︎ 19 minutes

At the Senior Class of a New Middleschool in Lower Austria, currently the topic of democracy has been dealt with. Although the pupils have been divided into two groups due to the Corona pandemic, they should learn how to make decisions collectively as part of a class council. At the same time in a different location, covered chandeliers and offices wrapped in tarpaulins hint at the state of an abandoned pomp building.  While empty meeting rooms and old lecterns are being renovated in the Austrian parliament building, the pupils find themselves in the new roles of their everyday school-life.

What processes and conflicts are the young people confronted with, at a time when life as a class community is being put to the test?

CONFESSIONS OF REPUBLICANS

In order to vote in the U.S. presidential election, citizens must first register on the regional voter registry. Convinced of Trump’s re-election, Republicans are preparing for November 3, 2020. Conservative activist Scott Presler is helping with the registration of new voter groups. With his slogan “I’m Gay. Democrats don’t own me” he makes his audience cheer.

Atmospherically, the film draws a picture of tension in a polarized country. Before the crucial presidential election and the all-changing COVID 19 pandemic.

I TEACH MY KIDS LOVE

_{︎︎︎ Click on image to enlarge.}

Every 15 minutes in the USA, a child is born after a prenatal exposure to opioids. The same-sex spouses Louisa and Nikki have adopted eight children from families with severe pain pill abuse. Their goal is to break the existing family cycles and to enable their adoptive children to grow up protected from the drug crisis.

ARS MORIENDI OR THE ART OF LIVING

Rosemarie Achenbach is 93 years old. Time and again, she has found the strength to liberate herself: During World War II, she was trapped under rubble following an aerial bombardment, but survived. As a pastor’s wife, she was trapped by the expectations of patriarchal post-War society. After her husband’s death, she took her life into her own two hands. She concluded her degree in philosophy and today she is writing her doctorate. She is writing about death, because “I am old enough for it”.

“ars moriendi – the art of living” is both the portrait of a woman and the portrait of a century now past.

SPIELFELD

In the winter of 2015, more than one hundred thousand refugees cross Spielfeld on the Austrian-Slovenian border without being patrolled. In response, the government presents its “modern border management system” to the media. But since the Balkan route has been closed, no refugees have been able to reach Spielfeld. What remains are deserted tents, a broken fence in the forest and the people of the village. How do they deal with the fact that their thousand-people village has become a “playing field” for helpless refugee policy in Europe?