Big, bigger, smallest?

Black versus white, money or life, Godzilla versus Kong, minimum and maximum: festival is always also a time of extremes, a time to reflect on oneself and ultimately also a time to bring one's inner self out into the open. This eternal circle of the festival - one could also speak of the "circle of life" - naturally finds its ultimate expression in the programme. Therefore, nothing would be further from our minds than to keep silent about the cinema of extremes!

In Deniz Simsek's experimental short film ›Centauress‹ there is a clash of giants between form and meaning. Minimal formal language meets maximum meaning. The few images in the film are schemata, the film almost refuses its medium. But only almost! The grey between all the black and white is omnipresent. Director Deniz Simsek talks to the audience at Atlantis today at 9:45 pm about the formal extreme.

Things are different at the maximum, namely very, very epic in ›On the Job: The Missing 8‹ by Erik Matti. Corruption, violence and betrayal mix into a hard-hitting reckoning with the Philippine government under Duterte. At the Cineplex Planken, Erik Matti and screenwriter Michiko Yamamoto will be chatting out of the closet today at 9:45 pm and talking about one of the biggest films of the 2021 cinema year in one of Mannheim's biggest cinemas.