Jan Mozetic
Italy, Slovenia
2014 | 0:15:40


In the skyscraper of a frozen city lives a collector. Unlike the others, he does not collect postcards, coins, but stories. He carefully preserves the trash, remnants of past events. He puts aside his feelings and memories in favor of other lifes. Wind of time inevitably reveals a persistent thread of his wishes and wounds. In the anarchy of digital memories the events and people bound and mix together, so that we can hardly separate the collector from the collection. Everything becomes a part of an unclear and lonely modern plural.

Alexander Hick
Germany, Mexico
2015 | 1:16:00

In order to escape being sacrificed, the God Xólotl transforms himself into a salamander, fleeing from what he once was." So relates the voice in the essay film which tells of the search for the Axolotl, a salamander that lives in the lakes surrounding Mexico City. The Axolotl refuses to undergo metamorphosis. According to a fishermen who survives on the outskirts of the megalopolis, the animal now disappeared. Cognizant of the mythological immortality that surrounds the strange creature, he expresses the desire to transform into one himself. Taking up this mythology of transformation from god to animal as a metaphor for Mexico City itself, the director accompanies a corrupt policeman and brutal gang members in the sprawling suburbs of the megalopolis. He examines the struggle for survival in what was the former lake of Mexico but is today the habitat of 23 million people. As an essayistic inquiry into survival and adaptation, the film casts its gaze on that which remains.