Chronovisor, the daring indie debut by Kevin Walker and Jack Auen, is an armchair mystery about a reclusive scholar and a device that can reveal the past. Blending science fiction, history and investigation, the film draws on the legend of the chronovisor - a machine said to make the past visible - and features music by Gustav Holst.

What happens when the music suddenly stops? In 1961, jazz pianist Bill Evans loses his bassist and closest musical companion, Scott LaFaro. Evans stops playing too. Grant Gee turns that silence into the starting point for an unconventional biopic, led by a phenomenal Anders Danielsen Lie as the brilliant yet troubled pianist. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director.

The destructive nature of dementia has been a source of inspiration for many a filmmaker, but perhaps never quite as unvarnished, carnal and discomforting as in Lance Hammer’s Queen At Sea. Eighteen years after his lauded debut Ballast, the independent director returns with a gut-wrenching drama that questions our understanding of intimacy and sexuality, agency and care. In it, a family’s life is upended by the rapidly declining health of Leslie, a dementia-stricken artist. She’s tended to by both her husband and daughter, but the two caregivers butt heads over Leslie’s best interests. This deeply touching drama was awarded with the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the Berlinale.

The Contes moraux follow a similar narrative pattern: a man who is already committed to a woman finds himself drawn to a second woman, leading to a moral crisis. The light-hearted, ironic La collectionneuse fits perfectly into this tradition and depicts temptation, jealousy and moral self-control, in which psychological games probe the boundaries between lust and self-deception.