competing for the Student award Rising Star VIDEO
Selma
Christina Schmidt
University of Television & Film Munich
Germany
Length: 30 minutes
Historical Drama Inspired by true events
Berlin, the 1950s. Two women, one shared past. After twenty years of silence, a newspaper article draws Selma's attention to a reading by Nore Döring. The drama of their once-great love catches up with her. Berlin, the 1930s. The passionate relationship between the aspiring writer Selma and her activist girlfriend Nore threatens to break apart over their differing responses to the rising Nazi regime, as the lesbian community increasingly comes into the crosshairs of the National Socialists. While Nore remains unshakably committed to resistance — putting herself in danger in the process — the melancholic, dreamy Selma clings to her hope of safety and a career as a writer.
But at what cost?
SELMA is a portrait of a lesbian love story set against political upheaval: Selma and Nore share a dream of writing and, as activists, a set of values — until the
Nazi regime forces them to choose sides, and Nore stays active in resistance while Selma withdraws out of fear. The film rejects both the glamorous "Golden Twenties" myth and the hero-or-perpetrator narrative of the era — most people, like Selma, simply stayed quiet and hoped it would pass, though unlike her, we already know how it ended. With the far-right AfD polling around 26% nationally and similar shifts across Europe, that question isn't historical but urgent — and by placing it inside an intimate, distinctly queer relationship rather than a didactic frame, SELMA turns a small story into a continental one, socially engaged, cross-border storytelling that uses the past to illuminate a shared European present.