Departures tells the story of Giralda, an undertaker who accompanies deceased human beings into their afterlife. Interpreted with the means of Spanish flamenco dance and music, and set at an old East German ship canal lift, the film creates an associative fusion between Northern and Southern Europe, movement and silence, farewell and eternity.

Bailaora is the last short film from the Rubin Stein's B&W suspense trilogy Light & Darkness after the award-winning Nero and Tin & Tina. Each of these movies try to explore a different issue related to the dark side of the human beings. In Tin&Tina it was the family; in Nero it was politics; and in Bailaora it is war.

After Whim makes it through an unconventional audition for the dance piece Syncope, the choreographer remains unsatisfied with her full commitment. But what she and the other dancers experience in rehearsals is only a glimpse of the dark vision he will impose on them.