It’s New Year’s Eve 2019, and not everyone feels like celebrating. Lola and Paul are two lost souls wandering the city. They banter and argue, trying to decide whether they still want to be together. The elderly teacher Karin befriends her student Fuad, a Syrian refugee. Simon and Marie find themselves having dinner with Simon’s former professor, whom they don’t really know. A mosaic of intertwining stories about personal transformation and the search for new beginnings, about three couples and six different destinies.

A look back into the past, at scenes from the history of a family marked by the serious illness of a child. In footage from dad’s video camera, hospital visits become a game, practice for actual medical procedures. A child’s-eye view of an illness whose path to a cure is filled with much pain and suffering, Baldilocks is director Martha Peters’s self-portrait of her own childhood spent battling cancer. The disease itself may have disappeared, but the memory of it has not. Fragments from the family archive produce a diverse collage of emotions, ranging from sadness, pain, and compassion to humor, courage, and – most importantly – hope.

A 16mm film strip damaged by the electrical discharges from the protagonist’s voice recording tells the story of a nuclear power plant worker who focuses his obsession with counting on one single goal: to calculate the maximum limit of his energy consumption. A poetic film in both style and content, 3 MWh is a meditation on man’s relationship with nature, a reflection on what might happen if we retreated into the background and submitted to the natural cycle of life. What might things be like if we were to disconnect from technology and just be?

Mona and her colleagues attend a teambuilding event aimed at improving cooperation within the team. But the course of the workshop is far from easy. Mona is unable to maintain her leadership position on the team, her colleagues are confused, and their instructor is almost unbearably optimistic and constructive. To make matters worse, Mona learns that she has been the subject of an anonymous complaint for inappropriate workplace behavior... A tragicomedy from the corporate world, where interpersonal ties and friendship compete with ambition, where being promoted is the greatest goal of human existence.

Penelope is working on an art project about empathy, and Dana is one of her subjects. But the meeting between the two women does not turn out as Dana had hoped. The initially harmless experiment forces the young woman to question her own emotions and thus herself. It isn’t until the opening of Penelope’s exhibition that we see the many different forms empathy can take. Named Best International Short Film at the 2023 Locarno International Film Festival, A Study of Empathy explores the limits of emotional vulnerability and the nature of emotion itself. A meditation on how much our perception of ourselves is dependent on our surroundings, the film naturally approaches its subject with both empathy and a subtle sense of humor.

Minna is a home care nurse. With undying kindness and optimism, she visits all her clients, providing them with mental and physical comfort. She has a fifteen-year-old daughter, but she is aware that she is unable to give her the time she deserves. And then there is Alvar, a sick man who desperately needs care and support – things his illness prevents him from asking for. Who Stands Up For Alvar is a critique of an overburdened welfare system that drains caregivers of valuable energy they could be devoting to their clients, as well as a poignant look at the need for “ordinary” human kindness.

In a small town somewhere in southern Italy, a mother’s prayer to Saint Rita saves her daughter from certain death. As a sign of gratitude, the little girl dresses in the saint’s clothes, after which the saint’s miraculous powers supposedly are passed on to her. Little Pinuccia enjoys her privileged, albeit isolated, status at first, but she soon discovers that fame comes with a dark side and unexpected responsibilities. Director Emanuela Muzzupappa’s short film The Love Servant explores the clash between the sacred and the profane, at the center of which is a little girl whose childhood world is not ready for such a thing.

The self-contained world of the swimming pool forms the stage for a conflict between Vio and her classmates, with whom she does not get along. The worst is Sara, a master of subtle innuendo, which each time becomes more personal and thus more painful. The entire situation leads to an inevitable clash that might just bring catharsis and change the two girls’ relationship forever. The pastel-hued setting of the swimming pool contrasts sharply with the darkly sad world of adolescent girls searching for their place in the classroom and in life.

Twelve-year-old Adam from the Slovak village of Utekáč can do any job you ask of him. He is strong, brave, and very active. He earns his own money, his life is completely in his own hands, and his friends admire him for it. That is all Adam says about himself, but the truth is perhaps a little different. Set to a folk rhythm, Slovak director Katarína Gramátová’s hybrid documentary brilliantly uses the tools of cinema, a sense of subtle humor, and provocative irony to tell the story of one Romani boy and one remote village where life is far from easy.

Violence begets violence, and 14-year-old Jessica knows it. She lives with a father who is quick to anger, especially if there isn’t enough food in the house – and Jessica, her younger sister, and her mother all have the mental and physical scars to match. She would like to live as carefree a life as her friends, but fitting in is hard. All of the family’s problems come to a head one afternoon when Jessica is supposed to pick up the shopping but would also like to go to a party. A film about the power of sibling love, about minor misfortunes with disproportionately negative consequences, and the yearning to break free from the vicious cycle of a dysfunctional family.