The 26 artefacts that the French state is returning to the Republic of Benin fit into five boxes. Director Mati Diop called her documentary film "Dahomey" because that is the name of the kingdom from which thousands of artefacts were abducted in 1892. Since then, they have lurked in the cellars of the state museums in "the blackest darkness", as King Gezo (1818 - 1858) described them. Diop gives the former ruler a voice as deep as from the grave. The wooden statue that symbolises him just made it into the first restitution delivery as artefact no. 26.

Mati Diop
"Dahomey" was awarded the Golden Bear at this year's Berlin Film Festival. It was written and directed by Mati Diop, who was born in Paris in 1982 and comes from a Senegalese-French family of artists: her father is a musician and her mother a photographer. Mati herself has previously made a name for herself as an actress ("35 Rum", 2008) and as a director and cinematographer of short documentaries ("Mille soleils", 2013). Her feature film debut, the romantic refugee drama "Atlantique", screened in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.

"The opposite of politics is art for me," says the woman whose films (including "Triumph of the Will" in 1935 and "Olympia" in 1938) helped National Socialism to survive on the big screen. Leni Riefenstahl - actress, photographer, but above all Hitler's director - has documented her life well in pictures, writing and sound. 101 years in 700 boxes. In "Riefenstahl", director Andres Veiel and producer Sandra Maischberger have successfully trawled through the estate for contradictions and loss of control in Riefenstahl's self-staging.

Andres Veiel
The documentary films in particular are regarded as the trademark of director Andres Veiel, who was born in Stuttgart in 1959. He often exposes the self-presentations of a wide variety of people, be it drama students ("Die Spielwütigen", 2004), terrorists ("Black Box BRD", 2001) or artists such as Joseph Beuys ("Beuys", 2017). "Riefenstahl" was screened out of competition at this year's Venice Film Festival. Exactly 80 years after Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" won the gold medal there.

Matt Reeves' "The Batman" from 2022 is undoubtedly one of the darkest superheroes ever to flicker across the screen. After its success at the box office, Warner Bros. briefly considered a sequel, but then opted for an eight-part series about Batman's adversary "The Penguin". As in the film, this time Colin Farrell wears a mask behind which he is barely recognisable. The story begins a week after the finale of the "Batman" film and tells the story of how Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot, the former right-hand man of mafia boss Falcone, becomes the ruler of Gotham City's underworld himself.

It seems a little anachronistic to resurrect the Soviet Union of all things - even if only digitally in a playful way. And yet there is a good reason for this, as nothing is better suited to testing out your own state-building skills than the planned economy system. The design and gameplay of "Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic" is modelled on the Soviet Union of the years 1960 to 1990. Depending on the player's economic skills, the outcome of the game differs significantly from reality.