link to the trailer

my grief grows unapologetic
14:50min, 2025 (experimental film)
drawings: sofia bempeza
music/sound collages: fine freiberg
editing/post production: fine freiberg

The animation is made of drawings and poetry particles that are composed in a vibrant dark-lighted collage. It engages with love, deviant sexualities and kinky sex practices connected to loss and grief. Bodily autonomy goes along with situations of vulnerability, inherited trauma(s) and the attempts to cut through im/possible desires and phantasies. The script refers to an impasse, a situation of disagreement and a condition of temporarily paralysis. Physical exhaustion and queer desires are mixed with liquid memories and somatic geographies. My gland is my land. My Grief Grows Unapologetic also contains quotes of the poem "Revolution" by the unknown female poet Nishi Junko (Japan). Junko, in our interpretation, acknowledges the situation of bringing to a standstill, of accepting the loss of (romantic) love songs, or terminating a love contract. (text by s.b.)

The film is a collaboration between Sofia Bempeza (visual artist, poet) and Fine Freiberg (visual artist, experimental film maker).

Premiere at SEXY SOLIDARITIES - Bodily Autonomy, Trauma and Protest, Exhibition at Semperdepot, Porn Film Festival Vienna 2025

into the void
video installation
7:12min, 2024 (experimental film, loop)
editing/post production: fine freiberg

Into the Void is an immersive video installation that investigates the evolving dynamics of the Anthropocenic landscape. Utilizing multi-channel video projections and an enveloping soundscape, the work presents environments where ecological systems appear to respond to human-induced transformations. The installation foregrounds the agency of non-human forces, positioning the landscape not as a passive backdrop but as an active participant in a shifting ecological order. Through visual sequences depicting environmental instability—such as glacial retreat, wildfires, and habitat degradation—the piece explores the complex entanglements between human activity and planetary processes. By immersing viewers within these destabilized terrains, Into the Void offers a space for critical reflection on the consequences of anthropogenic impact. The installation contributes to ongoing discourse in visual culture and environmental humanities, emphasizing the need to reconsider conventional narratives of human-nature relations in the context of ecological crisis.

Premiere in 2024

geontologies of memory
video installation
(in progress)

Geontologies of Memory is a research-based video installation that examines the politics of archival practice and the ways in which memory is shaped, restricted, and mediated through institutional control. Through juxtaposition and layering, the installation explores how archives not only preserve but also construct narratives of power, omission, and resistance. One part of the project remains deliberately open, acknowledging the evolving nature of memory work and the incomplete status of historical knowledge. Geontologies of Memory interrogates the material conditions under which memory is stored and accessed, proposing the archive as both a site of authority and a space of potential disruption. The installation invites viewers to consider how histories are made visible—and what remains obscured.

in collaboration with: carolina kappa, lisabona rahman, elske rosenfeldt and others

covidian dreams
stop motion film
(in progress)
editing/post production: fine freiberg

Covidian Dreams is a stop-motion animation film that explores the psychological landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of dream imagery. Drawing on widespread reports of heightened and often dystopian dream activity during periods of lockdown and isolation, the film captures the surreal and fragmented logic of the subconscious under crisis. Crafted using paper and plasticine, the materiality of the animation reflects the tactile and improvised qualities of life during the pandemic—marked by domestic confinement, uncertainty, and emotional flux. Visually, the film oscillates between absurdity and unease, mapping inner states of anxiety, disorientation, and transformation. Rather than offering a coherent narrative, Covidian Dreams unfolds as a sequence of loosely connected vignettes, mirroring the elusive and unstable character of dreams themselves. The work situates personal psychic experience within a collective historical moment, offering a reflection on how crisis permeates not only public life but the intimate terrain of the imagination.

on war
(2:40min, 2022)
Found Footage and Crass Animation Desk Techniques
experimental short film
Music: fine freiberg
Postproduction: fine freiberg
16mm scan: francy fabritz
Grading: francy fabritz

