Films by Paola Calvo

Germany 2021, 92 min
by Paola Calvo, Patrick Jasim

Luchadoras portrays the courageous female wrestlers of Ciudad Juárez, a city known for its high femicide rates. There is Mini Serinita who's biggest dream is to become a full time Luchadora and leave the factory work that disenfranchises so many women for good. Lady Candy who can see the US Border, where her daughters were taken, from her house but due to visa regulations can never cross it. And Baby Star, the young single mother who was a Lucha Libre Star at an early age and now makes her way to a come back. With Mexican passion they present a new image of what it means to be a woman in Mexico.

2016, 92 min
by Paola Calvo

We live in a society that wants to keep us away from pain. Aspirin, Paracetamol, Ibuprofen and Voltaren. Children´s playgrounds with rubber mats and bikes with cushioned seats. Please, take my body, wrap it up in cotton and don´t touch it! This film is about people who want to be touched and are not afraid of experimenting with pain. And, in doing so, have lots of sex.Felix Ruckert, dancer and choreographer, meets Mara Morgen, urban sustainability worker not to play with rubber mats but with whips, sex toys and sculptures of Buddha.So what does Dance, Yoga and S&M have in common? The Schwelle 7, not a basement but Felix´s sun bathed 500 m2 living room, an experimental place where real people play with real violence. While dancing, meditating, at sex parties and in S&M sessions."For her documentary Violently Happy, Paola Calvo accompanied the former dancer Felix Ruckert, whose choreographies coused irritation in the art business and who founded the Berlin project »Schwelle 7«. For experiments in BDSM, meditation and creative bodywork, this centre is a protected space for the participants and their notions of sexuality and pain. A courageous, insightful film that shows how liberating the testing of power structures and the acting out of sexual fantasies can be in the game of dominance and submission." (IFFF Dortmund|Köln)

Germany 2011, 55 min
by Steffen Köhn, Paola Calvo

Melilla is a small spanish exclave on the North-African coast. A piece of Europe in Africa, a remnant of colonialism. A huge 12 km long fence here seperates rich Europe from the global South in order to keep away migrants seeking their fortune in Europe. Our films tells the story of three migrants who have made it across the fence. One foot on European soil, they wait for their papers or their final deportation. Opara is from Nigeria. For two years, he lives in the CETI detention camp at the outskirts of the city. He doesn´t want to indemnify with his situation and fights for the respect of the spanish population.  Shahbaz from Pakistan lives in the camp for three years. Through his mobile phone, he organises a complex network of relationships to his family at home and to friends who already have reached Europe.  Ilham is from Morocco. Like many other Moroccans, she lives illegally in the city. For years, she fights for a legal status, lives on the street or stays occasionally with friends and does small jobs to survive.