tough, hardened by theory and immaculately styled right down to the emblems on her leather jacket, with current art scene jargon flowing elegantly from her lips.