Premiere Mentoring Programm Block 1

In the organizer's words:

The 3rd year of the *Mentoring Program of the Filmhaus Köln presents its work! A total of nine short, medium and feature-length films have been created and are now celebrating their premiere at the Filmhaus. They will be shown in 3 blocks on July 6 and 7.

The following films will be shown in Block 1:

1. Too Little, 16 min, Valeriia Butakova

For as long as she can remember, something has always been missing. "Too Little" tells the story of a person who has left her home to find exactly that. But what she is looking for seems to be nowhere to be found. In an effort to maintain her long-distance friendships, she struggles with the absence of a tangible home and the unexpected absence of homesickness. The film poetically describes the deeply felt emptiness and the desire to find inner balance. The main character tries to overcome this longing and achieve contentment, even if what he is looking for may never be within reach.

2. Uncle Rudi, 67 min., Katharina Frölich

The film deals with German remembrance within one's own family. How should we talk about ancestors who committed serious crimes? Who tells which stories? And why do we remember different things? In negotiation with her two uncles and her own mother, the most direct descendants of her great-uncle Rudi, the filmmaker questions her own family narrative. The film searches in an uncanny space between remembering and forgetting, suspicion and whitewashing, attempts at classification and the ambivalent hope that one's own family history was quite different after all.

3. Mea Culpa, 45 min., Lukasz Bartosz Sierpinski

When abuse of power is exposed in an institution that claims a monopoly on morality, it goes hand in hand with the visualization of injustice. In the case of child abuse, anger and helplessness are particularly high. Rafael, who grew up in Catholic post-communist Poland, found his own way of reacting to the crimes of the church: for years he has been redesigning devotional objects. Now he is devoting himself to the cult of the former Polish Pope, John Paul II.

*This program particularly supports people aged 18 and over who have not yet had the opportunity to try their hand at filmmaking. At the beginning of the program, the participants were familiarized with dramaturgy, directing, editing and other tools of documentary work in a series of workshops. To this end, the Filmhaus Köln organized six workshops with experts from the fields of idea development, camera, directing, sound and editing. During the creation of the films, the mentors continued to provide the participants with advice and support.