The exhibition “Never Ending Stories“ is an occasion for the BIFF to contribute a cinematic reflection on the subject. The loop is a fixed component of pop culture today, including music, dance, music videos, computer games. In music particularly, the loop as a refrain is very old and has a very positive connotation: people like to hear a beautiful melody repeated; the omnipresent music hit becomes a meta-loop. In film, on the other hand, the loop is either a (positive) dream or a (negative) trauma: if something doesn’t work, then everyone would like a second chance. The film enables this pipe dream – and then plays through the negative sides of this fiction, as for example in GROUNDHOG DAY by Harold Ramis. The loop becomes a trauma and nightmare when repetition or going back in the space-time-continuum fundamentally shakes up the basic preconditions of existence – we know of course that such loops are not possible in non-fictional life. In MOON e.g. the protagonist has to recognize that he is a clone with a limited lifespan. To quote this year’s inaugural film MATRIX which also knows the loop as a problem case: “A Déjàvu is a glitch in the matrix“.