A muscle remembers, even as it weakens. Movements, tensions and habits that we have trained ourselves to perform remain stored in our memory, even beyond the point of forgetting. Does memory, too? The films perceive memory as a muscle that can be trained and tensed. In hypnosis, in looking back on childhood, in smells, daydreams and forgotten spaces lie the stimuli to tense this muscle. Film is a storage space, cinema a gym for the memory… Perhaps we should go and work out more often. (Matti Ullrich)
WWII veteran, Ray, is a self-help guru in the afterlife, guiding us through breathing exercises and spiritual release. A former Nazi air force headquarters turned 90s daytime talk-show studio becomes the unlikely setting for collective healing of deep personal trauma.
… >>>Far from home, Mohammed Imrani, a young painter born and raised in Gaza, is facing the weight of distance, loss and helplessness by the physical destruction of his homeland. As an act of personal resistance, he begins sketching the streets, buildings, and everyday corners that hold deep personal meaning for him. Through the slow, tactile act of drawing on paper, the film suggests another kind of memory, more intimate and internal. A place you can return to at any moment, you close your eyes and you're there.
… >>>"Fish are nightly invaders of my sleep. Work consumes my dreams. Night gives way to another commute; adverts appear before me, their faces drawn tight. The day passes again, and at night, within the walls of my workplace, a fishmonger’s in London, dreams appear again, this time, a grief-stricken reverie, memories of my father."… >>>
A few years after fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, a boy returns home via a robotic dog, his mechanical avatar, which he controls from his room in Poland. Through this remote presence, he relives memories and reconnects with his past – a connection that now depends on a fragile video stream that could be cut off at any moment.… >>>
Ibrahim goes back to the village he once left, hoping to screen films. But as he wrestles with custom and bureaucracy, war ignites across Sudan, turning his search for a screen into a battle to stay alive.
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