Daddio © Leonine Who hasn't had this happen to them? You get into a taxi and two minutes later you're in the middle of an in-depth discussion about politics, philosophy, life or love. In "Daddio", a young IT analyst throws herself into the back seat of Clark's car at JFK airport. The New York taxi veteran has an eye for people and problems. And screenwriter Christy Hall proves in her directorial debut that she has a flair for tight spaces and tense situations. The latter is built up by a shrewd Sean Penn and an only seemingly fragile Dakota Johnson.

Dakota Johnson
Dakota Johnson was born by chance in Austin, Texas, where her father Don Johnson was filming the thriller "The Hot Spot" in 1989. Dakota spends a large part of her childhood on film sets, either those of her father or her mother Melanie Griffith, until she finally appears in front of the camera herself at the age of 10 in her stepfather Antonio Banderas' directorial debut. However, it was not until 2017 that she achieved worldwide fame as the female lead in the hotly debated film adaptations of the "Fifty Shades of Grey" book series.

A small piece of the cake © Alamode Film It is the young women in Iran who are increasingly rebelling against the mullah regime and appearing in public without their headscarves. It is the older women in Iran who can still remember the more westernised life under the Shah before the Islamic Revolution began in 1979. So nostalgia resonates when Mahin meets up with her friends, who are all widowed like her. Mahin's taxi journeys are the only times she meets a man. Among the drivers, she is particularly fond of Faramarz.

Maryam Moghadam
At this year's Berlin Film Festival, "A Small Piece of the Cake" was one of the highlights of the competition, not least because it dealt with a series of forbidden things in Iran (including alcohol and dancing) in a comedic way. In this respect, it was no surprise, but nevertheless a violation of human rights, that director Maryam Moghadam, who was born in Tehran in 1970 and still works there today, and her co-director Behtash Sanaeeha were banned from leaving the country and were therefore unable to present their film at the festival.

The Sympathiser © HBO In Europe, the Vietnam War is only known as a military fiasco in the USA, which was made into Oscar-winning films such as "Apocalypse Now" and "Platoon".

in 2015, Vietnamese author Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote the black-humoured espionage thriller "The Sympathiser", which promptly won the Pulitzer Prize. South Korean director Park Chan-wook ("Oldboy", 2003) and Canadian actor Don McKellar ("eXistenZ", 1999) adapted the material into a series in which the young Australian star Hoa Xuande plays the lead role, comedienne Sandra Oh his lover and Robert Downey Jr (almost) all the other roles. Highly amusing and worthy of an award.

Lorelei and the Laser Eyes © Annapurna Interactive Tricky number puzzles that open doors and labyrinths that pave the way with increasing levels of difficulty and increasing internal logic are responsible for the fact that players of "Lorelei and the Laser Eyes" can always make new discoveries. It is therefore worth entering the abandoned hotel in Syracuse, Italy, which serves as the setting, again and again. The fact that the design is also reminiscent of a horror film from the 1950s - including mysterious phone calls and mysterious messages - doesn't detract from the fun, especially among film fans.