Have you seen … yet?
As you wander through the Women*s Theater Festival, you might come across a staircase leading to Pandora’s Box—a shipping container housing video installations that also serves as an immersive gathering place for ideas and stories. Each year, Pandora’s Box creates a new constellation of film and video works. It offers a moment of respite amidst a festival charged with transformation, imagery, and energy. You can lose yourself in another world for a while—resting on the cushions inside the box with headphones on, listening to heartwarming stories from around the globe—before returning to the festival feeling recharged. Pandora’s Box is intentionally designed as an intimate space where the artworks engage with one another and with the visitors. As Pandora’s Box has evolved over the years, the range of artistic expressions has expanded from film and video to include mixed media and elements of theater and dance. We invite artists to join our collective community process and share their work and perspectives during artist talks. Featured this year are:
3.14159 – Dasha Brian ART PROJECT REVOLUTION
Ciudad Cicatrizada – Laura Arcalean
Kristalle – Carolin Martin
Open up! – Stella Nyul FAKTOR TERMINÁL
Pandora’s LightBox – Simono
Rewilding Lands, Rewilding our Stance – Guayaba Collectivo & las Barragûan
The Brutalist Death of a Brutalist Parrot – Leonie Bohrer, Laura Dal Checco, Anna Schwalgun und Alissa Wedmann THE BRUTALIST PARROTS
Undine – Saskia Corleis
Urano, Planeta do Amor – Mahanah Maciel, Elora Souza und Austine Lopes RUPTURA
Venus ohne Haut: Interview mit Samira Freitag – Viviana Kammel & Samira Freitag
WE ARE OCEAN_Berlin+Brandenburg – Lisa Rave in Zusammenarbeit mit Schüler*innen der Barbara-Zürner-Oberschule Velten und der Schule am Berlinickeplatz Berlin
Curated by Edith van den Elzen
ART PROJECT REVOLUTION is a multidisciplinary political art foundation amplifying the voices of migrant artists, women, and queer creatives. Founded by displaced artists mainly from Belarus and Ukraine, we use exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, and community events to turn art into resistance, dialogue, and transformation. We challenge censorship and exclusion while addressing human rights, refugee experiences, and LGBTQ+ narratives. By building bridges between communities, we create opportunities for fearless expression and meaningful exchange. Our long-term vision is a permanent home for artists in exile: an inclusive platform where creativity crosses borders, empowers communities, and inspires lasting social change.
Website/IG
3.14159
(Video) EN, 6:58′3.14159 explores women’s experiences through three chapters: politics, art, and war. It examines the forces that shape and constrain them – from systemic discrimination to cultural portrayals and survival in conflict zones. The title, inspired by Pi (π), symbolizes resistance, as the film’s heroines challenge the roles imposed upon them.).
Target Audience: The film is open to all audiences.
Please Note: The film contains references to war and violence, as well as depictions of scars and nudity.
Language: English
Laura Arcalean (*2000 in Heidelberg, Germany) studied Urban Planning at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City. In her academic and artistic practice, she works with photography and video, exploring the traces, gaps, and resistant practices that inscribe themselves into public space and the spaces of everyday life.
Lola Livre is an artist and activist from Mexico City. Her artistic practice encompasses performance art and interventions in public space. At the center of her work is making visible current social conflicts from a gender-political perspective. She uses the street as a place for the expression and spread of her messages and draws on graffiti as a central artistic medium.
Website/IG
Ciudad Cicatrizada
(Video) DE, 30:47’
Laura Arcalean & Lola Livre
“Ciudad Cicatrizada” follows graffiti artist and activist Lola Livre, who has found a sanctuary in the streets of Mexico City. The documentary portrays graffiti as a form of resistance and liberation that uses public space to bring to light the scars of a sexist and violent country.
Carolin Martin lives and works as an artist and filmmaker between Berlin and Marseille.
She is a master student of the Berlin University of the Arts. Her artistic work
often takes as its starting point fairy tales she has written herself, featuring
female protagonists shaped by mythological and fairy-tale narratives.
In her work, she questions outdated notions of romantic love and femininity.
Website/IG
Kristalle
(Video) DE, 20’Carolin Martin
Neige eats a slice of cake from a pastry chef and turns into a woman of sugar. After another transformation, she wakes up in the garden of a strange wizard and digs her way out of the earth surrounding her. More courageous than before, she takes her fate into her own hands.
