Tanzfilme

In the organizer's words:

28.11.2025 18:00

Short films:

Movement and Encounter

A Bird Called Memory
Brazil 2023, 15'
Director: Leonardo Martinelli
Choreography: Soraya Bastos

A bird called Memory has forgotten how to find his way back home. Lua, a trans woman, searches for Memory on the streets, but the city can be a hostile place.

Shame (عيب)
Lebanon 2024, 5'
Directed & choreographed by Hadi Moussally

In the 19th century, in the Levant region, Salma Zahore takes part in a photo shoot with long exposures together with her parents and neighbors. At the end, Salma takes off her coat and reveals her body - unaware of the chaos this gesture will cause in her surroundings. A gesture that could lead her to disgrace (عيب).

Lucid Dreaming
Netherlands 2023, 14'
Directed & choreographed by Emma Evelein

Lucid Dreaming tells the story of a girl on a train who loses herself in the world of a man sitting opposite her. As she allows herself to be drawn into his world, the train and its passengers become part of the experience. In a non-verbal encounter between two strangers, she experiences how imagination and empathy are both powerful and vulnerable.

My Name is the Sound I Use to Introduce Myself
Netherlands 2023, 10'
Director & Choreography: Albert Rask

A group of young men dance a competitive waltz while balancing a glass between their foreheads. In this captivating setting, director Albert Rask creates a new code of conduct - an allegory for growing up. A playful but poignant exploration of responsibility, expectations and the rules of adulthood.

A Tango Drama (Pollution Loves Tango)
Italy 2021, 4'
Director: Antonio La Montanara

Is it really just the umpteenth story of a love triangle to the rhythm of the tango?

Tipping Point
Poland 2024, 9'
Directed & choreographed by Agafia Thekla Popowska

On the Beckstraße slag heap in the heart of the Ruhr area, a carefree dancer comes across a work suit. Surrounded by the harsh industrial landscape, she immerses herself in the life of the former worker and reinvents his story - between fantasy and movement. The dance tells of change and inner imbalance, oscillating between past and present.

Completed
Netherlands 2023, 8'
Director: Hans Lein
Choreography: Laura Feliu Casas

Teenager Alysha struggles to accept her mother's decision to end her life. Between incomprehension and love, she learns to understand the depth of her mother's unbearable pain. A poetic coming-of-age story imbued with magical realism.

Lettre à ma fille
Benin 2024, 4'
Directed & choreographed by Michael Maurissens

A heartfelt letter from a mother to her future daughter unfolds on the beaches and streets of Benin. It tells of the challenges and joys of being a woman. Through song and dance, a community of women debunk fairytale myths and celebrate embodied values of female strength: strength, independence and self-worth. With a rebellious spirit, they find freedom and joy in the rhythms of their bodies - hands clapping, shoulders shaking, hips gyrating, feet stomping their bold dreams of femininity.

28.11.2025 7:30 pm

Shahid
Germany 2024, 84'
Director: Narges Kalhor
Choreography: Nina Wesemann
Camera: Felix Pflieger
Editing: Frank J. Müller, Narges Kalhor

Director Narges Shahid Kalhor no longer wants to be called "Shahid" (martyr) by her surname and stages an actress as herself, who is supposed to set about changing her surname. Just then, her bizarre great-grandfather appears - a man who was declared a martyr in Iran after his heroic death a hundred years ago and gave his descendants the honorary name "Shahid". He wants to stop his great-granddaughter from carrying out her plan.

The temporal levels intermingle and the director and actress find themselves in a nerve-wracking conflict. While the film formally jumps between reality, fiction, theater and musical, everyone fails in their plans: the director because of the obstacles of bureaucracy, the actress because of the director's demands, the great-grandfather because of the granddaughter's will and finally the film because of itself. In the process, the film questions all kinds of radical ideologies - and doesn't always take itself too seriously.

Shahid is a personal film about the balancing act of reconciling oneself with the past, with the present and with oneself. A political drama and a desperate comedy at the same time.

29.11.2025 18:00

The Sea
USA, Sweden 2025, 64'
Director: Douglas Rosenberg
Choreography: Benno Voorham
Cinematography & editing: Paul Wu

29.11.2025 19:30

Short films: Bodies write history(ies)

Diving into the Wreck
Egypt 2025, 8'
Director & Cinematographer: Michael Maurissens
Choreography & Performance: Salma Salem

In a monochrome dreamscape, the boundaries between man and nature blur as a woman drifts under the weight of memory and time - a haunting visual poem interwoven with fragility, resilience and the silent unfolding of the self.

Diving into the Wreck is a black and white dance film that unfolds as a sensual, cinematic ritual of femininity - a poetic excavation of memory, resilience and the female body in relation to the raw forces of nature. Shot in the barren landscapes of Egypt, where the horizon stretches into nothingness, the film moves between moments of stillness and eruption, of surrender and resistance. Guided by the haunting language of Adrienne Rich's "Diving into the Wreck", this experimental video poem questions what it means to live in a female body shaped by silence and survival.

