A mischievous little penguin misbehaves at dinner: he slurps, spills stuff and rocks his chair until he is sent to the bench, the “naughty seat”, in punishment. It’s not long before he has company. And the opportunities for more mischief are far from exhausted. An enchanting puppet animation without dialogues.

Lina Dinkla

A dark room is so much more than it first seems. With patience and curiosity, it will come to life. In between four walls is a Cuban household, filled with objects passed down over generations that hold memories of the hands that kept them. As one walks through the room and interacts with its objects, the space begins to come alive. Visitors will take their own time and make their own way through the quiet evidence of a lived-in space, uncovering hidden moments waiting to be found.

Over the course of the piece, a clock runs a day in fast forward, and the room shape-shifts from the 1980s to 1990s and onwards, slowly, steadily, almost unnoticed. Time moves differently here. It is a piece that lives in the in-between, in the narrow space that treads the line of physical and virtual and in the cracks that separate days, years and decades. And it is precisely this in-betweenness that cultivates portals and the possibility of walking through a door and into a past waiting to be touched.

“The Room of a Thousand Voices” was directed by Pavel Méndez. Additional credits include creative technologist Shipeng Ouyang, 3D artist Taimy Valdés, Unreal Engine optimisation by Cristian Cuevas and interactive design by Peter Muthesius, Salvador Revelo, and Christopher Theophanous.

Dana Melaver

Luscious avocado plantations. Smoke rising on the horizon. Then echoes of explosions. In the “Envelope”, just before the border with Gaza, Yo, Tom, Yan, Piak and Lee work in Israeli fields. Like many other migrant workers, they were recruited from Thailand. They work for below-market wages, often seven days a week, up to 17 hours a day, to support their distant families. They are being observed by a robot snake that crawls through the fields looking for Hamas tunnels beneath the farmland. Bullet casings among the weeds, makeshift shelters in front of the barracks – a psychogeography of fear and vulnerability. Sometimes, in brief moments of leisure, the light-hearted games and the community of young men provide a distraction. On 7 October 2023, the underworld opens up and interrupts the film, which then shifts to the families of the victims. On the banks of the Mekong, the mythical snake god Naga guards the threshold between the living and the dead. An intangible, floating and empathic narrative about precarious labour movements through a military-agrarian complex.

Jan Künemund

Why are we so fascinated by the ancient world even today? In 2023, the viral hashtag #RomanEmpire brought to light how many people are still captivated by ancient Rome – men above all. For Pinji, the director’s uncle, this fascination has long since become a life project. He lives in an old house in Bulgaria, looks after a collection of antique treasures and has been writing a book about antiquity for years. When his nephew comes to visit, uncle Pinji does not hesitate: With humorous implacability, he launches into a rhetorical "demolition" of the present age. Toddi listens closely and decides to join the fight. He implements himself and Pinji in a computer game, right into the middle of an antique battle. Now the present is battling the past – outcome uncertain.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann