Superheroines without a mask

Many of the heroines in our film programme do without superpowers or flashy costumes: Calamity Jane, for example, the first Western heroine to make a name for herself in the USA in the 1860s. In our KINDERFILMFEST section, the animated film ›Calamity‹ looks at her childhood and the transformation from girl to confident heroine.

In our RETROSPECTIVE we show the first feminist film of the FRG: Ula Stöckl's ›Neun Leben hat die Katze‹ is episodic-essayistic feature film in which five types of women - the professional woman, the divorcée, the betrayed woman, the career woman, the dream woman - clash. The film is considered a milestone of German cinema and the first work by a German filmmaker to focus on female self-determination as sexual self-determination.

Her sexual awakening is also experienced by the protagonist in Agustina San Martín's Tropical Gothic fairy tale ›To Kill the Beast‹: 17-year-old Emilia searches for her missing brother on the Brazilian-Argentine border and finds herself virtually out of time. Myths and legends shape everyday life in this remote region. The ghost of an evil man is particularly feared and Emilia must face her very own fears. ›To Kill the Beast‹ is a film about female desire. The dense images and sounds of this remote border region create an eerie universe that resonates for a long time.