Karsten Krause

The old paternal house of the Le family, set in a rural scenery at the fringes of the small town of Ninh Hoa, close to the southern coast of Vietnam: A household dominated by women, neither rich nor poor, with chicken behind the kitchen and rice paddies bordering the plot. Through the everyday life of the inhabitants of the house, the constellation of the extended family becomes visible. A constellation that is fundamentally marked by the course that history took in the second half of the 20th century, and that has made Germany a substantial reference point in the life of the Le family.

A person enters the frame dressed up as a bird. In a dressing room, John Malkovich sheds the costume of Casanova. A young woman's skirt is just as orange as the beak of a zebra finch singing in a cage. White lilies stand at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary, red roses in front of the window of an SM studio. There the quiet game of submission in exchange for money, in a museum an embrace, a poem whispered in the ear. Children playing in a forest in autumn. A forest in summer, framed by light. An orgasm and a dance.

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.

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.

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.

Martin and Constanze retreat to a secluded holiday home in northeastern Germany for his 60th birthday - he yearns for fishing and fine dining, she a lavish city party. En route they meet Gaby, the local innkeeper. Joined by Martin’s old friend and his young mistress Lene, they toast and rejoice, until a stranger knocks, pleading in an unknown language for help.

La empresa is a strange creature of a most ambiguous nature: a fiction film about documentary filmmaking as fiction filmmaking, and what it all does to a region’s economy as well as a collective psychology. Or is it? Isn’t it more to the point to say that... But before we get lost here, let’s state what La empresa talks about: how the caminata nocturna, the illegal crossing of the border between Mexico and the United States, was turned into a business that ranges from four-hour night-time tours for tourists out for a sick thrill to reenactments for film and television crews. The latter, of course, is at the core of André Siegers’ casually ironic look at this economy of disaster. When the Germans arrive in town, they meet a workforce already in place and willing to play to any national stereotype – as the French seem to get other kicks out of presenting the caminata nocturna than the Netflix internationals.

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.