Seán McGovern concludes his two-part coverage of the Berlin International Film Festival.
Juliette Binoche presents the Golden Bear to Israel's Nadav Lapid for his drama "Synonyms"
There is a bittersweet conundrum with film festivals, that no matter how many films you see, you still only get one colourfully subjective corner of a greater kaleidoscope of stories. But you do get a sense both from the conversations you have in line and the energy on the ground as to what you absolutely must see. Each year we ask the same question, no different for the 69th Berlinale: was it a good year, or a bad year? The answer is... a resounding shrug of the shoulders.
Not that the festival was without worthy winners. In typically pluralistic European style, a veritable bread basket of awards were given to a range of films both in the main competition and beyond, led by our “beautiful” president Juliette Binoche. I don't know if it was a translation thing, but the amount of times that Binoche was referred to as “our beautiful president” during Berlinale was insane...
There are other adjectives, people! Talented, incomparable, brilliant, incredible... why the excessive need to keep pointing to her obvious beauty?. A roundup of some completely subjective highlights, and the festival winners including the TEDDY awards (the LGBT prizes) follows.
THE GROUND BENEATH MY FEET (dir. Marie Kreutzer, Austria)
Competing for the Golden Bear was this cold and stark drama of work and sisterhood. Lola (Valerie Pachner) works, eats, and pushes her body to the edge on her spin bike. Living ostensibly in Vienna, she mostly seems to exist in drab nondescript areas of Germany, in office blocks that seem comprised of pokey rooms and claustrophobic hallways. Somehow within her 100-hour working week she has a romantic power-play with colleague Elise. But while Elise and Lola expose more than their bodies together, Lola keeps the existence of her sister Conny a complete secret. Conny, who is living in institutional care, is a chaotic and powerful contrast to tightly wound Lola. As Lola receives calls from her sister that detail her activities, she questions just who exactly is the person in greater need of help. While Pachner's performance may be a comment on the dehumanisation of work and the dilution of love and friendship in the pursuit of the bottom line, the drab chill of Lola's life overpowers the entire film, preventing a thaw for this character and the world we're watching.
ACID (dir. Alexander Gorchilin, Russia)
Russian cinema has delivered many great films in recent years. Films by the likes of Andrei Zvyagintsev (of Leviathan and Loveless fame) and Kiril Serebrennikov address the toxic autocratic politics that have infiltrated the lives of ordinary Russians in complex and unexpected ways. Serebrennikov is a filmmaker who has been under house arrest since 2017, on trumped up "fraud" charges. One of Putin's legacies in Russia is the creation of a complicit bourgeoise. In Kislota (Acid), our protagonists have all come of age post 2000, and know nothing of a world without Putin in power. They are directionless and adrift in a society that inspires little more than the replication of the most boring aspects of the West. They party, they take drugs, they have nice apartments with doting grandmothers. But following the death of a friend, protagonists Sasha and Pete realise the lie they willfully share with their friends and families. At times stark and cruel and at other times blackly humourous, Acid is a gritty Russian teen movie.
BEFORE WE GROW OLD (dir. Thomas Moritz Helm, Germany)
A film I thought I'd enjoy, and really did, until my cinema companions talked sense into me. Before We Grow Old is a film with a big 'B' for having a truly bisexual youngish couple in the form of Maria and Niels, house sitting for the summer in a brightly lit Berlin. They both try to pick up boys and girls, sometimes unsuccessfully as in the brilliant and brazen opening scene. When Maria meets English student Chloë they begin a partially clandestine trist, as Maria keeps some secrets from her boyfriend, ultimately inviting him into the relationship dynamic which gets irritatingly trite when Chloë becomes pregnant. In the second half, which rests firmly on the bloke, the irritatingly trite becomes just irritating. Bogged down by the pregancy story, Before We Grow Old loses the potency within its portrayal of jealousy, and how even the most progressive and politically staunch people struggle to navigate the messy feelings of desire and inferiority. The film is so Berlin – make of that what you will.
WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL (dir. Rob Garver, USA)
When this film was over I asked my friend why exactly this perfectly conventional documentary had been programmed in the Panorama, which prides itself on being explicitly queer, edgy and daring? We didn't have an answer, but we didn't care. A documentary about Pauline Kael is a big wet kiss to cinema, one where you bite the bottom lip a little bit longer than necessary. With ample amounts of clips of the films she championed, interviews with the likes of Camille Paglia and filmmakers such as David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino, the film covers all from her days before the New Yorker to the bitter takedown by Renata Adler. Massively enjoyable.
