
The Smoothness of Our Teeth
By Vanessa Gunesch, Oliver Adam Kusio
2021 | 28 min | Drama
A family visit and a broken tooth raises universal questions about identity, origins and life choices.


By Vanessa Gunesch, Oliver Adam Kusio
2021 | 28 min | Drama
A family visit and a broken tooth raises universal questions about identity, origins and life choices.

2023 | 18 min | Shorts
Set in the deserted off-season on the Italian coast, caregivers Anca and Zoya meet at a bus stop shortly before returning home and decide to visit a client's abandoned beach house. A brief vacation turns into a moment of solidarity and tenderness that challenges the structural norms that govern their daily lives. “The discourse on the inner-European class question has never been more present and at the same time more repressed. As a German-Romanian, I encounter these socio-economic conditions every ...

2014 | 15 min | Shorts
Ella is a Polish migrant worker who works in Germany to finance her daughter's studies in Poland. Due to illness, her job seems to be in jeopardy. When her daughter decides to come to Germany and faces the same fate as Ella, the mother decides to blackmail her boss for severance pay. The film ELLA deals with social tensions and dependencies that recur in many European migration biographies. The short film focuses on family responsibility, structural exploitation, and the tension between origin and ...

2022 | 15 min | Comedy
Helen tries to do everything right, but the customers aren't interested in the middle-aged woman in the vendor's tray sausage grill. As the straps cut deeper and deeper, Helen has to break out and from then on does everything wrong, or right? Go Helen! The oversized sausage hovers over Helen's head like a thundercloud. The bratwurst metal corset glows in bright color, but no one approaches the mid-50-year-old as if she were invisible. Despite her precarious work situation, she wants to meet the ...

2009 | 17 min | Documentary
In the beating heart of Tehran, embedded in the lively atmosphere of a university cafeteria, a fascinating story unfolds from the everyday life of three chefs and a kitchen hand. They face the daily challenges of serving 600 kebabs, soups gone awry, and the critical remarks of students. But between the hustle and bustle of the market and the seething chaos of the kitchen, they find time to philosophize about the essence of cooking and the bigger questions in life. The cafeteria becomes a place of ...

2022 | 89 min | Documentary
EUROPA PASSAGE is a profound documentary film by Andrei Schwartz that follows the lives of a group of Romanian Roma over five years. These families commute between their home village of Namaiesti in Romania and Hamburg to earn a living by begging, as there are no job opportunities available to them at home. The film shows the constant challenges and difficulties they face, from discrimination and exclusion from urban emergency programs to the simple living conditions in their village. The story ...

2015 | 3 min | Shorts
Look away or intervene? When a man is victim of unfounded abuse in a packed bus, there is only one passenger who doesn't ignore the situation like everyone else. How do you best confront xenophobia? Is it right to stand up for the one abused or is it too great a risk of becoming a victim too? When a black man is abused by a stranger for no reason in a packed bus, there is only one passenger who doesn't ignore the situation like everyone else. He has the courage to step up and intervene. This doesn’t ...

2022 | 98 min | Documentary
In the heart of Southern Carinthia, a story unfolds that is deeply rooted in a century-old decision. In 1920, like many in the Slovenian community of Carinthia, filmmaker Andrina Mracnikar's grandfather voted for Carinthia to remain within the Republic of Austria, an act of self-determination expected to herald a new era of coexistence for the Slovenian minority. However, the reality that unfolded was starkly different, marking the beginning of a century-long struggle against discrimination. Andrina ...

2024 | 75 min | Documentary
Torn between two worlds: Maria regularly leaves her home in Romania to work as a 24-hour caregiver in Austria. Her sons grow up in Ibănești while she cares for a woman in need of nursing care in Vienna. Every goodbye is difficult, every return is marked by joy, but also by the certainty that she will soon have to leave again. MÂINE MĂ DUC – TOMORROW I LEAVE by Lukas Schöffel and Maria Lisa Pichler is an intimate documentary about the reality of life for many Eastern European caregivers who balance ...

2004 | 6 min | Shorts
In the hectic atmosphere of a large kitchen, where time is as sharp as the knives, a sensual story of passion, jealousy and unbridled desire unfolds. Fernanda, the attractive dishwasher, arouses burning desire in the hearts of her colleagues, but who ignites the fire in Fernanda's heart? The kitchen, a place of strict hierarchies and tight deadlines, unexpectedly turns into a battlefield of emotions. While everyone loses themselves in their delicious fantasies with Fernanda, an unforeseen event ...

2018 | 62 min | Documentary
Although they make their living in the same way, their daily lives are very different. The documentary gives a deep insight into the lives of five tea cooks and at the same time takes a look at the social circumstances, contrasts and traditions of India. For all of them have a story to tell, and as they tell their stories, we learn about India's multifaceted, nuanced and multilayered society. "Hülser is able to not only show these petty self-employed folks in the midst of their poverty and squalor ...