2nd Blue Danube Film Festival

Jeremy, a cab driver, is from Africa and a stranger in this land. And Marcel is his passenger and on drugs. A conversation unravels and gets out of hand. Because Jeremy can’t understand, that sometimes strangers remain strangers, even within the confinements of a cab. Director - Alexander Reinberg, Paul Porenta

Athens, today. Seventeen-year-old Aria, who is working at Jimmy’s local kebab place is waiting for a driving lesson with her father. When he nally arrives, it is not to go for a drive; on the contrary, he con des in her the care of a young Chinese immigrant who speaks neither Greek nor English.

During a professional conference in Prague, two simultanous interpreters in the Hungarian booth realize that only one person is listening to them.

A weekend together out in nature — father and son alone, with a tent and beer, talking about men’s business. What at first seems to be a harmless trip that Max undertakes with his father slowly turns into an unexpected horror trip in which the regained bond between the two is truly put to the test.

ELYSIA is the story of a young girl who spends one day in the afterlife. As she is led through the ethereal Maine countryside by a family of fantastical beasts she finds music, poetry, and darkness lurking around every corner. But in order to come to peace, Elysia will need to reunite with her mother before the day is over.

A Swedish couple is on a wellness trip in the Austrian mountains, but after an argument, Aron's girlfriend leaves, and slams the door behind her. Now, Aron is looking for his girlfriend but can't find her anywhere. He dives into the bizarre world of the alpine wellness resort and drifts along until the question arises if Aron is looking for his girlfriend or really himself.

Gijs (17) sails together with his father, as an internship, from the Netherlands to Wallonia. It was a long time ago that father and son were dependent on each other. On the deck, their communication flows naturally, but words are not as easily found in their personal conversations. Sometimes Gijs feels the need to dress as a woman in other words he is a crossdresser. He hides this part of himself, as he is afraid of what others might think.

A woman gives voice to Annie Ernaux The years's text, a few collected fragments on the shores of a timeless Sardinia. Neither the words, nor the images, drawn from the family films, are expected to complete the narration of her story: places from her past. The mountains on the cost, a seascape, gardens, terraces, rooms of an apartment emerge like reflections of a fragmented and ever-changing memory, uncovered by a new light. The details in each gesture, in each face, of scenes of a life lived amongst family, reassembled and freed from their original context, become expressive elements of a confession that is both personal discovery and collective narration.

Santa is capitalist. He brings toys to the rich kids and swea shirts to the poor ones. Nikos, 5 years old.

A village far away in time and land. Nearby, in a forest thought to be haunted, a child falls into a pit. His grandfather, an old and nearly blind shepherd, tries to convince the villagers to go rescue him, facing the darkness of the night and their fears…

Sara (a 24-year-old girl) is supposed to babysit Matin (a 6-year-old boy) for the day, while his mother is at work. In the morning Matin tells Sara a story of a fight with his mother from the night before, this leads to a series of events through the day which will change Matin and Sara for the rest of their lives.

* Gillingham, UK, 2018. Mike, a music producer in free fall, Dan, a sound engineer who is tired of his job, Murphy, the autistic brother with his headphones fixed to his ears, and, Lilli, the mother, are going through a rough time in their lives. Mazzy, the youngest sibling, a singer with a superb voice, has disappeared. What do they have left of her? Hours of recordings: her magnificent voice was recorded onto countless tapes, which are carefully stored and filed in the family studio.

Most adults dream of staying in childhood forever and going through life like in a game, free of society’s rules and restrictions. Five employees in a metal company put this dream into effect. What they find is that you may escape the rules but you can’t escape the consequences or your personal responsibility.

Macho is a poor boy, who skips school to work on a construction site. The only ray of light for him is his girlfriend, Donna .Yet, she is ashamed of his mother, who works as janitor in their school. Macho has to chose between his mother and his love, and he finds his own way to deal with his emotions.

A young teacher is sent to a remote village in the mountains to teach the children who live there. The winter is cold and long, and the children never seem to come. Instead, the young teacher meets an old lady who used to work in the school and who promises her that the children will come once she learns how to light a fire.

