What is supposedly ugly awakens our fear – most of all, the fear to be regarded as ugly ourselves. This is a concern also haunting the 14-year-old Marija. She has been walking with a limp ever since she was a child and is marked as an outcast in her slowly decaying hometown in Lithuania. One day, she decides to try her luck at a model school where, for the first time in her life, she’s been told that she possesses some kind of beauty and (in extension) value. But the mean comments of the other girls gnaw at her. Marija gets slowly eaten up by the high expectations propagated at the institution. Together with her friend, Kristina, she gets pulled into a poisonous cycle based on beauty ideals, self-doubt and radical decisions. Sometimes, the most toxic relationship is the one we have with ourselves...

More than three years ago, Russia invaded and started a war on Ukraine. How do you live with the constant fear of attacks? Ukrainian director Kateryna Gornostai looks at one aspect of everyday life under the dictates of war: schools in areas close to the front, which try to maintain continuous service despite bombed-out buildings and constant alarms, and thus also a piece of normality. Gornostai has courageously created her film as a consistent documentary of a kind rarely seen today: The camera only observes, there are no protagonists, no interviews, no re-enacted scenes.

It's pretty monotonous work that Aurora has to do day after day at the dispatch warehouse. The working conditions are not inhumane, but they are bleak for the young woman from Portugal who works in Scotland. Her social life in an accommodation centre for migrant workers, whose rent she can barely afford due to her precarious job, is also dull. At a job interview, for which she sacrifices her few free hours, she suddenly realises how work has taken possession of her and has degraded her to a robot. On Falling is a precisely observed study of alienation and isolation that grows into kafkaesque dimensions with its subtle tones.

Dead Mail is a term that describes letters without an address or that can’t be delivered for other reasons. Such a letter finds itself on a postal worker’s desk in the Midwest of the United States - bloodstained. It contains a cry for help from a synthesizer engineer taken hostage by a psychopath who will stop at nothing…

Dead Mail is a journey to the beginnings of electronic music and a noir thriller about a strange business relationship between two outcasts that becomes increasingly violent. With its grainy and noisy images, this film feels like it was ripped from the early 1980s and sent to us.

How can we prepare for death if we know it’s coming closer? How to handle the fear of the uncertain, of the void? And how to make such a solitary act a more gentle one? When Isabel is forced to reconnect with her terminally ill and estranged ex-husband, she learns to let go of the past and finds ways to tame his growing fears. As days go by and life fades, faint glimmers of light make the weight of the inevitable a bit more bearable. Glimmers shines most when it captures these fleeting, albeit significant moments. Without excessive dramatism, the film shows how simply being together is the most honest, most pure, most effective way of combating fear.

The jockey has begun to lose all his races. It’s time to kill him. Or perhaps he can have one last chance to prove his worth. After all, the goose may still lay a few more golden eggs. Set in the heightened reality of Argentinian horse racing mafia, Kill the Jockey is a flickering, shape-shifting film that moves freely from gangster movie to an exploration of gender and identity. Anchored by an unforgettable performance by Nahuel Pérez Biscayart and with a soundtrack that will make you want to get up off your seats, the film ratifies Luis Ortega as one of the most interesting voices to follow in world cinema today.

It’s not easy being nineteen. For Leonardo, it means moving from one city to another, then to another, from one university to another, then to another, wondering what the point of everything is. Caught in a seemingly eternal pursuit to escape adulthood, the young man at the center of Giovanni Tortorici’s debut feature is as shape-shifting and unpredictable as the film he is in. The director’s assured eye captures the multiple, often contradictory, states of being of Leonardo with a camera that gracefully shifts from naturalism to Nouvelle Vague-esque experimentation, crafting a wholly original coming-of-age story that defies all conventions of the genre.

The world is in crisis yet again. The leaders of the G-7 countries meet up in the fictitious Dankerode, somewhere in the hinterland of Saxony-Anhalt, to give a collective statement. However, this turns out to be a rather complicated matter, not only because of differing opinions, but also because the whole staff suddenly goes missing and a few bog bodies turn up next door – and zombies appear in front of the venue. This is political satire in a serious state of the world: Cate Blanchett acts as the German chancellor, Charles Dance as the chronically tired American president and Dennis Ménochet mimes the French president with morbid tendencies.

