Klappe
Director, Producer: Jürgen Brüning
Year: 2022
Country: Germany
Running time: 64 Minutes,
Languages: German/English/Spanish
Subtitles: English
As in one of those snuff porn movies that depicts gruesome surgical procedures, Jürgen Brüning invites us to creep into his body and catch a glimpse of what is inside his famously criminal heart: a sex-ridden public toilet, a Tearoom, or (in German) a Klappe! A dirty place where many characters will take turns not only to shock, insult and irritate us, but also to shamelessly introduce a riotous debate about several wounds regarding dissident identities and contemporary culture.
“Fuck copyright laws!” is the war-cry with which Brüning and his editor, Jörn Hartmann, defy society’s most cherished values, meandering not only through samples from his own work, but pop references from around the world as well, and a set of rousing songs by Claudia Fierke, Stefan Kuschner and Matthias Köninger, in a rowdy mix resembling an unlikely uproarious underground TV channel midnight show that could only be possible in a better world, a world swayed by romantic revolutionaries and artists.
You may say many things about Brüning’s Klappe that could scare the most temperate dispositions, that its punk attitude is anti-religious, for instance, or anti-authoritarian at best, and somehow a bit anti-everything indeed, but it’s also undeniable its core of deep compassion, as opposed to the alarming dehumanization growing amidst the queer community, a frame of mind best resumed with a cherubic choir of heartbroken porn stars inviting us to sing enthusiastically: Long Live Gay Solidarity!
Goyo Anchou, May 2025
Endless
Director, Producer: Wojciech Puś
Year: 2024
Country: Poland
Running time: 110 Minutes
Languages: polish, English, German, Ukrainian, French
Subtitles: English
Endless “forges a new, radical cinematic language”* rooted in New Wave’s storytelling, dark irony and labyrinthine mystery, bursting with queer and transfeminist diaristic echoes.
When lonely, searching for their identity, nonbinary/trans X start a new, complicated affair with transgender Frank, they are drawn into an uncanny game of feelings, which puts their emotions to the test. Relationship with the mysterious M, a collector of beauty and youth, seems like a salvation and the possibility of new beginnings. However opening to a new life imitating art has its price. Is a transition to the other side worth it?
The film builds a visual and conceptual bridge between classic movie narration and uncanny poetic strategies adapted from different visual art forms and mediums: performance, installation, VR/XR and AI engines. In that sense “Endless” dares to reach beyond the known horizons, offering the viewer to look through the eyes of a main charachter trapped in the monumental intrigue of their own desires, longings and irresolutions. “Endless” redefines the spectator’s role of a passive “content consumer” and introduces the possibility to engage audience’s senses through the mystery of becoming “the other”: made of the shattered and forgotten mirror splinters.
The New Jews
Director: Amir Ovadia Steklov
Producers: Amir Ovadia Steklov, Jürgen Brüning
Year: 2025
Country: Germany
Running time: 80 minutes
Languages: Hebrew, English, German
Subtitles: English
A decade in the making, The New Jews is a bold and provocative documentary following a group of non-Zionist Israeli Jews who flee the rise of right-wing nationalism and relentless violence. Seeking refuge in Berlin, they become entangled in the city’s layered history, only to find that their search for belonging leads them into a web of sexual, social, and political contradictions, complicated by the fetishization of Jews.
Visually witty and partially animated, the film centers around filmmakers Amir and Inés on a hunt for intimacy and sexual adventure in their new home. In a darkly humorous twist, their encounters—through dating apps and sex calls—expose the lingering shadow of Nazism, Holocaust guilt, and a disturbing objectification of their Jewish bodies.
Other participants are interrogated in a dimly lit room, confessing their conflicted relationships with Israel and the bittersweet experience of making Berlin their new home. Their testimonies reveal that the violence that once shaped their rebellious Jewish identity in Israel continues to haunt them, now appearing in a different guise in multicultural Berlin.
In a country eager to love its Jews—but only the ‘right’ kind—the film unfolds as both an ironic reminder of the world the participants sought to escape and a wake-up call to the one they now face.
Homophobia!
Director, Producers: Goyo Anchou
Year: 2024
Country: Argentina
Running time: 72 minutes
Languages: Spanish
Subtitles: English
It’s fascinating how much of a fool an insecure man, cornered and touched by his pride, can be. Throwing himself at the feet of his beloved girlfriend, crying for forgiveness, getting angry over a supposed betrayal, feeling like Christ on the cross, slamming a door, wanting to kill himself and then wanting to kill everyone else, are just some of his outbursts. The repertoire of the pathetic man is endless. And the protagonist of “Homophobia!” follows this path to the fullest, allergic to shame. So thoroughly, that he plans a possible solution: having sex with a gay guy from college and then beating him up, or making a porn movie with him. That’ll be decided later. Because they, the gays, according to his latent homophobia, are there for that.
Between pathos and repression, a thesis emerges: the frustration of being closeted is a double-edged sword that always ends up cutting the person who wears it. The logline “They’re all faggots…” on the poster for “Homophobia!” sheds light on this issue that hovers throughout the film. The idea of transparency is everywhere in Anchou. A concept sometimes associated with comfort, laziness, or a lack of flair for disguise. But the avant-garde (the aesthetic and political avant-garde that obsesses the director) fails if it dissolves into total opacity. And Anchou, a rabid and libidinous artisan of the margins, is very clear about this: breaking away from standards implies proudly and head-on embracing one’s own dissidence.
Text originally published in the CONTRACAMPO catalogue. Tomás Guarnaccia / Copyleft 2024