Steilvorlage

Steilvorlage

17th of February 2026 – 8 p.m. Hackesche Höfe Kino

Films:
DESIRE LINES (LINIJE ŽELJE)
IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, LOOK AWAY (AU BAIN DES DAMES)

Debate Format: STEILVORLAGE

Films as a template, as an invitation, as a provocation for debate. In this format, the filmmakers of the evening are joined by a member of the selection committee to answer questions from the moderator and the audience. 

Debate guests: Margaux Fournier, Dane Komljen, Martha Mechow, Lucía Salas

DESIRE LINES (LINIJE ŽELJE)

D: Dane Komljen, C: Ivan Čuić, Branka Katić, Petja Golec Horvat, Rok Juričić, Nadim Hendawi, DOP: Ivan Marković, Jenny Lou Ziegel, SRB/BIH/NED/CRO/GER 2025, 107 Min., Serbo Croatian Original with English Subtitles – German Premiere

Branko can’t sleep. Alone, he wanders through Belgrade observing the nocturnal interactions of others. He also watches his brother, a mystery to him. Everyone around him seems to have a clearer relationship with desire. Meandering in his route, he veers deep into the forest, where he finds a group of people living a different kind of life, and a landscape forgotten by humans and re-written by plants. The “desire lines” Dane Komljen here traces are sometimes thin, as insubstantial as following someone just to have something to do, but in the course of the film they coalesce into experience, creating connections between touch, sight, the landscape and the passage of time. A film about discovering one’s own shape, and the fact that it is constantly in flux as long as there are others, whether human or non-human.

Dane Komljen (born 1986, Banja Luka) is a filmmaker whose work explores notions of the body, space, utopia, and collective existence. He has directed three feature films—DESIRE LINES (2025), AFTERWATER (2022), and ALL THE CITIES OF THE NORTH (2016)—as well as the documentary THE GARDEN CADENCES (2024) and numerous short films. His films have been awarded at major international festivals including  Locarno Film Festival, IFF Rotterdam, Cannes Film Festival, Sarajevo Film Festival, New Horizons IFF, and the Seville European Film Festival, and have screened at the Berlinale, Cinéma du Réel, FIDMarseille, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, FIC Valdivia, VIENNALE, Mar del Plata IFF, FICUNAM, CPH:DOX, Jeonju IFF, among others. Komljen’s work has also been presented at art institutions such as the ICA London, Volksbühne Berlin, Centre Pompidou Paris, Union Docs New York, and the Lagos Biennale. He is Professor of Film at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg and lives and works in Berlin.

IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, LOOK AWAY (AU BAIN DES DAMES)

D: Margaux Fournier, DOP: Théo Vincent Suzzoni, FRA 2025, 30 Min., French Original with English Subtitles – German Premiere

A group of retired women in Marseille meet for an afternoon at the beach. Ladies in their twilight years, you might say, but Margaux Fournier turns this metaphor on its head in her documentary short: the day may be coming to an end, but, in another sense, it’s only just getting started. On the beach, there is unrestrained gossiping, flirting, and dancing, with the latest hairstyles discussed as well as their most recent dates, alongside memories of experiences of violence. The camera stays close to its subjects, sometimes admiring them from below like ancient goddesses. But Fournier is not above breaking up the observational style, choosing to emphasize the women’s life-energy cinematically, staging them as if in a music video or sexy ice cream commercial, right up to the grandiose, cathartic finale.

Originally from Marseille, Margaux Fournier draws on her Mediterranean roots to fuel her creativity. After a cross-sectional and multidisciplinary career at Sciences Po Lille and La Fémis, she embarked on the production of her first short, AU BAIN DES DAMES. The film is an intimate dive into the world of a group of 70-year-olds from Marseille, shot in her hometown.