Toast

In a post-apocalyptic world not dissimilar to the present, SUGAR, a humanoid robot that can feel, think and dance, is sent out to bring a human touch back to humanity. SUGAR finally encounters a HON (Human Organism Normal), a post-influencer who, in an underground techno cell, poses in a sort of eternal commercial. SUGAR tries to free HON from his prison of routines, speech and movement loops and seeks to build a true encounter – an interaction, a dialogue.

Brynntrup creates his own rococo version of the classical myth of Narcissus and Echo, a story of longing, love, and self-love. Brynntrup comments "A film in the form of a riddle is a special kind of entertainment film whereby the film’s content must be deduced from the film’s formal structure."

When her sibling Zara suffers a nervous breakdown, the introvert Eva is forced to take on Zara’s job as a Foley artist. She struggles to create sounds for a commercial featuring a horse, and then a horsetail starts growing out of her body. Empowered by her tail, she lures a botanist into an affair, through a game of submission. Piaffe is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice.

Against the backdrop of an unfathomable megalopolis, in a story that follows the associative qualities of a dream logic, the protagonists quote from concepts of neo-liberal elitism, and a mix of religious delusions and hallucinations of the apocalypse. The film begins in a sacral space, where Randi, a figure that references Ayn Rand, transforms a parapsychological medium into two digital clouds and sends them on a journey through a megalopolis in full growth. There they materialize as two bodies, which go by the names of Mr. Freedom and Ms. Independence.

Ingeborg and Adam are visionary hand surgeons bound by love, control, and irresistible fixations. She is compelled to steal objects; he longs to become one. When an accident brings the enigmatic Gaia into their lives, unexpected desires begin to take shape, unsettling the careful balance that has long defined their relationship.

Melhus slips into the role of the captain of a space ship, accompanied by a bold man and a boy in his communion suit. Threatened by a dark power and while stars are exploding in the background, all three perambulate in dialogues, cut from different science-fiction films.

In reference to the trailer of Psycho (USA 1960), narrated in German by Alfred Hitchcock himself, a gardener with a chainsaw guides us through the premises of the Herbert Gerisch Foundation in Schleswig-Holstein 51 years later. The visit ends, just like in the original trailer…, in a bathroom.

An exorcist ritual in a hotel room at night falling on Which a spasm-ridden medium predicts "sudden destruction".

Doors of Reception is a collage of door sounds from various science fiction films, creating an abstract sound painting of opening and closing colour fields. A recurring theme of the genre is passing through doors and being locked in or locked out on one side or the other, a condition that became the painful reality for many in times of the pandemic.