Beyond the Screen

When does a film begin? With its first image – or perhaps with a rhythm, a sound, or a mood? The panel »Beyond the Screen« explores the creative relationship between film and music, asking what happens when music is not simply added as a soundtrack, but becomes the starting point for cinematic storytelling.

Conceived as a screening and listening session, the event opens with around 15 minutes of selected film scenes. Building on these excerpts, director Emmanuel Amoako-Jansen, ANNY, Mulay, and moderator Lena Obara discuss how music shapes narrative structures, influences writing and directing processes, and determines the rhythm of a film. The conversation also explores the deliberate use of silence and negative space, as well as the ways tempo, dynamics, and sound create emotional dramaturgies. Here, music is understood not as an accompaniment to the image, but as a narrative language in its own right.

The discussion draws in part on excerpts from Amoako-Jansen’s feature film debut »Stilllieben«, illustrating how musical thinking can already be embedded in cinematography, staging, and editing. It also offers insights into the accompanying music project »Amor Fati«, which was conceived not as a conventional soundtrack but as an independent continuation of the film’s emotional world, with twelve artists each contributing an original song. Film and music enter into a dialogue in which both media tell the same story in different ways. »Beyond the Screen« invites audiences to rethink audiovisual storytelling as an interplay of rhythm, sound, image, and silence, and as an artistic practice in which the boundaries between media continue to dissolve.

Emmanuel Amoako-Jansen is a director, creative director, and founder of the Berlin-based platform ATR. His work moves across the intersections of film, music, and visual culture, telling stories that place Black perspectives and contemporary identities at their centre. Under the ATR banner, he recently completed his feature film debut »Stilllieben«, which will be released in 2026.

Mulay combines alternative R&B, downtempo, and experimental pop into a sound that is both intimate and cinematic. Based in Berlin, the singer, songwriter, and producer approaches her music as a Gesamtkunstwerk in which sound, image, performance, and movement are inseparably connected. Blending soul, hip hop, and electronic textures, she explores themes of vulnerability, self-healing, shame, and empowerment.

ANNY fuses contemporary Afropop, R&B, and pop with West African rhythms and German-language lyrics that are both sensual and self-assured. The Berlin-based artist with Ghanaian roots writes songs about identity, self-empowerment, and desire, demonstrating how naturally and elegantly the German language can function within an international R&B context.

Lena Obara has worked for many years at the intersection of music, film, and advertising. As a music supervisor and music publisher, she supports audiovisual productions from creative music selection and international music research to composer sourcing, licensing, and negotiations. Drawing on her extensive network and experience, she connects artistic visions with the demands of international film, media, and brand productions, creating spaces in which music and image develop a shared narrative.

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