Films by Benedikt Schiefer

Ukraine, France, Germany 2023, 72 min
by Olga Chernykh

Olga Chernykh spent her childhood in Donetsk in the 1990s, before moving with her parents to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Her grandma stayed in the Donbas region, large parts of which were occupied by pro-Russian rebels in 2014. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the ensuing war, only increased the sense of distance between Chernykh and her grandmother.A Picture to Remember is an essay-style account of the war from the perspective of three generations of women. There are frequent video calls between Chernykh, her mother (a pathologist working above a morgue, where it feels surprisingly safe during bomb attacks) and her grandmother. Recordings of their conversations are interspersed with photos and videos from the family archive, and news reports, as well as images of the parasites Chernykh’s mother observes with a microscope. The result is a kaleidoscopic and personal film. Traveling fluidly through time, it connects the current violence in Donbas with the destruction there during the Second World War—as related by Chernykh’s grandmother. A sense of absence and loss prevails throughout. [36 IDFA]

Brasil, France, Germany 2021, 99 min
by Karim Aïnouz

Algerien par accident flirts between the fiction and the documentary, even the auto-fiction. Karim Aïnouz, the Brazilian director, by using his personal background, invites the audience to follow/discover an incredible journey through space and time, with an original and usually unknown prism/aspect: The strong bound between Algeria and Brazil, two countries with political and revolutionary strikes that moulded their evolution.With the support of: ANCINE, ARTE FRANCE - LA LUCARNE, CNC, PROCIREP ANGOA, SANAD, Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Literary Colloquium as part of the Grenzgänger funding programme, Fundação Paradiso

Germany, France, Brasil 2018, 97 min
by Karim Aïnouz

Berlin's historic defunct Tempelhof Airport remains a place of arrivals and departures. Today its massive hangars are used as Germany's largest emergency shelter for asylum seekers, like 18-year-old Syrian refugee Ibrahim. As Ibrahim adjusts to his transitory daily life of social services interviews, German lessons and medical exams, he tries to cope with homesickness and the anxiety of whether or not he will gain residency or be deported. (LUXBOX)A documentary about Berlin‘s former airport Tempelhof, opened in 1923 as one of the world‘s biggest building complexes in the 3rd Reich. Since then more than 30 million arrivals and departures have been counted. It was closed 10 years ago. But up until now it remains a place of departures an arrivals.A film about those Berliners who come here to escape from their daily lives and those refugees who came here to finally arrive somewhere. (LupaFilm)