On War is an experimental meditation on post-war trauma, built from decaying 16mm found footage and Super 8 Material in a postwar landscape in Georgia in 2015—centered around haunting images of a man pedaling on an indoor bike, trapped in a motion that leads nowhere. The footage is fragmented while raw animations etched directly onto the film surface claw through the frames like buried memories. War isn’t shown—it echoes through visual dissonance, ruptured sound, and obsessive gesture. The man cycles as if escaping a memory that clings to him, pedaling through layers of trauma, archival debris, and scrawled war iconography. A crass animation desk becomes the battlefield—each frame scratched, burned, or overdrawn, revealing a psyche in collapse. The sound design tries to hold everything together. On War visualizes trauma not as history, but as an unending present—an internal conflict playing on an endless loop.

this is no simple reform
(4:20min, 2009)

This Is No Simple Reform is an experimental short film inspired by Gloria Steinem’s provocative quote, challenging the rigid gender norms ingrained in society. Using vintage advertisements from the Rick Prelinger Archive, the film dissects the subtle but pervasive messaging that enforces gender conformity. The archival footage, layered and fragmented, is presented using a stereo projection technique, creating an immersive experience that amplifies the tension between the idealized body and the reality of human experience. As the images flicker between two screens, they evoke the fractured nature of identity under the pressure of societal expectations. The stereo projection heightens this sense of dissonance, pulling the viewer into a more visceral confrontation with the illusions of beauty and gender conformity. Through this technique, This Is No Simple Reform not only critiques the advertising industry but also calls into question the slow, often painful process of transformation toward true gender equality.

i don´t feel safe
(3min, 2008)
drawings: fine freiberg
post production: fine freiberg
music: fine freiberg

I Don’t Feel Safe is a raw, intimate exploration of transgender embodiment, drawn frame-by-frame from a sequence of personal photographs. Through animated linework, the film traces gestures of discomfort and survival—hands bent across a chest in early puberty, the quiet choreography of hiding, folding, reshaping. Each movement echoes the weight of living in a body that feels misaligned, exposed, and unchosen. The repetition of gesture becomes a language of resistance, a silent scream turned into art. The drawn lines waver, stutter, vanish—reflecting the fragility of identity under pressure, and the violence of being unseen. There is no narrative arc, only sensation: a visual diary of what cannot be spoken aloud. I Don’t Feel Safe does not explain—it shows what it feels like to inhabit a space between. Between image and body, between visibility and fear, between the desire to disappear and the urgent need to exist.

ausreise / exit
3min, 2007
post production: fine freiberg
music: fine freiberg

Ausreise / Exit is a quiet elegy in celluloid, an experimental film drawn from Super 8 family footage—an intimate homage to a grandmother recently gone, whose presence before the lens was luminous and unafraid. The camera, then still a new witness in domestic life, captures her in fleeting rituals: a sideways glance, a burst of laughter, the way she performs herself for the machine with tender defiance. Each frame trembles with time, layered with loops and pauses, as if the film itself resists letting her go. Her movements become a choreography of memory, and the act of filming—once casual—now becomes sacred. Ausreise / Exit is not a departure, but an unfolding. A reweaving of the familial archive into something more fractured, more alive. Through the fragile gaze of the Super 8, the film becomes both an exit and an entrance—into grief, into presence, into the quiet resistance of being seen.

theatre productions
la danse d´amazon / Rimini Protokoll
kritter / Turbo Pascal
drag & drum / Heinrich Horvitz
feuer und flamme / Antonia Baehr
die hörposaune Antonia Baehr & Jule Flierl
w wie wollmäuse / Antonia Baehr
hexploitation / SheShePop
face / dgtl fmnsm Hebbel am Ufer
Kein Schöner Archiv / Nuray Demir & Michael Annof Hebbel am Ufer
Voice Elevator / Isabell Spengler & Neo Hülker
NSU Tribunal / Schauspielhaus Köln

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