JYOTI Film GmbH

Germany 2024, 82 min
by Farahnaz Sharifi

Farah, an Iranian woman is forced to migrate to her private planet to be free. She buys other people's memories in form of super 8mm films and records and archives her own, to create an alternative history of Iran. Best Director – Astra FF Jury statement: This film conveys the disruptive power of visual image, layering different forms of footage to tell the story of liberation. This filmmaker uses their personal journey to chart the tumultuous realities of their nation – both the harm that exists and the joy of an optimistic future, while also keeping the central role of women at its core. We, the jury, are very excited to award Farahnaz Sharifi for her film My Stolen Planet, the best director of the New Voices Competition.

France, Germany, Turkey 2021, 93 min
by Ahmet Necdet Cupur

In a village in the south east of Turkey, Mahmut wants to divorce his newly-wed wife. At the same time, his sister Zeynep enrols in an open high school and takes on a job in a factory. Against her father’s wishes, she wants to leave the village and ultimately go to university. The siblings’ demands become the center of conflict in their conservative family and community, who are not used to what Mahmut and Zeynep strive for. Intimately captured by their elder brother Ahmet Necdet Cupur, who left the village twenty years ago to pursue his studies, LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES is a story of clashes between generations, between the past and the present.

Germany 2020, 96 min
by Mayye Zayed

From a scrappy, vacant-lot training site in Alexandria, Egypt to the Olympic Games, 14 year-old Zebiba ("raisin" in Arabic) stands at the precipice between childhood and weightlifting champion – guided only by her dedicated yet relentless coach, Captain Ramadan, and her own competitive edge. Can she make the leap?