Oliver Grice

Helma Sanders-Brahms directs this inventive film that uses the verse of Jewish poet Else Lasker-Schüler and Nazi poet Gottfried Benn to dramatize the passionate, real-life affair between the two unlikely lovers. Forced out of Germany, Lasker-Schüler makes her way to Jerusalem even as Benn discovers the true nature of the Nazi ideology he had once championed. Lena Stolze and Cornelius Obonya star.

This film goes behind the scenes and under the skin of a unique live theater production. Film director Niko von Glasow brings together a company of performers to conceive and perform a new stage comedy. In the play, a group of physically and mentally disabled hopefuls show up to audition for a TV talent show. They are sent to a separate and suitable room, where they are forgotten. Believe it or not, this up-close and often upsetting documentary is full of laughter, fun and moments of genuine theatrical magic.

Director Jonas Rothlaender confronts nine men, including one gay and one bisexual interviewee, with anonymous statements of other men in his documentary experimental set-up. The topics: sexual (borderline) experiences, traditional role models and the current understanding of male sexuality. The result is that the interviewees themselves subsequently begin to speak openly and frankly about their own experiences. And to reflect on their sexuality. To which social ideals does the male sex see itself committed, and do "typical male traditions" still exist at all today?