What is actually real? As a medium and art form, film has always moved between reality and fiction. This duality goes beyond the long-since blurred boundaries between feature films and documentaries. The play between illusion and reality is principally used in the narration of feature films – the deception of the viewer becomes the vehicle for suspense, the expression of the mental state of the characters, or cinematic self-reflection. Like its effects, the means a film uses to create confusion are almost inexhaustible: on a narrative level, for example, through unreliable storylines, breaks in linearity, deliberate omissions, or special formal approaches. The topic of artificial intelligence is also no longer limited to the science fiction genre or to already established motifs and characters. Breaks with reality serve as a starting point for diverse theoretical reflections and surprising multilevel filmmaking, often going beyond clearly defined genre boundaries.
The film series Cracks in Reality is dedicated to those moments where the fragile construction of reality becomes shaky. It presents films that play with subjective perspectives, distortions of space and time, and surreal moments. Content-wise, the spectrum ranges from subjective perspectives to psychological mechanisms, from collective fallacies to modern fairy tales. This is formally expressed in mockumentaries, surreal visual language, and purposefully irritating narratives. The disturbance itself becomes a stylistic device, and the crack becomes the dramatic aspect.