PROGRESS IN THE VALLEY OF PEOPLE WHO DON'T KNOW (dir. Florian Kunert, Germany)
A true film festival experience: I went to see this deeply enlightening little documentary based solely on its description in the programme. Director Florian Kunert, takes us to his native town of Neustadt in Saxony, a place so far from both East Berlin and West Germany that it could not receive TV broadcasts and was commonly known as "the valley of the clueless." In 2015, with the arrival of refugees from Syria, the townsfolk are challenged to welcome a completely different kind of people into their lives. We see local people revisiting old factories where they once worked, designated as the homes for these young men. They share histories, and the young men ask them what life was like in the GDR, was it better or worse? For some of these people, nostalgia is the enemy of truth.
100 DAYS BEFORE THE COMMAND (dir. Khusein Erkenov, Soviet Union, 1990)
As Berlinale's Panorama program turned 40 this year, the festival celebrated by showcasing some of the sexiest, edgiest and queer films from the past four decades. It my be completely typical of me that a 67-minute Soviet film was my favourite, but 100 Days Before the Command is a sexy, hypnotic and jarring cinematic experience. Made in 1990, the film is cast in a haze of mental and spiritual exhaustion, months away from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Largely bereft of narrative, the film focuses on vignettes of three young soldiers in a Soviet Army Barracks. Here they cast furtive glances at each other's bodies but punish those who act on that desire. They suffer at the hands of their commanding officers, pushing their bodies to the limit. They fantasise about drowning. A beautiful female officer, who may not even be real, drives them to extremes. While the men are cautious with their gaze, the camera is not, with lovingly focused shots of the young men's bodies getting soapy in the banya. And you wonder why I liked a war film so much?
THE BERLINALE WINNERS
MAIN COMPETITION
Golden Bear for Best Film: Synonyms (Israel) dir Nadav Lapid, which is about a young Israeli man (Tom Mercier) fleeing to Paris with his trusty Franco-Israeli dictionary
Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: By the Grace of God (France) dir. François Ozon. Ozon's latest is a religious drama about three men (Melvil Poupaud, Denis Ménochet, Swann Arlaud) who were once childhood friends, crossing paths again
Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize (New Perspectives): Systems Crasher (Germany) dir. Nora Fingscheidt
Silver Bear Best Director: Angela Schanelec (Germany/Serbia) for I Was at Home, But
Yong Mei and Wang Jingchun both won acting prizes for the Chinese drama "So Long My Son" from Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, Chongquing Blues)
Silver Bear Best Actress AND Best Actor: Yong Mei and Wang Jingchun in So Long My Son (China)
Silver Bear Best Screenplay: Maurizio Braucci, Claudio Giovannesi, and Roberto Saviano for Piranhas (Italy), a gang drama about teenage boys in Naples hired by mob bosses
Silver Bear Outstanding Artistic Contribution: Rasmus Videbaek (A Royal Affair, 12 Strong) for the cinematography of Out Stealing Horses (Norway).
Editor's Note: You may see some of these titles pop up again in next year's Oscar race as submission from their home countries. Obviously if any of these films continue to be well received they're threats in that regard, particularly François Ozon's film (Despite his fame, France has only submitted one of his films in the past, 8 Women, though he also made the French finals for Frantz) I'd also keep an eye out, in particular, for Out Stealing Horses as a possible Oscar submission from Norway this year. Norway doesn't make a lot of eligible features in a given year and this one is based on an acclaimed novel that's been translated in multiple language and involves the Nazi occupation of Norway. It stars the very well liked oft-employed in multiple countries Stellan Skarsgård as a grieving widower with handsome Tobias Santelmann (Kon-Tiki, The Last Kingdom) playing his father in flashbacks during the 1940s. - Nathaniel
TEDDY AWARDS
Best Feature Film Breve historia del planeta verde (Brief Story from the Green Planet), dir. Santiago Loza (Argentina)
Best Documentary/Essay Film Lemebel, dir. Joanna Reposi Garibaldi (Colombia / Chile)
Best Short Film Entropia dir. Flóra Anna Buda (Hungary)
Jury Award A Dog Barking at the Moon by by Xiang Zi (China)
Other winners can be found here.