Magdalena Hausen: Frozen in Time

(MOURNING) AFFIRMATIONS is a dreamy short film that drifts through mental struggle, grief, and fractured memory, structured around the relentless voiceover of a self-help tape. Set in the gloomy landscape of Berlin, the film exposes the quiet violence of compulsory wellness, the demand to cope, to heal, to be “okay,” and explores what emerges when we stop performing stability and allow ourselves to unravel.

In the midst of the economic crisis, a persistent researcher delves into the eventful life and the unexplored work of preeminent Greek modernist poet, Nikos Karouzos. Through photos, archives, super 8s, videotapes and memories, he travels back in time accompanying the poet from the traumatic postwar history of Greece to the Academy of Stockholm and all the way to the 1921 rebellion of Kronstadt in order to find a lost film footage.

Independence Day in Athens. A girl lights a small fire and tells a small lie about a boy. Small racist lies easily get out of control. So do small racist fires.

Nefeli, a young Greek activist, creates a heartfelt diary film to say goodbye to her last relationship. By resignifying the last images and memories they shared, she sheds light on her way of understanding care, empathy, and ultimately, the need for collectiveness in a system that is collapsing.