Target audience: Everyone, especially those interested in feminism, fairy tales, and art; not rated by the FSK; recommended for ages 6 and up.
Language: German Subtitles: English
Stella Nyul (is a 24-year-old Hungarian artist, studying and working in animation, illustration and graphic design.
Faktor Terminál creates its performances mostly in the theatrical, artistic form that still only a few people choose today in Hungary. It is a meeting of professional creators with civilians, not only in theatrical space, in high artistic quality, responding to current societal problems.
Website/IG
OPEN UP!
(Video) keine gesprochene Sprache, 3:20’Stella Nyul & Faktor Terminál
This proposal brings together organizations from Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic with the aim of raising social awareness about the real-life situations and danger surrounding human trafficking. Our film aims to make you feel something that you would rather put in the back of your mind. Disgust, uneasiness, discomfort. We wanted to create a box, a room, where people experience the effect of an act so sick it should never occur. But it does; there is a demand and a supply.
Target audience: General audience – ages 12 and up.
Language: No spoken language.
Simono is an audiovisual artist. She works with anatomical forms, temporary installations, and signs and symbols. She uses drawing, audio, video, and laser cutting and is a Taiko Player.
In the 1980s, she studied visual communication at the HdK/UdK Berlin and continued her education in the field of audiovisual media, partly through self-study. Her work is currently on view at the Openart Lausitz Biennale; previously, she directed the light and space project um|raum at Britz Castle.
She acts in feminist and queer contexts for years. She was born in (West) Berlin and lives and works in her studio in Berlin-Neukölln.
Website/IG
Pandora’s LightBox
(Animation in Laternen-Objekt, S/W ) 2022-2026, non-verbal, 10:14’Simono
Drawings—white on black—emerge in a visible process. The entire film represents the process of clarifying and examining forms, figures, and ideas on their own terms before encountering others in discussion and discourse. What does an embryo, a torso, or a demon mean?
Target audience: This work is for an audience interested in art, culture, theater, and feminist issues
Language: German, partly English.
Guayaba Colectivo is a trandisc research ecology rooted in the flooded savanas of Colombia. Through restoration ecology, art and embodied practice, we explore how relationships between bodies and territories cultivate ecological regeneration.
Website/IG
Rewilding Lands, Rewilding our Stance
(Video) EN, 6’
Guayaba Colectivo
This art video poetically expresses how we are living in times of ecological collapse. Our consumption behaviour has made us reach and pass tipping points of no return. Biodiversity loss, extreme weather, climate catastrophes, human genocide, forced migration… and yet…
We keep “paving pulse(s).
Extracting feelings.
Deforesting souls.
Producing scarcity.
Glorifying speed,
Massifying fear,
Consuming sordidly
Our self-denying tears…”
How are we accepting socio-ecological transformations on our planet and still be far from societal change?
Target audience: Anyone interested in the changes our planet has undergone since the dawn of the industrial age and in maintaining a sustainable approach.
Language: English
The Brutalist Parrots are a FLINTA* collective exploring movement as a shared language. They meet at the intersection of contemporary, urban and club dance, where the body becomes a site of experimentation. Formed in Mannheim in 2025, they collaborate on works investigating the relationships between body, space, social structures and community. Through collective movement, they explore how bodies connect, support and reshape their environments, opening spaces for care, resistance and mutual empowerment.
Website/IG
Project link: https://filmfreeway.com/projects/4182414
Our IG profiles:
Leonie Bohrer @loewen.feder/
Laura Dal Checco @lauradalchecco/
Anna Schwalgun @anna.amary/
Alissa Wedmann @pdrschnik/
Cota Projects @cotaprojects/
The Brutalist Death of a Brutalist Parrot
(Video) keine gesprochene Sprache, 5:45′The Brutalist Death of a Brutalist Parrot investigates the structures that shape our everyday lives. Brutalist architecture becomes a metaphor for rigid systems in which forms of patriarchal violence can emerge and persist, often invisible, yet deeply embedded. In contrast, the film highlights the necessity of community: spaces of solidarity where safety, care, and mutual empowerment can grow. Through collective movement, we make resistance visible. The body becomes a site of connection, support, and shared strength.
Target audience: General public – regardless of language, age, or cultural background
Language: No spoken language
Saskia Corleis studied German language and literature as well as acting in Kassel and Hamburg, obtaining state-recognized professional stage qualification upon completion of her studies. Since then, she has worked as a freelance artist, actress, journalist, and voice artist across the fields of theater, film, performance, and audio art.
