Matilda Mester

Borrowing its title from an experimental text by Walter Benjamin. Many years ago, the cities by the river were gripped by a contagion. Things started to change and everything slowly became something else. It was not clear if transformation was a symptom of the disease or a way to escape it. The contagion touched everything and everyone: animals and plants, stones and soil, men, women and children, their thoughts, their dreams, their memories. An old woman once told me how all memories turn into trees, I could hardly make out what she was saying. She said she could hear the trees singing: To be a body, to be any body. After the years of contagion ended, the cities appeared untouched. One had to look hard to see the traces of the previous time. If one could listen to the trees, what would they say? A way out, a way out?

A pain management specialist in a Berlin hospital laments how difficult it is to see if black skin has turned blue. The patient, 15­year­ old Arlette, doesn’t understand German. Her knee was injured in the war, and unknown wealthy Germans have helped pay for her trip to have surgery in Europe. The camera follows Arlette on her journey, from her worried family in Central African Republic to the desolate rooms of the hospital and the rehabilitation centre. The girl’s gaze is captivating but impenetrable, and the easily bored teenager surrounded by adult strangers is only cheered up by an interpreter who knows her mother tongue. The story takes a gloomier turn when it transpires that rebel forces have taken up arms in Arlette’s home country.

"House in the Lake" takes a look on an oppressive and intimate family. We follow the holidays in their remote summer house, the every day and the fragile normality, where the three kids absorb and partially channels the emotional energies of their parents.

An essayistic architecture documentary dwelling on modern-day Ukraine, Constructivism, and the Soviet Revolution.

It is autumn in the small Danish port of Nakskov. The last year of high school lies before Sara and her friends. They talk about the future, about the wish to leave to a bigger city. Karen just moved to the island to work as a teacher at the school. During class, Sara becomes fascinated.

An affectionate, locally rooted portrait of the Danish town of Nakskov as a miniature model in the ratio of 1:50. The locals share their stories of class struggle over beers in the lunch break.

A dreamy big city atmosphere from a haven in the middle of Berlin, where a motley community of eccentric people have created their own world.