The wide, open plains of the Colombian desert fill up the screen, with a woman walking by herself, barely visible at first sight. Living a mostly isolated life, Georgina has weathered various trials and tribulations, hinted at by the many wrinkles covering her face. She has not, however, lost an ounce of her sweetness, concealed by the strength she needs to show to fight for her place in a society that has taken decades to respect her as a transgender woman, and a Kafkian bureaucracy that insists on denying her the right to self-affirmation. The story of a Wayuu woman who has lost fear for she has nothing left to lose, and is left wondering, “are there others like me?”.

Marajo, where the Amazon flows into the sea, is where thirteen-year-old Marcielle lives with her family. She goes to school, plays with her siblings, helps out her parents - and is slowly growing up. But she senses that her beloved home is increasingly turning into a prison. An invisible burden, which generations of women seem to carry, now rests on her too. Marcielle wants to leave: The boats passing by on the river promise freedom in a new world. But at what price? Ready to change her fate, she decides to fight back against the violent system that rules her family and the women in her community.

The Canadian influencer Ziggy can hardly believe her luck: She has just signed an extremely lucrative advertising contract with the seed and fertilizer company Nature's Oath. Shortly afterwards, however, she has to return from the big city world to her old home, a Mohawk reservation. A non-relaxing holiday awaits them in her childhood home: Ziggy has no idea that an old secret is hidden there, which the very company that hired her is after.

Seeds is an exciting mixture of thriller and comedy. The film takes a dark-humoured but warmhearted look at the First Nations' struggle for autonomy in a time of hyper-individualism and unleashed mega-corporations.

A locust is a solitary insect that can easily go unnoticed, its branch-like body camouflaged by any small shrub. When under stress, though, it swiftly changes its patterns of behaviour, becoming gregarious, and turning into an aggressive plague. A fitting metaphor for Zhong-Han, an unassuming mute young guy working as a waiter by day and a gang member at night. When his two lives collide, Locust shines the most. KEFF’s directorial debut is a dark, sleek neo-noir set in the streets of Taipei, in the midst of the Hong Kong protests, with an eye on the tensions arising from a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and the tolls it takes on average working people.

In the cold steppes of Mongolia, first-time director Jiang Xiaoxuan stumbled upon the story of a man caught between his life as a herdsman in the countryside and his life as a showsman in the city, performing an idyllic and entertaining version of a herdsman to foreign audiences. For her debut film, Jiang built a fictional story based on the man’s life, and persuaded him to interpret the film version of himself, with no prior acting experience. What emerged was a modern, sensible and honest Western, a story about the fear of a man and a community losing grip on their livelihoods and trying to navigate an ever more uncertain world seeping in from the outside.

The twins Grace and Gilbert have been inseparable and quite an exceptional pair since their childhood. When both get sent to different parts of Australia after their father’s death, it heavily affects Grace. In fear of the world, she decides to withdraw, to shrink into her snail shell, where she finds herself surrounded by the small animals that ornament her modest home. But after the sudden death of her best friend, she once again finds her world turned upside down; here, a journey through her own memories begins. She follows the tragic and comic intertwinings of life, spread out like glittering slime traces from the past and leading her towards a present where a glimmer of hope awaits her.

At first glance, businesswoman Xia You seems to lead a carefree life. But her partner abuses her. While searching for concert tickets, she meets and falls in love with street vendor Xu Zitai. When she unexpectedly encounters him again in another city, she leaves her old life behind and follows the terminally ill Xu in the final months of his life, working as a noodle seller and delivery courier. Death and the fear of dying loom like a Democles sword over one of the most moving love stories in recent years. At the same time Bound in Heaven offers deep insight into contemporary China: the contrast between urban and rural life, the clash of modernity and tradition, and the often-unspoken issue of domestic violence.

Orsolya feels guilty. During an eviction that falls under her responsibility, an illegal house guest strangulated himself whilst she was taking a coffee break. The event hits the bailiff hard as she meant to carry out the eviction as humanely as possible. She can hardly bear the feelings of guilt. During her ordeal, she visits a colleague, her mother, her priest and a mechanical T-Rex to find reassurance, forgiveness, distraction and redemption. Radu Jude's brilliantly written screenplay opens up an uncomfortable discourse in our righteous world: Who is to blame for systematic crimes and what use is our compassion to the victims?

