Short films Taking Refuge

XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin visits the Lenbachhaus

When:
Thu, August 6, 2026, 9pm–10.30pm

Free admission

Duration:
approx. 90 min.

Meeting point:
Garden Lenbachhaus

When:
Thu, August 6, 2026, 9pm–10.30pm

Free admission

Duration:
approx. 90 min.

Meeting point:
Garden Lenbachhaus

The power to name and to categorize, the power to colonize and dominate, the power to exploit and make profit of: These films explore farming and archival film, geology and greenhouse gardening, labor and land relations. Reminding us of how ecosystems are sites of power, this short film program offers critical reflections on extraction and exploitation. Yet it also shows how nature turns into a site of refuge. Nocturnal wanderings end in a botanical garden; a walk around the lake offers healing. When acceptance grows, we are finally beginning to take root. 

Merle Groneweg, curator at the XPOSED Queer Film Festival Berlin, has put together a short film programme for the Buntes Garten Ciao. The films were selected in collaboration with Wen-Ling Chung and Samira Yildirim. 

Short films: 
Tejimola-he Moi (I am Tejimola), Aditav Dowerah, India 2025, 7 min 
While getting ready for the day, the protagonist feels the presence of something sinister, and soon comes to face it. During their confrontation, they turn to a childhood story for strength. Tejimola-he moi is an animated short film that re-tells a classic Assamese folktale, through the eyes of our protagonist’s personal experiences. It talks about queerness, gender expression, and fluidity as a form of resistance

The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, Theo Panagopoulos, UK (Scotland) 2024, 17 min
When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender film essay questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and the land.

Lolo, Ana Gutiérrez Salgado, Mexico 2024, 16 min 
LOLO lives in Xochimilco a rural area of Mexico City and works on a chinampa that belonged to their grandfather. Despite the tranquility of their piece of land, LOLO doesn't feel free to be who they are. While striving to make a living with their harvest, their non-binary identity is constantly questioned, even by themselves. One afternoon, after a hard day work at the market, LOLO reunites with KAT, an old friend. Together with her and other friends, LOLO discovers an open and safe space where they can feel free, while keeping each other’s company and cultivating their own true personality.

as a bird that briefly perches, Dorothy Cheung, UK/Hong Kong 2025, 17 min 
Departing from the filmmaker's personal experience as a diasporic artist, as a bird that briefly perches is a three-part cinematic diary that weaves together her sentiments about homeland with reference to the geology of Hong Kong; an analogy between human nature and greenhouse gardening; and her reflections on the choice of living abroad as she studies the everyday life of migrant farmers and their adaptation on foreign soil, reinterpreting agricultural processes and the migration of species. The work explores the implications of rooting, re-rooting and growing as the artist contemplates on the evolving dynamics between land and human. 

Swan Lake, Stella Traub, Germany, 2025, 5 min 
When we are ill, everything—everything we want—is just one thing: to no longer be sick. The filmmaker sees a swan in a duck pond and, with Long COVID, dreams of the realm of the healthy. An essay about enchanted patients and dreaming birds. 

From Ecuador with Love, Jonathan Brunner, Ecuador/Germany, 9 min 
A film about the discrepancy between productization and beauty, taking place on an Ecuadorian rose farm. Densely pressed and sorted according to flawlessness, the roses get prepared for transport to the Global North. But not only the roses, also the workers are part of a system. They pack and measure the roses in lockstep, without a moment's pause. A morbid look at rose production in Ecuador and the contrast between productisation and beauty. 

Rezbotanik, Pedro Gonçalves Ribeiro, Brazil/Portugal/Spain, 2025, 18 min 
After heavy nights partying with drugs and sex, Rezmorah goes to the Botanical Garden of Lisbon to get sober again. More than a park, the place is a living museum: and is amidst its tropical and exotic flora that Rez talk about their relationship with the night, with that space, and with gender, wondering what plants may have to teach us about ways of seeing and thinking queer life. 

The screening will take place at extra+: free entry to all exhibitions from 6 pm to 10 pm.