Also at Werkstattkino München, the cradle of UNDERDOX, the theme of FRAGILITY runs through the selected films in a multi-layered way. Viewing and reception habits shift, and the viewer is also put in a state of fragility – UNDERDOX is the festival that opens eyes.

MEXICO, ARGENITINIA: Nicolás Pereda, Heinz Emigholz

In FAUNA, Mexican director Nicolás Pereda overwhelms with subtle narrative sophistication. An actor from the series “Narcos” meets a literature obsessive with a yellow Reclam book when he wants to buy cigarettes in a lonely village in Mexico.
In Heinz Emigholz’s latest stroke of genius THE LOBBY, an “Old White Male” inhabits the lobbies of various apartment buildings in Buenos Aires. Absurd, grotesque, then again very reasonable, he expresses himself in a monologue about death, consciousness and human relationships.

BLOODSUCKERS: Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Tim Leyendekker, Julian Radlmaier

UNDERDOX does not stop at genre cinema either. The fragile figures in Norbert Pfaffenbichler‘s silent horror film “2551.01”, in which “everything is dirty, bare, cold, stripped, but more than that, the people are not only ‘dressed’ in rags, their bodies are virtually disintegrating into shreds, have a disturbing effect. The film is flawless gore that relies on repulsion and sends the human spirit into a wild mental roller coaster ride.” (artechock)
In his staged documentary FEAST, Tim Leyendekker uses the “Groningen HIV Case” to circle the perverted yet humane shades of a deadly love affair.
In BLUTSAUGER by Julian Radlmaier, a summer romance unfolds on uncertain terrain: Vampires plumb the physical and spiritual boundaries at the time of Eisenstein and Trotsky.

DOCUMENTARIES: John Gianvito, Thomas Ash, Claire Angelini

In HER SOCIALIST SMILE, the American documentary filmmaker John Gianvito uses sound, film, and written documents to tell the story of deaf-blind Helen Keller (1880-1968), who became one of the most important anti-capitalist intellectuals, as she found her way through language and thought.
Using a hidden camera, Thomas Ash captured the uncompromising refugee policy and one of the country’s human rights scandals in the deportation prison near Tokyo for USHIKU.  
In Claire Angelini’s THE TIME OF OTHERS, archaeologists search for remnants of our past humanity at Mont Beuvray in Burgundy. The landscape bears multi-layered witness to cultural migration. 

FRIENDS: Ted Fendt, Caroline Pitzen, Ludwig Wüst, Guillermo Benet

The master of laconism Ted Fendt was UNDERDOX’s “artist in focus” two years ago. His latest film OUTSIDE NOISE is about the restless Daniela, who has just returned from a trip abroad and is now drifting through Vienna with two friends, rather disoriented.
The diverse neighborhood in which the young protagonists of Caroline Pitzen’s debut film FREIZEIT OR: DAS GEGENTEIL VON NICHTSTUN grew up is one big construction site where people have to give way to each other’s dreams. They drift through Berlin and ask themselves how they can live in this city in the future.
In 3.30 PM, Ludwig Wüst leaves the filming partly to a bodycam. Two friends, Martin and Anthony, meet again after 15 years, a traumatic experience comes back.
In his debut film LOS INOCENTES, Spaniard Guillermo Benet uses the famous multi-perspective “Rashomon” narrative style. In a squat, a concert is abruptly interrupted by police intervention and the young people are driven into a violent confrontation. In the end, there are no certainties, even the truth is fragile.