Alice sings, wears make-up and cracks herself up. She is happy. Yet she is at the hospital, just out of surgery. She is very ill and totally bald. However, she is love with her surgeon. He is her savior and comes to see her every evening. Each of his visits is a magical moment for Alice and helps her forget her unbearable situation. Alice escapes into her own dreamworld and makes her life over into a sweeter, love-filled one ...

When Sophie goes to  a job interview at Spencer and Jacobs, she does not suspect the weird recruitment method used by the company: the candidate has to overcome the recruiter at a game chosen at random. This is the Greenberry Method.

Tom, a Flemish comedian used to doing cartoon character’s voices, replaces offhand a doubler friend. He finds himself in the studio of a pornographic french speaking film. Catherine, an experienced actress, will be his partner. Tom will play the plumber.

Musicologist Mr. Szabo has dedicated himself to collecting archival material from the history of Austrian pop music. Due to a unfortunate coincidence, an original stage costume of a Viennese beat band from the 60s landed in a charity clothing collection. To retreive the rare piece, Szabo doesn't shy away from a veritable break-in. His young, aspiring colleague Mr. Fitzthum helps him - not entirely voluntarily. Because unlike Szabo he has a lot to lose: his job, his career and above all, his freedom.

Pride and a broken heart are the forces that drive TNT, a has-been boxer who never made it to the top. To get his hands on some cash he accepts a dodgy deal to fix his last fight. Only moments before stepping into the ring it becomes clear that loosing the fight will be tougher for him than expected

A short film dealing with the energy generated through human confrontations with walls. The urge for freedom and fulfillment is just as human as the urge to build walls for everyday order. Three individuals in different countries are struggling under this tension - and finally decide to go all in.

“A triptych in which the figure of the horse becomes a medium for meditation on its various incarnations as symbol, domesticated animal for human domination, and its abstract power as spirit.” Images Festival

Found Super 8mm home movies of wildlife from 1960s apartheid era South Africa and colonial Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) comprise the visual elements of African Film School. In order to disrupt the viewer, American filmmaker Roger Horn juxtaposes these found images with audio he recorded while attending a wildlife film-training program in Cape Town in 2007...

A snail has a journey. He meets a lost mirror and he thinks that his life has an important purpose. The snail is curious about his own reflection until everything gets lost in his mind and the dream of the snail becomes confused...

After going through a breakup, experimental musician Isra struggles to compose. Her inner emotional chaos seems to be taking over her creativity. In order to face the pain, Isra has to listen to its sound and capitalize on it.

A keen observation on captivated animals becomes a deep reflection on human beings.

Analyzing human interaction with objects and their functional and aesthetic presence in recurrent, yet questionable domestic scenarios.

Pablo and Marius make a disturbing discovery about their childhood friend Lou: she appears to be able to synthesise into sound the light she is exposed to. But as she soon becomes an instrument of their musical experiences, her gift turns into a sort of curse…

In a series of increasingly lush and intimate encounters, two dancers are forced to confront each other and themselves, exploring the expansion of identity beyond solely masculine or feminine.

A Short Film About the Environmental Age from a Team Spanning Six Continents.

A reflection on the difficulty of living the present moment before it becomes a memory, on the fear of the inexorable march of Time. The work consists of three parts. In the first one [Random Access Memory] the image of a woman floating in the water alternates with a flow of memories. In the second part [Entropy / Syntropy] we see the dance of a body struggling with time, gravity and decomposition. The movement is not linear and the choreography takes shape by two forces acting in opposite directions. The third part [Instar Aquae Tempus] is focused on the difficulty of identifying the present moment. Time is perceived as a constant stream, suggesting that the nature of reality is that of becoming...

As a child, Carlotta didn’t expect the people around here to have faces. She even doesn’t recognize her own face. Years later, she learns about a rare, untreatable deficit of her brain. It was art, after all, that offered her a way to finally recognize herself.

Geometry is a visual music animated piece. Inspired by Oskar Fischinger and John Whitney, Geometry combines graphic shapes with music to show a ball's journey.

A young woman wakes up to a couple of missed calls, after spending the night with a young man. A sensitive observation of society and corporeality.

In a veritable firework display of digital self-portraits, hundreds of quaint, embarrassing and dreadfully disturbing selfies were arranged in a unique short film composition. Single photos, artistically reworked, consolidate to form a ghastly grin that outshines the abyss of human existence.

Grandson tries to fix an annoying eating habit his grandmother has.

An unsharp pencil, it's very annoying

The story is a pharaphrase of a poem by Sándor Kányádi, taken on a Transilvanian farm. The film is focusing on a dialogue with a girl who recalls the memory of a murder from the last few days. An act of killing, not only commited on a regular basis, but also executed as an everyday mundane task, becoming all too normal for people in some lands.

We are all transients, just passing through. A glimpse of bone memory or sensing the familiarity of now reminds us of our connection to all things past and present.

Magdalena und Samuel spatzieren gemeinsam durch die Natur. Jeder von ihnen hat eine geheime Absicht.

However its sound, a "No" never lose its meaning. Stop violence against women

The members of video activist group Equipe Media, from occupied Western Sahara, fight to keep their cameras. This is a story about breaking an absolute censorship with unique footage from an area where the Moroccan authorities have managed to implement a near total media blockade.

“Bjarne Hates the Camera” is the story of a foreign filmmaker who invades the life of her neighbour Bjarne. Who is he? She asks him about life and death, hopes and dreams. He asks if she’s going to stop anytime soon. But when the woman behind the camera refuses to stop, a relationship rarely caught on film is born - full of absurdities, warmth and humour. And mostly just a bunch of unanswered questions.

This documentary depicts the life of a young girl out in random Syrian refugee camp around the borders of Jordan, Fatima unknown age, living her life in the camp among those who escaped from her family and neighbors and how it affects her maturity and identity.

Snow, sweat, testosterone and the sound of chainsaws. Every four years, over a period of three moths in winter, wood is being cut in a steep mountain high above Lake Ägeri and prepared for log rafting. Neither economic change nor technology has been able to replace this traditional and sustainable craft in Switzerland.

In Southern Spain, a peculiar pidgeon's race with hand painted colors, will award not the fastest one, but the one who acheive seduce a pidgeon female, and fly the longest possible at her side.

A one of a kind student documentary Oymyakon tells the story of the people from an isolated village located deep in the Northern Siberian taiga, known as the Pole of Cold. Witness a day in the life of the citizens of the coldest inhabited place on Earth and discover the challenges they face in this inhospitable landscape where the lowest ever recorded temperature stands at -71.2°C (-95.8°F).

Formed by a group of local, black women from communities surrounding the Kruger National Park, The Black Mambas is South Africa's first and only all-female, anti-poaching unit, the first line of defense in an attempt to rescue their country's threatened rhino population from the edge of extinction. They are the eyes and ears on the ground, patrolling over 150 square miles of dangerous bush, and monitoring its borders. With military training, yet unarmed, these women have reduced rhino poaching significantly in their area, but know they may have only won a small, short-term battle in a much larger war. Their mission now is to take their work well beyond the reserve, to the schools and communities across South Africa, to empower and employ other women, educate children and bring upliftment to underprivileged communities. Only then will they bring about lasting and sustainable change to their country.

Four Friends. Many bands. Expectations. Addiction. Loss.

The Woman Weighing Gold is an essay documenting the influence of capitalism on the Dutch painting during the Golden Age.

Construction of dams by energy companies in the Brazilian Amazon would destroy the heart of the world's largest rainforest, and severely affect the community of the indigenous people in the area. If built, the dams would flood an area the size of London, Paris and Amsterdam combined. The flood would also cause a large amount of toxic plants to dissolve in the water, leading to severe poisoning or even death among the local tribes. These plants are commonly known as Timbó.

‘Too-Tash’ is a short documentary from the Pamir Mountains in Tajikistan. An old Kirghiz nomad tells a tale about past times, when people and ghosts used to live together. Adun Mergen was a famous hunter, who travelled alone and always shared his prize with those in need. Once, when sleeping in a cave, he was approached by a wild ghost. The next day, when following trails, he discovered imprisoned people and gave them freedom by killing ghosts and moving a large rock...

Dan Dailey lives in the middle of the Texas desert, one of the least populated, and darkest places in the U.S. Dan chose this place for a reason; in 2009 he started a retreat for juvenile parricides, or kids who have killed their parents. WANDERVOGEL begins when two documentary filmmakers arrive at Dan Dailey’s residence to make a film and find him dead. From there, the story unfolds as the filmmakers are thrust into a search for Dan’s cause of death, and next of kin. They find out about Dan’s unnatural obsession with Nazi youth, his recent altercation with a young man, and his status as a “weirdo” in the town. WANDERVOGEL is both a look outward into Dan’s life and legacy, and inward towards the process of documentation.

