The young Afghan girl Narges loves to dance. But even when her father is out of the house, she can’t do it. Her little brother also beats her up when he catches her dancing. Narges has to use her imagination.

A young Ghanaian street vendor is going about his daily business when he sees a pink balloon floating over the dusty streets of Accra. The balloon leads the boy to the backdrop of a fashion photo shoot, a completely foreign world. Inspired by what he sees, the boy begins to dance and his repressed youthful energy bubbles out of him.

20-year-old El tries to fathom his understanding of masculinity. His relationship with his father plays a major role in this. He has to confront this in order to come to his own idea of his gender image.

At a difficult turning point in his personal and professional life, choreographer Florent Mahoukou returns to the city of Pointe Noire, where everything began for him with dance. His homeland has barely developed and the people have no way of escaping their precarious situation. Only odd jobs allow them to survive. “Face to Face” is a self-interrogation with the desire to understand life in a place where coping with everyday life is an art in itself.

“Desert Heart” tells the story of a man trying to overcome the trauma of his childhood. Only when he learns to love himself will he be able to find peace. London-based fashion photographer and director Jacob Sutton tells this emotional journey primarily through movement: “There is something we all innately understand about touch and our physical relationship with each other that is often hard to put into words. This makes choreography a powerful narrative tool when it comes to telling emotionally complex stories.”

Julien Meyzindi is a dancer in the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris.  He joined the National Opera when he was only 12 years old. Today, Julien is 42 years old and has to leave. That’s the way it is, that’s the rule. Halfway between documentary film and dance fiction, “What Next?” is both a retrospective of the 30 years he spent at the Opera and Julien’s choreographic creation, with which he imagines his future. Julien is the bearer of this narrative, choreographer and leading actor of the hybrid film. It is his name, his voice, his body.

The lift of a nursing home becomes a stage as an old dancer explores the limits of his body, his memory and the passage of time. Trapped between four walls, he must confront the helplessness of his own ephemeral body shell. The leading role is played by Jan Minařík, the soloist of the Pina Bausch Theatre and the greatest Czech dancer of the 20th century.