Under Control

Filmmaker and author Helke Sander is an icon not only of the women's movement, but also of new German cinema. Historical upheavals sometimes only need a small impulse to suddenly set petrified conditions in motion. Helke Sander triggered such a landslide-like change in Germany many years ago.

The Hamburg friends Walter, Ricco and Floyd take each day as it comes between the estates of tower blocks and fast food restaurants. All three are in their early twenties and are dreaming of another life when Floyd suddenly takes a job on a freighter going to Singapore.

The Tara is a river on the outskirts of Taranto whose waters are believed to have healing properties; bathing there is a tradition for the inhabitants of the city. Starting from this bucolic place, Volker Sattel and Francesca Bertin take us on a journey through a territory where myths clash with reality and where so-called “progress” has taken a heavy toll on nature and society.

Unannounced, Aziza is once again standing in her room – internship, Portugal, everything canceled. But her room is occupied. Her mother, Trixi, has rented it out. Zach lives there now, a twenty-something from New Zealand, who came to Germany on a one-way ticket. Starting from this situation, the film develops an almost documentary-style portrait of a Kreuzberg ‘situation’: everything is readily available, time, people, summer, streets. And in the end a crash, the film itself: ‘for nothing’?

Self-important author Leon joins his best friend on a summer holiday near the Baltic Sea to complete his novel. When they arrive, they find their house is already occupied by a carefree woman who challenges Leon to open up. Meanwhile, forest wildfires rage around them and impending disaster looms.

Zohra has received a French residence permit for medical reasons, but when her health improves, she is supposed to leave the country. In the summer heat of her small town, dreams and everyday life merge into a shimmering narrative in the subjunctive.

The portrait of a house without supporting walls. A bold dome made of concrete, an open space – right in the middle of the bizarre rock formations of a rugged coast made of reddish granite. The house belonged to actress Monica Vitti and director Michelangelo Antonioni. The emptiness of the “cupola” and the deserted quality of the site are the starting point for speculating – seemingly at random, figures wind up in the image and enter the dome, and even today, the utopia of an alternative concept of living seems to float above its form.

A cinematic essay on Berlin that succeeds in capturing complex contexts in an almost casual way. The concise images, torn from the amorphous stream of time, form a collage about urbanity, masses and forlornness. In this way, the wonderfully composed film emancipates itself from its outwardly hackneyed theme and, conversely, gives the object of observation back some of its innocence.

MARX is Olaf Nicolai’s audacious 24-hour film created from a single shot of a sole statue: a vast bronze bust of Karl Marx, installed 50 years ago in Nicolai’s hometown of Chemnitz (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt). Shot in one take on the 2020 autumnal equinox, when day and night are equal lengths, and screened on the same date, MARX transforms this iconic figure into a kind of unnatural landscape, subject to constant change beneath the evolving light of night and day. Turning notions of time upside down and inside out, this 24-hour film will be screened at 17 worldwide venues all at once – like an artificial sun rotating around the Earth.

Berlin in the 3rd millenium. Rather by chance Kai Starel gets into the newly founded CC Institute "Carl Celler Culture", where hip creative minds buzz around in bleak spaces and think about company logos with animals. This brings up art, campaigns or something inbetween - and a liaison between the designer queen Rena Yazka (Sabine Timoteo) and Kai, who becomes her model.