YES!
Estonia 2024, 3'
Director: Madli Lääne
Choreography: Raido Mägi

The corners, slopes, dead ends and curves of the Tallinn Cruise Terminal inspire us to reflect on the dilemmas of meritocracy. Should we fit ourselves into a grid - or do we dare to be wrong? Based on the poem by the European Poetry Slam Champion 2023, Joonas Veelmaa.

Purgatorio
USA 2024, 6'
Direction, choreography: Stephanie Miracle
Camera, montage: Auden Lincoln-Vogel

You can't win a game if you don't know the rules - but you can't lose it either. A dystopian universe of gymnasium-like spaces opens up as the nesting takes its course. A site-specific dance film with an experimental fusion of choreography, cinematography and sound.

Room with A View
France 2020, 5'
Direction, choreography: (LA)HORDE - Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer, Arthur Harel

In this music video from Rone's album of the same name, (LA)HORDE explores forms of protest and resistance through dance. The camerawork and the dancers' movements allow the filmmakers to depict the unimaginable and question the physical relationships between individual and group with even more harshness and strangeness - through possible breakdowns. Shot a few days before the first lockdown in 2020 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, it seems like a last rave before the apocalypse.

Podium
Israel 2025, 2'
Director: Dor Averbuch
Choreography: DanDan Cohen & Ori Manor

When nineteen dancers from the Batsheva Ensemble turn the track of an athletics stadium into their podium, chaos is inevitable. For them, the tartan track becomes a starting point and a source of inspiration for ideas and experiments, an expression of everything that drives and fascinates them.

Syncope
Switzerland 2023, 21'
Director: Linus von Stumberg
Choreography: Sarafina Beck

After Whim survives the unconventional audition for the dance piece Syncope , the choreographer is not satisfied with her full commitment. But what she and the other dancers experience in rehearsals is just a foretaste of what his dark vision will demand of them. They have to dance for their lives.

Freeway
Hungary 2024, 3'
Director: Suzanna Kiss
Choreography: Bence Balogh

Ben jumps onto an abandoned truck in the middle of the Hungarian plains and dances his feelings away on the moving vehicle - free from fear and danger. Pure performance, in which fragments of thought intensify the feeling.

The End is the New Start
Hungary 2022, 1'20''
Director: Dóra Sallak
Choreography: Imre Katona

A dancer always remains a dancer, no matter what difficulties he encounters in life.

Naval Ode
Portugal 2024, 6'
Director: Fu Le
Choreography: Magalie Lanriot

The poem "Naval Ode - Ode Marítima" by Fernando Pessoa captures the movement of separation between quay and ship and thus the distance - between inside and outside, between the self and the other. The text is embodied in a mysterious, floating dance, imbued with nostalgic longing that billows out like a sail.

Disconnected
Spain 2024, 5'
Director: Roger Bayerri
Choreography: Kike Granero

Spain 2024: Smartphones have undoubtedly changed our lives and influence almost every aspect of our daily lives. A group of young dancers explore the impact of technology in a dynamic interplay of dance and camera.

Better not kill the groove
Switzerland 2024, 7'
Director & concept: Jonathan Leggett

In search of his identity through scootering and self-discovery, a young boy explores his relationship with his body and emotions. Composed from material collected on the internet, the film documents the character's attempt to come to terms with his existential turmoil.

30.11.2025 18:00

First steps: Workshop films

Moovy NRW brought the fascination of dance film to Pulheim, Monheim am Rhein, Troisdorf, Bad Honnef, Windeck and Hürth. In each community, we presented an individual film program on the theme of dance. The program was supplemented by creative dance film workshops for young people, which enabled artistic participation and opened up new perspectives. Moovy also organized such a dance film workshop in Cologne.

On this evening, we will show the workshop results of children and young people who tried out their first steps in the field of dance film.

30.11.2025 19:30 h

Streetwear
Germany 2022, 50'
Director, camera, editor: Mark Sieczkarek

The art and dance film Streetwear artistically interweaves multiple levels. The performers dance with the places, corners and angles of the city of Wuppertal. Stairs, public spaces, a soccer pitch and walls sprayed with graffiti appear and provide the backdrops and backgrounds for the filmed choreographies. Cycles of materials become visible: materials that we all know from our everyday lives and that the artist Mark Sieczkarek has collected and devotedly transformed into unique, humorous costumes using a sewing machine and a lot of manual work.

Prominent dancers such as Julie Shanahan, Ophelia Young, Nayung Kim and Kenji Takagi, who are associated with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, are also involved. Wuppertal artists from the world of music, such as Karlo Wentzel and Butoh dancer Udo Sträßer, will also be performing. In addition to the performers, the Wuppertal locations and, above all, the curious costume creations by Streetwear make a striking statement. The latter develop a fascinating life of their own, brought to life by 22 performers and staged on film by Mark Sieczkarek.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of NRW