To conjure up the magic of being together again and again, there are love rituals all over the world. In the ARTE series "Love Rituals" Charlotte Roche tracks down these culture-specific love rituals. They sometimes seem so bizarre and strange that the western creatures from Germany, France, Europe simply seem knitted. And yet one recognizes the deeper meaning, a universal validity of the underlying motives, which also appeals to the Western romanticism. In the episode "Love Rituals in Japan" Charlotte Roche visits the Kanamara Matsuri in Kawasaki. Once a year, big phalluses are carried through the streets, girls suck on penis lollipops and boys on sugar vaginas, while older ladies make radishes from phalluses and local party chairmen bow to wooden pegs. It is an ancient ritual and it should anchor the knowledge of a healthy portion of sex in the minds of the Japanese. So how does that fit together, this visual overkill of sexual permissiveness, how he is lived at the festival - and the reluctance of the Japanese? As a cultural interpreter, Charlotte is supported by the journalist Kyoichi Tsuzuki: He is not only considered the discoverer of Haruki Murakami, but also the expert for Kinkyness. Thanks to Kyoichi, Charlotte Roche meets a free-spirited shrine priest, gets a love of Japan explained by a geisha and her son, experiences bizarre sexual practices and understands the problem of having sex in modern Japanese society.

Charlotte Roche travels to Israel to attend the Tu B'Av festival at Amuka Shrine. Hundreds of young Jews pilgrimage here to receive a blessing in prayer, which is to help quickly find the Bashert, the God-appointed partner. In the Jewish faith, before birth, God provided such a bash for every human being. Charlotte Roche travels to modern Israel and traces the question of the soulmate. As Cultural Interpreter by her side, Yanai Himmelfarb, a young Liberal Israeli who has not yet found his Bashert, sometimes finds himself dreaming about it. Her joint tour takes her to include Melech Zilbershlag, an ultra-orthodox YouTube star. In the case of Eti Landau, a matchmaker, Charlotte is allowed to learn more about the mysticism that is at the heart of the belief in a Bashert. As Charlotte Roche meets a young ultra-orthodox couple in Jerusalem who have found themselves and thus appear radical and revolutionary, viewers are in the midst of a reinvention of love in Israel. As with Rachel Levian, a modern Israeli woman who trusts that love will just develop in her.

In Kenya, Charlotte Roche participates in a dowry ceremony with the Kalenjin tribe. The value of a woman is negotiated there by the tribal elders of both families and must be paid off by the family of the man for decades. At the center of this episode is the taboo theme Love and Money. How important is the money for love? Does it matter when falling in love? Together with Kui Akariza Mahihu, Charlotte wonders about Kenyan society and marvels: money and love are a much discussed topic in Kenya and money plays an important role in the choice of a partner. Charlotte Roche explains the economic construct of polygamy and learns that in modern Kenya polyandry is on the rise and why. Love and money - Charlotte is learning in Kenya - means to see love realistically.

1009/5000 In Louisiana, Charlotte Roche explores the question of whether one can influence love through magic and if that can even work. What if you are longing to be loved, and there is a cure for it? Charlotte Roche travels to New Orleans and joins voodoo priest Sallie Ann Glassman for a voodoo love ritual. Through Crescent City, she is accompanied by Chuck Perkins, a spoken-word poet and club owner who does not believe in voodoo, but sees it as a link to his ancient African spirituality. Chuck Perkins leads Charlotte Roche through the special history of voodoo in New Orleans, introduces her to witches, priestesses, pirates, and saints, and it is he who finds love: the love of his community. For Charlotte, the journey turns into a wild ride through the city of songs and death: she cries, she laughs and learns that voodoo means far more than the mainstream pretends.

In India, Charlotte Roche seeks an answer to the interplay of love and marriage. Is the marriage a prison or empowerment? This is not easy to answer in Indian society. At the Gangaur Festival in the desert state of Rajasthan, Charlotte Roche is invited to an extended family and watches as the eldest daughter internalizes her desire for a happy marriage in a ritual. For this she adorns the divine couple Shiva and Parvati and lets them drink water at the ghat. Charlotte Roche receives support from the unusually free-thinking Divya Dugar, who explains her sisterly everything and takes her into the soul of the Indian partner relationship. It is rarely as colorful and romantic, as tourists, mostly young couples, in Udaipur, the most romantic city in India, imagine. In a remote village, Charlotte meets Roche's children's brides, and in Vrindavan, the city of the Indian goddess Krishna, she talks to widows who were rejected by their families after their spouses died. And yet, in all these encounters, there seems to be something that brings Charlotte Roche closer to love and ultimately shares with the audience.

Be it fairies, selkies - a kind of shape-shifter - or Valkyries, everywhere on the Orkney Islands you will find references to an empire beyond our world, which enriches our world above all in love affairs and with love fantasies. Charlotte Roche supports Professor Donna Heddle in this episode, who knows Orkney like no other and accompanies her to encounters. There is the couple Dee and James, who seek togetherness in loneliness, storyteller Tom Muir, who deals with the selkies and their gender roles all his life, or Becca, who is searching for narrative that has the understanding of Trying to transfer different worlds to renewable energies. In the end, Charlotte Roche will stand in the surf with her feet, an intermediate world, neither water nor land, and understand why fantasy also gives wings to love.