"Have you ever noticed that people are incapable of not caring?" It's one of the most philanthropic questions you'll hear in cinema at the moment. And the person asking it is someone who has not actually lost faith in humanity. But all the more faith in himself. In the years that literature lecturer Charlie has been hiding from humanity, he has physically become a whale. In his soul, however, he is a butterfly. With "The Whale", director Darren Aronofsky brings out the highest instincts in people.

Brendan Fraser

It is a great compliment to the make-up artist and the actor if it is only at the Oscars that you realise that both were needed at all. This is what happened at this year's Academy Awards: both the realistic-looking Fat Suit and Brendan Fraser, whose captivating performance makes us forget him again, were honoured with an Oscar. For Fraser, who was born in Indiana in 1968, "The Whale" is a comeback as a protagonist on the big screen. After great success with three parts action comedy "The Mummy", things went quiet for him in 2008.

Action, reaction, overreaction. In "Das Lehrerzimmer", writer and director Ilker Çatak tells the universal story of a supposedly good deed and its complete escalation. Cinematographer Judith Kaufmann provides the claustrophobia of a German grammar school. Anyone who thinks they have seen all kinds of school dramas has not yet looked into Leonie Benesch's big, meaningful eyes. When she thinks she's caught a pickpocket, the highly motivated maths and PE teacher's own standards fly off the handle.

Leonie Benesch

The fact that Leonie Benesch studied acting in London and has played leading roles in international series such as "The Crown", "Counterpart", "Spy City", "Around the World in 80 Days" and most recently "The Swarm" suggests that she is British. Yet Benesch was born in Hamburg in 1991 and has been considered an acting discovery since Michael Haneke's highly acclaimed black and white drama "The White Ribbon" (2009). And Benesch has not disappointed, be it in three seasons of "Berlin Babylon" or in Heinrich Breloer's docu-drama "Brecht" (2019).

No genre has proven that reality is by no means less exciting than the legend than the western. Films such as "The Revenant" and "Homesman", as well as the series "Deadwood" and "Godless", stand for this. The six-part "The English" goes one step further, cutting the traditional white male hero out of the equation altogether and focussing on a European woman and a Pawnee man in the search for law and order. What developer and director Hugo Blick unearths in the process, alongside quirky characters and impressive landscapes, are a few truths that may even be new to die-hard western fans.