Editing
In 1988 the largest demonstrations and strikes ever in the history of the Soviet Union took place in Armenia. The immediate cause for it was the demand of Nagorno Karabakh, an autonomous area in Azerbaijan, to be an administratively accounted Armenian territory.
100 years of family and contemporary history, told through the lives of women from four generations, beginning in 1914, when the director’s grandmother emigrated from Berlin to Hungary. This richly illustrated chronicle, assembled from private and historical images, traces the evolution of a German-Jewish family into Hungarian Catholics, from the middle class to life under socialism, and finally to a return to traditions led by the director’s daughter.
After an assassination attempt, a mannequin ends up by chance with a castle owner who, due to an allergy, is confined to a room in the tower, where she collects commercials from around the world via video. Mysterious murders and eerie figures make it difficult for the young woman to distinguish between reality and dreams.
Lars Barthel asks his Jamaican wife Antoinette why she often wears hair extensions. This personal curiosity leads Lars and his film to some complex and politically-charged questions. What is the relationship between hair and racism? And where do the hair extensions actually come from?
Six directors, one film: in episodes, they recall their experiences at the end of the GDR and the fate of a family under National Socialism. They talk about making films despite censorship, about the search for opportunities. They tell of losses, of leaving, of staying and of love in exile. A film about the longing for home and the endurance of friendships.
Feisal, 30, was born in South Africa to an Indian-Malaysian father and a mother of both Scottish and Black African descent; he is a huge fan of the mega-pop star Michael Jackson. Since the mid-1980s, he has been making ends meet in West Berlin with dance gigs and other jobs, and his big break came when, following Michael Jackson’s fifth facial surgery, he was in demand as the singer’s lookalike.
Having just arrived in Germany, the filmmaker’s narrative voice searches for the meaning of life.
They were heroes of a special kind. They came from the steppes, the sons of farmers, of factory floor women. Salt-of-the-earth, strapping young men, model husbands, who believed in communism with all their hearts. Bright futures lay ahead of them. In the name of the Inter-cosmos Program they were about to conquer space. The second they touched down, they were treated like pop stars and worshiped as heroes. And today? What do the heroes of socialism do without socialism?
