Everything about "Come on Come on" screams arthouse film: the images (b/w), the sound (improvised dialogue), the style (crossover of interviews and play scenes), the setting (NYC, LA, Detroit, New Orleans) and not least the cast (Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann and 11-year-old Woody Norman). This is the only way - visibly, audibly and tangibly outside the mainstream - to deal with topics such as bipolarity, raising children and parents, dementia, the mistakes in one's own past, the fear of a shared future, and how to deal with feelings before they become entangled.

Mike Mills

Born in Berkeley, California in 1966, author and director Mike Mills likes to draw on his own family history for his films. His 2010 comedy "Beginners" is based on his father's late coming out, while his 2017 Oscar-nominated screenplay for "Women of the Century" is based on Mills' experiences as a teenager in his mother's feminist flat share. And "Come on Come on" presumably drew on countless conversations with his son Hopper, who was born in 2012 to Mills' partner and fellow director Miranda July.

Nora, Émilie, Amber and Camille, three women, one man. All four are around 30, are more or less successful in their careers and lead their love lives according to the motto "We have fun, but we're not together" - one more often, the other less often. Their lives are as functional as the skyscrapers of Les Olympiades in the 13th district of Paris, where the sun rises first thing on the rooftops. It is precisely there, between concrete and libido, that director Jacques Audiard searches for real feelings - and even finds them.

Jacques Audiard

Born in Paris in 1952, Jacques Audiard wanted to be a philosopher, not a film director like his father Michel. In the early 1980s, however, they wrote screenplays together and in 1994 Audiard Jr. made his directorial debut with the crime thriller "When Men Fall". Nine more feature films followed, including "Life: A Lie" (1996), "The Wild Beat of My Heart" (2006), "A Prophet" (2009) and 2015's Palme d'Or winner "Demons and Miracles". All masterpieces that are as good character studies as they are thrillers.

That's what he gets for it: Wassyl Holoborodko's election as president bursts in the middle of a well-deserved session in the loo. The history teacher was simply venting his anger about corrupt Ukrainian politics while his students' mobile phones were ringing. Unbeknownst to Holoborodko, this made him a star on social media.

With the series "Servant of the People", the law graduate, comedian, developer and lead actor Volodymyr Zelenskyi became such an electable star in 2015 that he was actually elected president by the Ukrainian people with a large majority in May 2019. The 23 episodes of the first season give an idea of why.