Program #2 includes five portraits concerning loneliness. All movies deal with it differently in story and style. Like all the others the block is mixed and contains diverse genres: two documentaries, two fictions and a clay animation.

Waiting for Women

“For years we tried to bring women to our village”… Estephan Wagner portrays the men of the Spanish village Riofrio. The women left years ago, so most of them are single. A gloomy atmosphere dominates, even the animals seem lonely. The men – from all different age groups – dream of getting “a piece of skirt and drag her home”. To achieve that, they organized a busload of single women. The first part of the movie deals with the preparations for the get-together. With a lot of care and arguments about every detail the singles organize a party and dress up. In conversations they express their hopes and expectations. They speculate about the unknown species “woman”. The second part of the movie starts with the arrival of the bus, but the men never learnt to cope with women. They force approaches, act clumsy and jealous, and every potential success is observed and awarded with applause. “Waiting for Women” is a loveable portrait of the men and you really hope for happy endings…

“Game Over” by the Canadian director Michel Riendeau starts with a break-up via telephone. Nick is left paralyzed. He starts playing video games, but gets beaten all the time. He decides to get out. Driving through the town and visiting places his lonely reality is mixed with flashbacks of his relationship with Laurie. He eventually finds a way out of this situation.

“Ghosts” by Jan Ijäs is a portrait of an asylum in Finland, viewed very personally by an resident: “I just exist. That’s the only word I can use. I’m not dead, I just exist.” We hear his thoughts about his life and the asylum. We see him move to fight boredom. Neither time nor space seem to matter. The daily routine in the refugee center – “a warehouse for humans” – is shown: the TV room, the empty floors, the kindergarten. The nightguard  has been longer in the center than any resident. Inhabitants from different cultures wander the floors. The pictures are intense. The voice is absorbing. The film leaves the audience moved.

Another movie of the program is “You are going to hurt yourself” by María Luz Olivares Capelle. It deals with the question if one can cope with the pressure from the outside for being different? A young women is hospitalized for growing wings. She is confronted with the lonely decision to let them be removed or not.

The programs ends with the three minutes animation film “Open your Eyes,” by Elisabeth Ritter. A magician’s rabbit escapes out of its top hat and is confronted with the world outside. It is scared all by itself, until it witnesses the growth of a flower.