Alice Júnior

Director: Gil Baroni, Brazil, 2019

“So folks, you know me as Alice Júnior. I’m trans, hard to beat, and ready for whatever there is to be.” Fast-moving cuts set to pop samples and sound effects, a hint of glitz and and bagful of emojis. Alice Júnior is producing her latest YouTube video about the long-awaited first kiss. But when her father walks into her bedroom and announces in front of the camera that they will be leaving the vibrant Brazilian city of Recife and moving to a small, conservative town in the south, Alice has to prepare herself for the prudery and small-mindedness she will confront there… read more

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Director: Burhan Qurbani, Germany / Netherlands, 2020

Francis has survived his escape from North Africa. When he wakes up on a beach in the south of Europe, he is determined to live a regular, decent life from now on. But he winds up in present-day Berlin where a stateless person without a work permit is treated just as mercilessly as the labourer Franz Biberkopf in Döblin’s classic novel of German modernism. Francis initially resists an offer to deal drugs in Hasenheide park, but then comes under the influence of Reinhold, his neurotic, sex-addicted pal who takes him in. When Francis meets club owner Eva and, after several dramatic experiences, the escort girl Mieze, he feels he’s found something for the first time, something he’s never known before: a little bit of happiness… read more

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets

Director: Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross, USA, 2020

In their films, the brothers Bill and Turner Ross often train their camera on simple people leading far from glamorous lives. In this film they find their protagonists in the shadow of the glitzy world of Las Vegas, in a bar called Roaring 20s, which is on the brink of closure. Always observing, but nonetheless in the thick of it, they accompany the last 24 hours in and around the bar, enabling the viewer to immerse themselves in a microcosm that might well be found in many places in the world but that nobody likes to look at too closely… read more

Charlatan 

Director: Agnieszka Holland, Czech Republic/Ireland/Poland/Slovakia, 2020

Jan Mikolášek is the epitome of aplomb and solidarity. He is talented, sensitive, assertive and enigmatic. In his youth and when he is older, regardless of whether he is in private or public, he is a man of action, reason and intuition. A faith healer. Just one glance at the urine bottle is enough for him to know what ails his patient. With fame comes fortune, and this at a time when Czechoslovakia is a pawn in a game being played by the major power blocs. Protected and used by both the National Socialist and Communist regimes, he steps in wherever the system fails… read more

Die letzte Stadt (The Last City)

Director: Heinz Emigholz, Germany, 2020

An archaeologist and a weapons designer, who knew each other in a previous life as a filmmaker and a psychoanalyst, meet at an excavation site in the Negev desert and begin a conversation about love and war, which they continue in the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva. A series of encounters with alternating actors in different roles ensues, which leads the viewer through the cities of Athens, Berlin, Hong Kong and São Paulo… read more

Futur Drei (No Hard Feelings)

Director: Faraz Shariat, Germany, 2020

High-cut trousers, skin-tight t-shirt, short, peroxide-blond hair. On his birthday, Parvis celebrates by stealing a bottle from the bar at the club and dancing. The son of Iranian parents, he has established himself in the attic of his parents’ house in a quiet new housing estate in Lower Saxony and is busy trying out everything and anything from sex dates to raves. After getting caught shoplifting, he is sent to do community service in a refugee shelter where he falls in love with Amon, who has fled Iran with his sister Banafshe Arezu. The trio enjoys a summer of fierce partying till dawn, coloured by the realisation that, in their different ways, none of them is at home in Germany… read more

Kød & Blod (Wildland)

Director: Jeanette Nordahl, Denmark, 2020

“You’re too baked, sweetheart”, says Mads´ mother after greeting him with a kiss on the lips. In this family it is okay to bend the law, as long as you do it right. A twisted lesson the 17-year-old Ida is about to learn. Having recently lost her mother in a car accident, she has been taken in by her aunt and three cousins, whom she barely knows. Theirs is a loving home, but it soon transpires that the family, led by its caring but disciplinarian matriarch, engages in criminal activities. As boundaries keep on being pushed, Ida finds herself torn between her safety and the allure of her cousins’ ferocious behaviour. When the clan descends into conflict with the police, Ida has to decide what is more dear to her: the loyalty to her new family or her own life… read more

KOKON

Director: Leonie Krippendorff, Germany, 2020

“We’re like fish in a fish tank. We keep swimming round in circles, from one end of Kotti to the other and back again, until we eventually manage to jump out of the tank.” Berlin-Kreuzberg is Nora’s microcosm. Nora, the silent observer, is always tagging along: At parties, at school, at the pool, on rooftops and in apartments. Nora drifts around the monotonous housing blocks with her big sister and her friends, witnessing events that seem to cross-fade in the summer light… read more

Las mil y una (One in a Thousand)

Director: Clarisa Navas, Argentina / Germany, 2020

Clad in sportswear, 17-year-old Iris dribbles her basketball through the wide courtyards of her social housing estate somewhere in Argentina. She has been expelled from school and spends the warm days and nights with her two best friends – her cousins – in cramped rooms, fiddling with her mobile phone, or on the empty streets of the town. While playing hide-and-seek, the boys disappear with other boys, they strip off in front of the webcam and write passionate texts in which they rail against a heteronormative society. There is a deceptive lightness in the air and the promise that, when it comes to love and sex, anything is possible. When cool and selfconfident Renata enters the scene, Iris is fascinated, and it is not long before they begin flirting. But on the estate, the rumours about Renata’s past are getting louder and louder… read more

Meu nome é Bagdá (My name is Baghdad)

Director: Caru Alves de Souza, Brazil, 2020

“You guys are awful. You don’t even know the girl and the first thing you say is: ‘She’s fucking hot.’ She’s probably doing a whole lot of cool things you don’t even know.” Rolling through São Paulo on her skateboard, Baghdad wears her hair short, her trousers pulled up high, and her sweater tucked into the waistband. Baghdad is cool; she is a girl who respects whom she wants to respect – everyone else might find wet clumps of toilet paper hurled their way. She lives in a house of strong-willed, emancipated women and spends her days at the skatepark with a group of guys who like to hang around shirtless, playing cards and plucking their chest hair… read more

Minyan

Director: Eric Steel, USA, 2020

For a Jewish prayer community or “minyan” to be able to hold a service, it must consist of at least ten practising Jews. David, who was born into a Russian immigrant family, is 17 years old and regularly helps out at minyans in Brighton Beach, a district of New York that is characterised by Jewish life. His father, a former boxing coach, his mother and his beloved grandfather all take this for granted. But David, who is just starting to tentatively explore life in the East Village gay scene, gradually begins to question the strict rules of his community and makes friends with two elderly gay Jews. At the same time, David’s sexual awakening cannot help but be affected by the emergence of HIV and AIDS… read more

Rizi (Days)

Director: Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan, 2019

Kang lives alone in a big house. Through a glass façade, he looks out onto the treetops lashed by wind and rain. He feels a strange pain of unknown origin which he can hardly bear and which grips his whole body. Non lives in a small apartment in Bangkok where he methodically prepares traditional dishes from his native village. When Kang meets Non in a hotel room, the two men share each other’s loneliness… read more

Schwesterlein (My Little Sister)

Director: Stéphanie Chuat, Veronique Reymond, Switzerland, 2020

Lisa has given up her ambitions as a playwright in Berlin and moved to Switzerland with her children and husband, who runs an international school there. When her twin brother Sven, a star actor at Berlin’s Schaubühne theatre, falls ill with leukaemia, Lisa returns to the German capital. His hopes of getting back on the stage give Sven the strength he needs to fight the disease. But when his condition deteriorates and his mother, also an actor, proves unreliable, Lisa takes the reins and whisks her brother back to Switzerland. She hopes that new treatments, family life and mountain air will work a miracle… read more

Shirley

Director: Josephine Decker, USA, 2020

Two imposing personalities are at the centre of this intensely atmospheric drama: horror writer Shirley Jackson and her husband Stanley Hyman, a literary critic and college professor. When young graduate student Fred Nemser and his pregnant wife Rose move in with the Hymans in the autumn of 1964, they soon find themselves under the magnetic spell of their brilliant and proudly unconventional hosts. But Shirley’s need to nurture her writing is a ravenous beast that threatens to devour Fred and Rose’s own relationship… read more

Suk Suk

Director: Ray Yeung, Hongkong / China, 2019

With practised movements, Hong Kong taxi driver Pak gets ready, polishes the traditional bright red paint of his car to a high shine and picks up his granddaughter from school. After years of driving a cab to support his family, he has now come to the end of his career, but he refuses to fully quit his job. In search of anonymous sex, he meets Hoi, who is retired, divorced and also a grandfather. After a first fleeting encounter, they begin to spend time together more often. But just one late-night text message threatens to throw their everyday lives off balance. In a bathhouse, they find a place for tender moments of intimacy… read more

The Twentieth Century

Director: Matthew Rankin, Canada, 2019

Toronto, 1899. The young William Lyon Mackenzie King is running for the office of prime minister. The satirical and anarchic fantasy biopic The Twentieth Century explores the tribulations of the young politician, who would go on to become a long-serving prime minister of Canada. Serious Oedipal conflicts, an obsession with worn shoes and anti-masturbation therapies make it difficult for the young Mackenzie King to pursue his calling. Driven on by his authoritarian mother, he stumbles through a claustrophobic world in the grip of a bitter winter in search of love… read more

Vento Seco (Dry Wind)

Director: Daniel Nolasco, Brazil, 2020

The area around Catalan in Brazil’s state of Goiás is dry, very dry. Sandro’s life here is somewhat monotonous. He works in a fertiliser factory, goes swimming and spends his evenings doing jigsaw puzzles of landscapes. Sandro has a purely sexual relationship with his colleague Ricardo. He always seems to be a bit of an outsider, not comfortable in his own skin, not really belonging. When Maicon, a man straight out of a Tom-of-Finland illustration, shows up in their small town and flirts with Ricardo, Sandro’s burgeoning feelings of jealousy set a change in motion… read more