With the market value of their peaches in free fall and new energies on the rise, the Catalonian fruit-growing Solé family is faced with a choice: Trees or solar panels? The documentary style of Carla Simón's "Alcarràs" in particular was worthy of the Golden Bear from the jury at this year's Berlinale. While existential angst slowly settles over the minds of the elderly, the children repeatedly provide distraction and amusement - both in front of and on the screen. This makes "Alcarràs" a finely observed social drama with heart and understanding.

Carla Simón

"Alcarràs" is only the second feature film that Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón, born in Barcelona in 1986, has made. She studied film and audiovisual communication in Oakland, Barcelona and London and initially specialised in human destinies in short documentaries ("Born Positive", 2012). in 2017, she made her debut as a feature film director with "Frida's Summer", based on her own screenplay, and was invited to the Berlinale's youth section Generations. Simón prefers to shoot in Catalan and with non-professional actors.

In their second cinematic adventure, cabaret artist Marc-Uwe and his kangaroo put on their aluminium hats to rescue neighbour Maria's mother from the clutches of brain-fogged climate change deniers. The reward is dinner with Maria (for Marc-Uwe) and the satisfying feeling of having been legal once again (for the kangaroo). But after just eight minutes or so, the central theme of "The Kangaroo Conspiracy" is abandoned in favour of a colourful selection of film genres (kung fu, westerns, etc.) and pop culture quotes (from Monty Python to Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Marc-Uwe Kling

Born in Stuttgart in 1982, Marc-Uwe Kling is a typical Swabian in Berlin. Instead of pursuing his small-time art without success or a livelihood, he won the poetry slam championships in 2006 and 2007 and, from 2010 onwards, made highly intelligent kangaroo podcasts and an audio book trilogy. in 2017, he published the dystopian science fiction novel "QualityLand", which was a hot series topic in the USA for about a year. And in 2021, Kling decides to co-direct the second "Kangaroo" film adaptation himself for the first time.

Hardly any other TV nation has as many fictional law enforcers as Great Britain. No wonder that the physical and psychological wounds that this profession leaves behind in British criminals are gradually coming to light. "The Responder" is the first multi-part film to focus on this, not least because it was written by former Liverpool man Bobby Tony Schumacher. The fact that Martin Freeman ("The Hobbit", "Sherlock"), who specialises in friendly, average characters, is pushed to his limits as a patrolman and father makes the six-part series all the more dense and exciting.