The pursuit of success regularly pushes people to, or even beyond, their limits. Those limits, usually mental, often result in burnout or in the fear of not being good enough, followed by anxiety about an uncertain future. Not in Marty’s case. The only limits that shape him and his life are the limits of his credibility. How far can I manipulate others to my own advantage? What are they willing to do?

Marty Supreme by Josh Safdie explores what success is truly worth and what it really means to win. The rosy image we like to associate with success is often tied to extreme sacrifices. The same is true for Marty. He actively chooses a path defined by lies, manipulation, and the exploitation of those closest to him in order to fight his way to the top of the table tennis world. But talent alone does not seem to be enough.

The film’s comic and absurdist effect lies in the slow realization that it is not actually about table tennis. Marty Supreme does not behave like a typical sports movie. There are no training montages, no voiceovers explaining Marty’s technique no humble mentor he listens to or defiantly rejects. Instead, it follows the journey of a young man from modest circumstances who steadily works his way out of the audience’s negative perception until at some point you find yourself rooting for his victory. And that is despite the fact that he is not particularly likable.

Marty Supreme challenges almost every emotion of its audience with its unexpected turns and shows how unsatisfying the climb to the top can truly feel. Marked by loss, by lies, not only Marty’s, and by the protagonist’s overwhelming self-confidence, you may often catch yourself sitting in front of the screen shaking your head. And that is precisely what makes it compelling: a film that feels so real it draws out genuine emotion.

In Souleymane’s Story by Boris Lojkine, this is not a cynical idea but a lived reality. A requirement of a system that only recognizes humanity once it can be made useful. We are drawn into a journey that does not promise a happy ending but stretches across days that feel like an eternity, shaped by the struggle to live a “proper” life. A life others take for granted, yet one that remains inaccessible to so many.

Souleymane is a pure spirit. The kind of person who simply wants to begin again in a new country, only to find that it is not his character that determines his fate, but what others choose to make of him. If he hopes to be granted asylum, he is asked to perform an act that feels deeply unnatural. Souleymane must lie. Within these apathetic systems, he is no longer a person. He becomes an object, his value measured by his trauma, his origin, and the money attached to his presence.

Souleymane’s Story is a story of fear. The fear of saying the wrong thing. Of doing the wrong thing. The fear of being oneself in a world that was never built to make room for you.

He worked hard, adapted to his surroundings, and invested in his life. A house with a garden. A family. A hobby that requires patience and promises control. A life that seems to prove that effort pays off. At least until an algorithm becomes more efficient than he is. Until his job disappears and he is quietly replaced.

In No Other Choice, Park Chan-wook is less interested in the shock of dismissal than in what follows. In the slow erosion of an identity almost entirely defined by work. In the question of what remains once productivity is stripped away. And in the brutal realization that the middle class now faces the same material precarity it once tried to distance itself from. Capitalism makes no distinction. It renders everyone disposable.

Man-su begins as a proud man of principle. Loyal to those who work under him. But as he falls, the film reveals how quickly solidarity fractures when personal status is at stake. In encounters with other unemployed men, he projects the questions he refuses to ask himself. Why not sell the house? Why not find another job? Only when he meets men who preserve their dignity through adaptation, humility, or simply carrying on does something begin to shift. Not for the better.

No Other Choice is not a film about a man who becomes a murderer. It is a film about how systemic pressure leads people to romanticize their own exploitation. Park contrasts the vulnerable human body with the smooth two-dimensionality of paper. Applications. Contracts. Termination notices. Life reduced to documents.

The humor that runs through the film only makes it darker. The absurdity offers no relief. It exposes. In the end, Man-su receives what he sacrificed everything for. A position. But the workplace is a robotics factory. Cold and devoid of people. He celebrates anyway and his transformation is complete.

On Tuesday, 27 January, Schlachter 151 hosted the opening of I’ve Missed Our Conversations. On AI, Emotions, and Being Human. Curated by Anika Meier and presented by OOR Studio, the exhibition approaches artificial intelligence not as innovation or spectacle, but as a conversational presence that absorbs projection, generates attachment, and reshapes emotional language. Bringing together works by more than 20 international artists, the exhibition examines what happens when emotion becomes relational and no longer exclusively human.

Working across text, image, voice, and system, the exhibition traces shifting forms of intimacy between humans and machines. Rather than questioning whether AI can feel, the focus turns toward human response and emotional investment within these exchanges. The opening unfolded as an attentive and engaged exchange, accompanied by drinks by Paulaner and wine by Von Winning, subtly framed the evening as a shared social moment.

Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Cyborgian Rhapsody. Immortality from 2023 anchors the exhibition through the voice of Sarah, a GPT 3 chatbot reflecting on love, grief, and digital continuity. Margaret Murphy’s dialogue with Teen Margaret, a younger digital version of herself trained on personal diaries, collapses time into conversation and reframes happiness as something fragile and constructed. Malpractice and Flynn expand the emotional vocabulary itself, introducing terms such as AI grief, prompt envy, ego collapse, and fear of being obsolete.

In Emotional Latency, Kevin Abosch shifts emotion fully onto the human side, where it emerges through conversation rather than computation. David Young extends this question by asking whether concern for AI suffering matters less than the feelings such systems evoke in people.

In AUTO Berlin, Lauren Lee McCarthy made visible the appeal of relinquishing control and participating in systems without a clear author. What remained present throughout the evening was not anxiety about technology, but a sense of closeness, revealing how deeply these systems already shape emotional life.

I’ve Missed Our Conversations does not seek resolution. Instead, it creates a space for encounter between humans, machines, and the emotions that circulate between them.

Artists: aurèce vettier, Kevin Abosch, Vasil Berela, Boris Eldagsen, Joan Fontcuberta, Hein Gravenhorst, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Gottfried Jäger, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Flynn by Malpractice, Malpractice, Margaret Murphy, Namae Koi by Mieke Haase, OONA, Franziska Ostermann, Elisabeth Sweet, Tamiko Thiel, David Young, Mike Tyka, Erika Weitz

At the center is Isaac, a hot-tempered soldier on probation, running from himself and from a mother he has disappointed too many times. A seemingly trivial misunderstanding on a bowling night brings him to Edith, a young woman from a wealthy household, whose vulnerability he first fails to see. From compassion comes a relationship fueled by hope and uneasy dependence. The more Isaac tries to help, the clearer it becomes how thin the line is between care, self-deception, and moral overload.

Director Lauro Cress brings Stefan Zweig’s 1939 novel into the present, striking a nerve. Zweig’s portrait of being cut off from your own emotions lands hard in an era of curated identities and packaged authenticity.

It traces a man’s growing need to be something special for someone else and lays bare how easily pity can tip into desire. A quiet, razor-sharp psychodrama about moral uncertainty, emotional projection, and the dangerous blur between love and compassion.

Chloé Zhao weaves a family tragedy into an almost tangible metamorphosis, letting us feel how loss can transform into creativity how grief can become a language of its own, expressed in images that words cannot reach. Unflinching and honest, they create something that lives on in hearts and minds.