Website/IG
Undine
(Video) DE, 2:37’Saskia Corleis
A visual poetry film about the mythical Undine—a creature of the sea.
Undine speaks of moods, images, and soundscapes.
A personal and artistic exploration of letting go of perfection and finding the courage to turn ideas into reality.
Target audience: Anyone who enjoys poetry and would like to linger for a few minutes and immerse themselves in a mythical world.
Language: German with English subtitles
Ruptura is a Brazilian audiovisual collective dedicated to producing works that explore themes of identity, gender, memory, and human rights. Formed by young
filmmakers from Salvador, the collective develops projects committed to original storytelling and to amplifying dissident perspectives in contemporary cinema. Urano, Planeta do Amor is part of this artistic research, offering a sensitive portrayal of the trans experience and the possibilities of love, care, and resistance.
Website/IG
Urano, Planeta do Amor
[Uranus, Planet of Love]
(Video) BR, 17′
Ruptura
Uranus, Planet of Love follows Elora, a young transgender woman living in Salvador, as she navigates the challenges of love, identity, and belonging in a society shaped by prejudice and rigid gender expectations. Her life changes when she meets Yuri, a man who finds himself questioning the beliefs and social norms that have defined him after unexpectedly falling in love with her.
As their relationship deepens, they must confront discrimination, fear, and the pressures imposed by those around them. Together, they embark on a journey of self-discovery, challenging conventions and redefining what it means to love freely in a world that often refuses to understand them.
Romantic drama
Ages 14+
Language: Portuguese (Brazil) Subtitles: English
Viviana Kammel lives and works in Berlin as an author and artist. She studied Film Studies and Art History at the Free University of Berlin and works at Filmgalerie 451. She has held residencies at Villa Kamogawa (Goethe-Institut) in Kyoto and the Schloss Wiepersdorf Cultural Foundation, and is the editor of the magazine *Monster, Monster, Monster Girls!*.
Samira Freitag studied Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. As a master student (*Meisterschülerin*) at the UdK, she was nominated for the President’s Prize in 2017. Her work explores transformation, the body, and symbolic references. She lives and works in Berlin.
Website/IG
VENUS OHNE HAUT
(Video) DE, 22′Viviana Kammel & Samira Freitag
The starting point for this interview film is an installation by the artist Samira Freitag, which, drawing on the myth of Marsyas, explores the theme of flaying. The myth recounts how the satyr Marsyas was flayed alive after losing a contest with Apollo. For the film, a diptych was created that combines the myth of Marsyas with the figure of Venus, goddess of love, beauty and fertility. In the collage, a figure of Venus is dismembered and reassembled using parts of photographed models. To create this, the heads of the photographed models were glued onto the exposed bodies of anatomical wax models, presenting us with a ‘Venus without skin’.
Target audience: General audience, especially those interested in feminism, fairy tales, and art; not rated; recommended for ages 12 and up.
Language: German Subtitles: English
Lisa Rave is a filmmaker, and photographer working at the intersection of artistic practice, research and higher education. Her work critically engages with climate change, cultural loss, and human–environment relations, with a strong focus on colonial and neo-colonial structures shaping ecological, technological, and cultural systems.
Alongside her institutional work, she has held international research fellowships and residencies, including Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the Climate Action Artist Residency of the German Federal Foreign Office and have been a fellow of the TBA21 Academy.
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WE ARE OCEAN_Berlin+Brandenburg
(Video) 2019, DE, 16:09′
ARTPORT_making waves
The film reflects on a series of workshops on the topic of climate change and the ocean, which were conducted by the artist in summer 2019 with high school students in and around Berlin as part of the project WE ARE OCEAN commissioned by ARTPORT_making waves. The focus is less on the documentary depiction of those events and insights than on Rave’s impressions of the encounter with various young individuals, their ways of seeing, behaving and acting as well as the contradictions with which they were more or less explicitly confronted regarding the topic. This includes their interaction with the audio- visual media. Another layer of the film incorporates sounds and moods that more freely take up the concrete place of Berlin and the abstract space of association of the sea in order to engross both conditions as a discursive and aesthetic interface.
Target Audience: Everybody, no restriction in age or background
produced by ARTPORT_making waves
a film co-created with the students of Barbara-Zürner-Oberschule Velten and Schule am Berlinickeplatz Berlin)