Film-Days 2026:
Stories Tell Us
HEIDELBERG / EST. 2023
heartblicke began in Heidelberg in 2023 as a small initiative bringing together cinema and social justice. It has since grown into a multimedia storytelling project centred around empathy, new perspectives and ethnographic ways of looking at the city and the world around us.
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WHY HEARTBLICKE
The name heartblicke brings together several meanings. Blicke means “glances” or “looks” in German, while heart suggests an alternative to looking only through the lens of reason and contains the word art.
At the same time, heartblicke sounds like hart-Blicke: difficult or challenging glances. Together, these meanings point towards the challenge of looking with empathy and artistic attention, especially towards what is more comfortably left unseen.
“A look can hold empathy, art, difficulty and attention at once.”heartblicke / a name in several registers
ROOTED HERE, REACHING OUT
Film creates a shared space to encounter lives, histories and realities that can otherwise remain distant.
Multimedia stories make room for empathy, new perspectives and careful ways of listening.
Workshops and conversations bring personal experience into dialogue with the social worlds around us.
THE PROJECT AND ITS GUIDES
Rooted in Heidelberg and the Rhein-Neckar region, heartblicke creates spaces for encounters with stories, memories and realities that reach beyond our immediate surroundings.
ORGANISING ASSOCIATION
heartblicke is organised under the umbrella of this Heidelberg-based association, which has spent more than two decades fostering artistic and cultural exchange between Europe and the Arab worlds.
ETHICAL AND POLITICAL INSPIRATION
The project was co-conceived and continues to be guided by the work and experience of Dr. Harsh Mander: activist, writer and scholar.
A CONTINUING INFLUENCE
Dr. Mander's founding of Karwan-e-Mohabbat, the Caravan of Love, remains an important ethical and political inspiration for heartblicke.
SUPPORTING THE WORK
heartblicke is funded by the Fonds Soziokultur, through the programme of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM), and by the Zentrum für Kulturelle Teilhabe Baden-Württemberg, supported by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden-Württemberg.
A SHARED PRACTICE
heartblicke brings stories, memories and realities into encounter: in Heidelberg, across the Rhein-Neckar region and beyond its immediate surroundings.
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