US 2019, D: Tyler Taormina, C: Haley Bodell, Audrey Boos, Gabriella Herrera, 85′, OV, DCP

A US-American independent film somewhere between prom night comedy and surreal smalltown roundel: several kids are dressing up, some of them feel visibly comfortable, others timidly fear the upcoming event. They are all meeting at the local attraction, Monty’s Diner. This is not only a place for juicy sandwiches and music, but also for unreal dating rituals, which are going to confound the tranquil life of this proto-American village immensely. In the course of this, HAM ON RYE is less straightforward than it may sound: different settings, styles and moods keep changing again and again.

Until today, the endless night of Franco’s fascist regime has been throwing a shadow on to current politics in Europe. Against this background, Galician filmmaker Eloy Enciso examines his 2019 film LONGA NOITE (ENDLESS NIGHT) together with the participants at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig. Subsequently, different aspects will be illuminated based on the screening: the role of documentary and literary texts while developing the script, the systematic work with non-professional actors, the effects of an aesthetic minimalism as well as the possibilities and limits of a political parable in feature and documentary films.

Eloy Enciso studied documentary filmmaking at Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV in Cuba. His works were shown at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, at Museum of Modern Art New York (MoMA) and at Museum of the Moving Image. 2014, he received the Robert Gardner-scholarship from Harvard’s Film Study Center and participated in the Modern Mondays programme at MoMA. Enciso lives and works in Galicia.

supported by the embassy of Spain in Berlin

GER 1992, D: Helga Reidemeister, Doc, 114’, ger. OV, 16mm

In 1991, West German filmmaker Helga Reidemeister observed the Soviet regiment´s withdrawal from Meiningen in Thuringia over the period of eight months. During that year, the Soviet Union fell apart, thus posing the question to which country the young people were supposed to return to. As soldiers, they had to obey the hierarchy of military structures, while Soviet citizens had simultaneously shown their free will and reshaped their country. More than only being a historical document, RODINA MEANS HOME has become highly topical, as questions dealing with freedom of speech and self-censorship have to be posed again, considering political developments in Europe and Russia over the last decade.

SU/Latvia 1986, D: Juris Podnieks, Doc, 83’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

The documentary film IS IT EASY TO BE YOUNG? by Latvian filmmaker Juris Podnieks opened in Soviet cinemas in January 1987. He obviously had his finger on the pulse of the times – Podnieks interviews junkies, a young mother, convicts of a show trial and Afghanistan war veterans, all on eye level, and thus gives an insight into the daily struggles of the Soviet youth at the beginning of perestroika. This portrait of the generation testifies that as an individual you just cannot defeat the system. The film was a blockbuster and attracted 28 million spectators in the Soviet Union.

ES/FR/LU 2019, D: Oliver Laxe, D: Amador Arias, Benedicta Sánchez, 85’, Orig. with Eng. subs, DCP

Amador, an arsonist, has served his prison sentence and arrives back in his village, at the house of his mother Benedicta, their fields and animals. Framed by documentary scenes, the story gently unfolds, wrapped in the silences between mother and son. The repetition of rural rites and tasks, the concreteness of the bodies executing them, in turns with shots that fuse the characters with the landscape create an anthropological and timeless register. It communicates the intensity of a beautiful and hard land, metaphor of the protagonist’s cropped life and the depth of the unconditional love that protects him. Jury Prize in the section Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2019.

supported by the embassy of Spain in Berlin