Those Next to Us

Vera Kohn, a Jewish woman of German descent born in Prague in 1912, fled from Czechoslovakia to Latin America in 1939, where she built a new life for herself as a theater actress in Quito, Ecuador. The trauma of losing home stayed with her forever. A severe mental breakdown changed her life. She spent three years with German Gestalt therapist Karlfried Graf Duerckheim in the Black Forest where she was introduced to his 'Initial Therapy'. Cured, she returned to Ecuador and became the country's most influential psychotherapist. The documentary essay tells the story of various encounters between the Austrian filmmaker whose grandfather was an SS soldier and the remarkable 98-year-old Jewish psychologist.

Mexico City, August 31st. It was Victoria Sala's birthday. Her mother Consuelo was waiting for her daughter to come home to celebrate. Never could she imagine that this day would change her life forever.

Chon, a member of the Native Mexican Wirrárika community, tells the story of his cousin Faustino, son of the shaman of an indigenous settlement in the mountains of Nayarit called La Mora. In the 1980s Faustino had proclaimed himself to be god and the community´s spiritual leader, which then had been accepted by his father and the inhabitants. Together with an armed group he menaced and terrorized other neighboring villages. When Chon witnessed his cousin kill various members of their own community, he escaped La Mora and reported the incidents to the police.

Martin and Daniel are inseparable friends. One is a bureaucrat who seeks to overcome every day, even though deep down he knows he will never leave his office desk. The other is a womanizer unstable without goals, but with a mathematical gift.