A film by Anne Linsel

2009 - Germany - Documentary - 1.85 DCP - 89 min.

The dance performance „Kontakthof“ bears the unmistakable signature of Pina Bausch: it deals with forms of human contact, the encounters between the sexes, and the search for love and tenderness with all the attendant anxieties, yearnings and doubts. It is about feelings, which pose a big challenge, particularly for young people. For almost a year teenagers from over eleven schools in Wuppertal went on an emotional journey. Every Saturday, 40 students, aged between 14 to 18 years, rehearsed under the direction of the Bausch-dancers Jo-Ann Endicott and Bénédicte Billiet and under the intense supervision of Pina Bausch herself. The film „Dancing Dreams“ by Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann accompanies the rehearsal process culminating in the opening night. We watch the teenagers making their first, still clumsy attempts to transform the subjects of the dance performance into motion and choreography and to develop an own, individual body expression. They discover themselves in a process, which leads great personal growth. Gentle and shy but also aggressive contacts condensate to individual experiences that many of the teenagers encounter for the first time on stage. Pina Bausch has always encouraged the young dancers „to be themselves.“ It is behind their own movements, fears, feelings and desires that their personal „Dancing Dreams“ become visible. At the end each of them has not only grown up, but above all has become more self-confident, independent and more sceptical facing prejudices. Employing an unusual adjacency, the film introduces the young protagonists in sensitive ways, it culminates in drawing a portrait of an entire generation. Pina Bausch died on June 30th, 2009. „Dancing Dreams – teenagers perform „Kontakthof“ by Pina Bausch“ shows the last motion pictures and the last interview with the world-famous dancer and choreographer.

A film by Semih Kaplanoglu

2019 - Turkey - Drama - 1.85 - 135 min.

Asli, a young mother who is trying to find a nanny to get back to work, finally meets young Gulnihal. Gulnihal is also a mother. With Gulnihal coming into her life, Asli faces her secrets which she has been avoiding herself.

A film by Kristina Lindström & Kristian Petri

2021 - Sweden - Documentary - 2.39 - 93 min.

In 1970, filmmaker Luchino Visconti travelled throughout Europe looking for the perfect boy to personify absolute beauty in his adaptation for the screen of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. In Stockholm, he discovered Björn Andrésen, a shy 15-year-old teenager whom he brought to international fame overnight and led to spend a short but intense part of his turbulent youth between the Lido in Venice, London, the Cannes Film Festival and the so distant Japan. Fifty years after the premiere of Death in Venice, Björn takes us on a remarkable journey made of personal memories, cinema history, stardust and tragic events in what could be Bjorn’s last attempt for him to finally get his life back on track.