The Humanitarians

On the last day of the year, a dispirited work-at-home phone interpreter has her moribund life turned upside down when she answers an unexpected emergency call.

A hearse cruises the streets of Medellín, while a young director tells his story in this city marked by conflicts, violence and paradoxes. He remembers his childhood and the discovery of his sexuality.

The director turns the diary of his sexual adventures into a serial narrative in the style of “One Thousand and One Nights”. This polyamorously-minded queer musical applies the same playful approach to folk tales as it does to Egyptian pop music.

The film is set in a modern day 'Berlin Republic' liberated from all irrelevancies. It's about artistic production, the creative industries and above all film and cinema - a political manifesto in feature film format. It centres on Asta, tough, hardened by theory and immaculately styled right down to the emblems on her leather jacket, with current art scene jargon flowing elegantly from her lips.

Phoebe Phaidon works as a climatologist at an institute of cybernetics which is about to be shut down. So there has to be a solution in the form of a successful evaluation. The strategy consultants now work against the student movement in a virtual reality. Turmoils start.

“If the ghosts can visit our time, we can visit theirs”. This freewheeling tour of German history of the 20th and 21st centuries follows a postmodern artist back to her East German village birthplace – where a discovered skeleton opens up mysteries both personal and political.