Styx

Rike (Susanne Wolff) embarks on a solitary voyage across the Atlantic. Time passes in comforting silence as muscle memory repeats well-practiced motions. When she comes up on a sinking boat full of exhausted refugees, however, she has to make a quick decision with human lives on the line-and no one else is going to help them. With no superfluous words, Wolfgang Fischer reaches into the past in order to confront the present: he discusses the refugee crisis by making references to the Greek myth of the River Styx, which the soul of every deceased person had to cross. "Since I started working on this film, 20,000 people have already lost their lives. Nevertheless, nothing has changed at all and there are still no specific solutions being offered," he said after the film's premiere in Berlin. While he never averts his gaze from this tragedy affecting countless people, he also doesn't waste time with vociferous declarations. To say something important, apparently you don't even have to open your mouth sometimes.