In a modern day airport, the flow of passengers is broken by sudden irregularities. Security forces try to get to the cause of the disruption, the atmosphere turns menacing at the slightest anomaly. Tragedy and panic are always just one step away.

"Amaterasu" is based on an ancient Japanese tale about Amaterasu, the sun goddess, and her difficult relationship with her brother Susanowo. The sets and marionettes in this film are made of found objects.

The presence of the moon affects all under its glow. The film explores the lunar cycle and the energies invoked by its radiance.

A letter, a broken heart. The sound of the rain. A black cat, a plan.

In a large forest where single-colored birds live, everyone has found his place in a tree that looks like him. But what happens when a bird has two colors?

The 20th Century was still young when Italien mountaineers conquered Germany with a sensation: Gelato! Tiny stalls developed into beautiful ice cream shops. But suddenly the Italians turned into war enemies. The love story between Rosa and Paolo ended before the seventh summer had even started … Up until little Molly decides to take matters into her own hands almost 80 years later.

In the swamps of Hanság lived a little boy, Istók, aged 8-10, happily fishing and hunting in harmony with the animals around. One day fishermen cauhgt him and brought the boy to the nearby castle in Kapuvár where he was kept in prison like he was an animal. Only the capitan’s daughter showed sympathy towards him and tried to be nice to him in order to tame him down. As time went by the boy was allowed to leave his cell and got a place to live and he got used to the every day life in the castle. On the wedding day of the captian’s daughter, Istók had a special present for the couple: a bowl of delicious creeping reptile. The trouble he had made with his wedding gift, reminded him his happy life amoung his fellow animals, but it also made him run away from the angry and violent people. He dived into the lake of the castle and swam back to his swamp where he was welcomed by the friendly creatures. He has never been seen since then. The story is based on events that took place in the 18th century and became a legend in the area.

Where People meet, brave ones discover that with enough trust pupil become door knobs and in doing so worlds open where horizons dissolve into nothing - the movie tells eight short stories about friendship.

Human activity does not always have a positive effect on our planet. The short animated film Look explores natural cycles of exchange between humans and animals. Dare to look and change the world.

Jiro, a little boy, feels sick. His father takes him to see the doctor. She diagnoses a harmless case of cat flu. However, according to the doctor, this means that Jiro must be a cat. As father and son try to cope with the boy’s new identity, things go awry. Jiro’s father wishes him to connect with other cats at the animal shelter, but Jiro gets scratched. Complying with a handbook on raising cats, Jiro’s father sends his son outside. This leads to encounters with a friend, with nature and with a wild white cat. In the end, though, everything will feel right again.

When the office employee Karl arrives too late at work, he stamps his punch card frantically. After a distinct mechanical sound from the time stamp clock he puts the card in the shelf “available”. At his working desk Karl is about to start his daily routine but he discovers a hole in his hand. He tries to hide the hole as well as possible but when several more holes are punched in his body, he tries to escape from the office. As he puts the card into the time stamp clock he’s pulled into it. Here he sees the mechanism which controls the office. Karl is dragged through the engine, transformed into a punch card, perforated several times and pulled out of the clock. Another office worker eventually takes the card and puts it back on the shelf where we see that all other punch cards have also been perforated.

You have probably heard of the phrase "To think outside of the box"? Well this is a film about such a box and the flat-headed creatures that live inside of it. Life in the Box is boring and miserable. Until one day when a new baby boy starts to grown in the middle of the Box! This baby is very different from other flat-headed inhabitants of the Box. He's happy, lively and curious. As the baby grows bigger and bigger, the flat-headed neighbours are becoming more and more annoyed with him. Until one day when he literally grows over their heads…

Going on a safari is a dream for many. For middle-aged couple Linda and Troyer, it turns into a horribly real adventure when they get left behind in the wilderness.

Wild Woman is an animated poem to mankind which invokes current world issues such as drone-strikes and religious persecution in a plea for empathy. Scenes transform and melt as the animator also explores her personal struggle of becoming a mother and identifying as such in our current social and political climate.