SY/LB 2015, D: Sara Fattahi, Doc, 98’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

Bright daylight penetrates into the darkened rooms oft he spacious city apartment only here and there. A shadowy microcosm of war-torn Damascus, atmospherically captured by the camera, is the setting for a drama affecting society as a whole as well as private life. Three women of three different generations live here: grandmother, mother and Sara, the filmmaker, who has created an experimental “home movie“ with COMA. While the war is raging outside – constantly conveyed by the running television or radio – the family members fight battles with themselves but also with one another.

AT/SY/LB 2018, D: Sara Fattahi, C: Raja, Heba, Jaschka, Doc, 95’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

Enriched with fictional elements, this documentary film portrays three women and her inner “states of war“. One of them left Damascus, another one is still there: As a kind of parallel countermovement we observe an older woman arraging the room for an ever absentee, as if he could return anytime. Both of the women portrayed have experienced loss, both a spatial and an inner isolation are palpable. While the latter one looks out the window of her apartment, we can hear the detonation of bombs in the distance. In Vienna finally, the camera follows a third woman whose identity remains enigmatic.

UK/TH 2019, D: Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong, C: Siraphun Wattanajinda, Arak Amornsupasiri, Primrin Puarat, 93’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

According to the Buddhist calendar, 2562 is they year of the films’ making, 2019. KRABI, 2562, the first collaborative work of Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers, explores landscapes, mythology and stories of the local community of Krabi, a tourist hotspot in southern Thailand. We encounter a film crew shooting a quirky commercial and learn of a phallic fertility shrine assisting one’s wish for a child. Seamlessly shifting between documentary and fictional modes, the question of what is real is of minor importance: in the end, all is cinema. A playful, shimmering, quicksilverish séance.

PT 2020, D: Catarina Vasconcelos, C: Manuel Rosa, João Móra, Ana Vasconcelos, Henrique Vasconcelos, Doc, 101’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

Beatriz Vasconcelos raised six children in the mid-20th-century, while her husband Henrique spent most of his time at sea. After her death, she started living on within her family: in photos, memories, fantasies. One of them was that of a tree imagined by her infantile granddaughter Catarina. Grown up and confronted with the experience of losing her own mother, Catarina creates – with a small budget and her relatives acting – an intimate elegy full of precisely arranged enactments, enriched with the colours, sounds and lights of the seas and forests of Portugal.

LS/ZA/IT 2019, D: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, C: Mary Twala Mlongo, Jerry Mofokeng Wa

Mantoa, a 80 year old widow, learns that her last son has just died in a mine accident. She starts planning her funeral, preparing for her own death. But death does not come. Instead, there is news that the village shall be resettled, because the valley is threatened by a flood. Based on this setting, the film conceives a darkly sparkling parable about grief, neo-colonialism and collective resistance. Displaying traces of Brecht’s Epic theatre and aesthetics of Pedro Costa’s films, it is a defiant, otherworldly threnody you will not forget for a long time.