All Films in Competition

The film poem TURBULENCE stands in the field of tension between surreal fantasy and multi-layered reality.
Telemach Wiesinger’s photographic recordings of aeroplanes from the perspective of the traveller encounter kinetic wing objects by the composer Alexander Grebtschenko.
In the congenial collaboration of the two artists, the electronically controllable “Chimera’s” – elegant bird wings with megaphone – unfold expressive “acting” presence.
The dialogue between the sound level (Grebtschenko) and the visual level (analogue film workshop Wiesinger) opens up space for emotions, thoughts and interpretations. (Thomas Spiegelmann, 2022)

A dysfunctional society controlled by a toxic leader results in the reality of illiberalism and the sole autocratic EU member state is leading the way. Recently, an angular black hole appeared in the centre of this nation’s main square, which proved invisible to Hungarians. The analysis of this dark object offers a short glimpse at tyranny from the angle of anxiety.

The animated film U-Trip is the story of a day in the life of Berlin’s metro system, the U-Bahn. Train cars and stations become the meeting point of a vast array of characters drawn from the rich and tattered fabric of 21st century Berlin.
The story starts at 4:00 a.m. as the U-Bahn opens, with only a cleaning person and homeless woman on the otherwise deserted platform. A ticking clock builds the accelerating rhythm of the film as passengers begin filling the station, each in a hurry to fulfill their morning’s destiny, all under the watchful eye of the video surveillance camera, which is always present, but cannot intervene.
The characters interact, inadvertently or purposefully, changing each other as they go, while the U-Bahn rumbles and trundles along, carrying with it moments of subterranean atmosphere and isolation from the streets above. The U-Bahn, the underground train, is its own world.

For years a wanderer steered clear of his home village but now the time has come to get closer again. However his old homeland welcomes him in silence. After bumping into an old acquaintance the silence might be broken.

Unsettling Dust, a collaborative short film project, explores the lived, bodily experience of radiation by focusing on the relationship between post-nuclear landscapes, radioactive dust and breathing. It draws attention to Fort de Vaujours, a former nuclear weapon testing site on the outskirts of Paris and asks what it means to be living with the threat of contagion, with doubt cast upon your every single breath.

“Us” is a short film of animation which mixes several Stop Motion techniques, proposing a journey through the conflicted human condition. War, loneliness, nature, crossings, fallen dreams are some of the recurring aspects in this animated poem on paper.

The composition “kleine winter” by the sound artist meinin is based on the playback process of a vinyl record, in which the quill of a pigeon’s feather acts as a pickup. The initial level of noise is gradually structured metrically by the steady rotation of the record, resulting in multi-tone motifs and finally repetitive melody. There are also pictures taken with old mobile phones, fragments of personal memories. The piece of music was the inspiration for connecting the images filmed on different trips. In the confrontation of the filmic and musical material, a RailroadSong gradually emerges.
Nicole Aebersold (Video) & meinein (Audio)

A dreamlike portrait of Barcelona, shot in double exposure on reversible 8mm film, is interwoven with an intimate “I remember” voice, creating a collage of memories à la Brainard and Pérec.

The director’s personal micro-memories, as a woman, filmmaker and immigrant, evoque the spirit of a time that may never return, constructing a communal heritage.

The act of making this film, involving the hazardous double exposure and the fragility of the physical film itself, becomes a metaphor for the perpetual tension between memory and oblivion.