Away from the Political, off into the Private Sphere.
The entries in the International Competition of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival this year focused on individual searches rather than global crises.
The world is in turmoil: Ukraine war. Climate and migration crisis. Terror by Hamas. Instability by Trump. Collapse due to pandemics. While biodiversity and democracy appear to be on the verge of extinction, an international shift to the right is shaking entire continents and the Gaza conflict is shaking up international relations. It cannot be said that the global crises with destructive potential have become less or less urgent in light of recent years. It is therefore all the more remarkable that the contributions to this year’s International Competition in Oberhausen focused less on the world’s areas of conflict and more on the filmmakers’ own family histories.
In view of the political impetus of the Short Film Festival, its political profiles such as the Detours to the Neighbor – The Film of the GDR in Oberhausen, the committed panel discussions or the Traveling Companions – Omnibus Films with their specifically female perspective (e.g. on the reinterpretation of the seven deadly sins or on the nuclear armament of the Cold War), this departure from the complex problems of the international stage was more than obvious.
Out of 47 short films, exactly two dared to take a look at the catastrophes dominating the news these days: Common Pear, which received the FIPRESCI prize this year, depicts a dystopian society in the post-climate catastrophe. Director Gregor Božić , who is himself involved in the establishment of a gene bank for fruit seeds, portrays young people who hope to revitalize trees that are dying in the hot climate using archive footage of senior fruit growers. The touching rapprochement between young and old takes place in a harmonious sci-fi setting, while at the same time reversing the current generational conflict, in which the old are seen as insisting on the polluter status quo and the young as progressive ‘do-gooders’ – or rather: defaming each other.
In The Palace Sq∞are (Dvorts∞vaya), Mikhail Zheleznikov uses archive footage to trace the history of the Palace Square in St. Petersburg. The archived revolts and triumphs alternate impressively in a potpourri of over 110 years of history around the Alexander Column once erected in honor of Russia’s victory against Napoleon’s France – until the yawning emptiness of the square, secured by a large police force, opens up when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Many other films in the International Competition, which this year was completely devoid of German contributions, were characterized above all by their introspection – whether individual or familial. Interestingly, many filmmakers and their narrator characters primarily addressed their own grandparents in the form of letters and monologues in order to understand their own history. In Letters to My Grandmother, Bibi Ase (Levelek nagy-mamámnak, Bibi Ase-nak), Amina Abdulrachimzai writes ten letters to her grandmother, who still lives in Afghanistan and whom she has never met. Her reflections about worries, wishes and the view of Afghanistan from afar, as well as her own migration background, form an interesting contrast to the simultaneous progress of her shadowy legs in the image, which is divided by a visual break.
Weronika Szyma’s Dear Leo Sokolosky (Drogi Leo Sokolosky) undertakes a symbolic and an actual journey in the form of reduced sketches and a poetic flow of dialog. The musings are directed at a great-grandfather, while German-Polish World War II history and personal family history are interwoven. A girl travels to Ansbach in Germany, where her ancestor was once sent to a labor camp. From there, however, the great-grandfather did not follow his friend to America after the end of the war, but returned to Poland, started a family and thus made the narrator’s existence possible in the first place. The film shares this retrospective view of drastic uprooting with The Last Border (La última frontera) by Camila Dron, in which atmospheric, darkly arranged archive footage traces the arduous ship journey of Jewish ancestors to Argentina.
In Lin Htet Aung’s A Metamorphosis (Aswin Pyaung Lelkyinn Titehku) the ghost of a deceased grandmother recounts the loss of her son and grandson amidst the AI-alienated chanting of lullabies from the mouths of Myanmar’s dictators. Small movements of her curtain, described in the running subtitle strip, hint at a breath of hope that was to be so painfully extinguished by the military coup in 2021.
The local turmoil in Myanmar, which was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1962, mirrored the experience of state TV propaganda and found its temporal counterpart in the forced resettlement of Chinese city dwellers during the Cultural Revolution: In the documentary The Other Side of the Mountain (Shan de Ling Yi Mian) by Chinese director Yumeng He, a filmmaker accompanies her father on his return to his own roots – the places where the grandmother lived. In the face of uprooting under the banner of progress, Yumeng He poses the question of how history and memories can still be told at all.
The escapism in the face of current crises, which made many titles in the competition look to the past, was obvious. The only question is why? The current crises are too global to dismiss the impression of their absence as a Eurocentric, narrow perception. The absence of these topics is certainly not due to a curation that attempts to omit them. Rather, a look back at history with its clearly analyzed conflicts, could be considered a less mined field for the largely young filmmakers. Looking back proves to be a film’s object that is perhaps easier to focus on, in comparison to the current crises, which are also subject to constant reassessment and could thus undermine one’s own determination.
Ultimately, this development is also reflected in the recent history of the Short Film Festival, whose last edition under the aegis of former festival director Lars Henrik Gass was also accompanied by squabbles over his clear positioning on the side of Israel after the terrible Hamas attack. While support for Israel in view of the massive military operation in Gaza by the right-wing government is also increasingly preoccupying politicians, the past conflicts to which the competition entries in question were dedicated are subject to a clearer classification.
But perhaps we also see the desire for more stability in uncertain times in addressing the grandparents, and the search for possible role models in equally uncertain world situations – which would build a bridge to the old people tending the fruit trees in Common Pear. Finally, the private sphere can also become political – especially when the realization of one’s own position on history has consequences for current actions. For where this reflection on responsibility arising from history is lacking, as The Palace Sq∞are makes clear, there are empty squares, populated at best by hedonistic concertgoers, such as the Palace Square in St. Petersburg. Or how would you put it cynically in Russian? Dobroy noci. (Good night).
Kathrin Häger
© FIPRESCI 2025