In his mountain village in the west of Tunisia, the 13-year-old Ashraf lives a life marked by restrictions. Because he must help his mother at home, he cannot go to school. He and the other villagers live in constant fear of governmental authority such as hostile rebel groups operating in the mountains. One day, when Ashraf and his cousin Nizar direct their herd of goats to a watering place, a group of Jihadists kills his cousin and forces Ashraf to report his cousin’s death to the villagers. The family receives no support from the local police, so they decide to head out by themselves to recover the body of the dead cousin. Based on true events.

It’s 1978, the dictatorial regime in Chile is 5 years in and a government worker like Raúl, charged with making architectural models in a bureaucratic office, has quietly lived an apolitical life. But there is no door left untouched by an invasive dictatorship meddling in all citizens’ affairs, and Raúl will soon start listening, ever so closely, to the rumblings coming from the house next door. Starting off like a political thriller before taking a deep dive into the psychological horrors in the mind of its protagonist, A Yard of Jackals is a portrait of paranoia and vulnerability, and of the trappings of individual and collective guilt.

Everything ends and even a Bond has to retire. His name is Diman, John Diman. The elderly Secret Service agent spends his time in a luxurious beach hotel with long walks and his favourite drink. But when a mysterious woman disappears in the room next door, his instincts awaken and he sets off on one last mission. Fragments of past heroic deeds break up his perception of reality with brilliant clarity. Reflection in a Dead Diamond employs the visual ecstasy of James Bond intros and combines these with a subtle critique of the macho heroes of old.

Fear can be both a driving force and a burden. The international short film programme ANGST highlights directors and screenwriters who are fearless in the creation of their works. Some of them confront fear within themselves, in a time when fear and oppression are once again profoundly present worldwide.

Lesego works as a banker, at least so far: financial supervision is after her and shut down all of her accounts. She has supposedly participated in a risky investment business that cost thousands of miner widows their pension. Hence Lesego, in her mid thirties, reluctantly has to go back to living with her mother Doris in the South African small town Thorntree. Her return stirs up not only her mother’s life. Somewhere between drama and thriller, the director Karabo Lediga illustrates a generational conflict between one that grew up and lived in apartheid and the other, younger one, that was raised in a more liberal society and is drawn to the temptations of the big business.

New Year's shows are pre-produced. So as early as December 1989, Romanian television is working on a show to thank dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu for another successful year. There's just one problem: the lead actress has defected to the West. The new directors promptly chose the actress Florina as her replacement. But with the impending uprising against the regime already brewing in the streets, Florina tries to escape the assignment by any means necessary. At the heart of this tragic comedy is the story of a show that was never broadcast. The New Year That Never Came recreates the last days of the Ceausescu dictatorship through complex interplay of multiple perspectives and characters.

It is a hot summer in Corsica, and the summer breaks in France are long. To her surprise, young Lesia is brought to a house where her father is secretly residing with his followers. A situation she can hardly read: who are these men and what do they want? It is 1995, and in Corsica not only the separatists are firing bombs - in a similar fashion, the gangs of organized crime, all structured in a patriarchal manner, fight against one another. The noose around their necks tightens, as the clan around the father becomes more and more endangered. The world of male violence from the point of view of a young woman: will she follow the bloody path her father left behind?

A nearing lunar eclipse, the prophesied birth of the antichrist, and the disappearance of several girls unsettles the citizens of Bogotá in the late 90s. Thirteen-year-old Mila is caught in the midst of this renewed religious frenzy and is unnerved by her overbearing stepfather’s lingering stares. Mila starts rebelling against her mother’s overprotectiveness by escaping at night into the darkness of the Columbian forest. Director Camila Beltrán observes Mila’s fight for freedom with a lot of empathy and accompanies the teenage heroine as she discovers strange things about herself and her changing body.

In the world of experimental and avant garde film, fear has many faces. A short film selection by DFF film theatre pursues these different facets with films from 1913 all the way to the 2000’s: Presented will be, among others, a proto-horror film by Lois Weber from the early cinema, subversive debates with visual conventions by Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet and a film by Peter Tscherkassy, that edits film material and defamiliarizes it. Afterwards, Marie Dressler and Polly moran dazzle in a crime comedy.

With works by Matthias Müller, Christoph Girardet, Lois Weber, William Watson and Peter Tscherkassky and more

The selection was compiled by Andreas Beilharz, Gunter Deller, Karola Gramann, Heide Schlüpmann and Björn Schmitt.