Berlin/London
Wrap of the Bird’s (No1) first Berlin Film Festival experience (arriving on Tuesday, February 18); Associate Editor Suman Bhuchar was also there earlier*…
WITH ITS once London based and American born new director Tricia Tuttle, many felt Berlinale had made a welcome and solid return to form.
Last year, the festival was accused of antisemitism as several filmmakers denounced Israel’s reaction to its October 7 attacks.
This year, those political controversies were mostly absent and the festival appear to applaud solid, old school European filmmaking. American director Todd Haynes was the main competition jury chairman.
and Hege Hauff Hvattam with their Golden Bear ©DickMichaelDeckbar
The top award – the Golden Bear, went to the Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud for his ‘Drømmer’ (‘Dreams (Sex Love’)) and is the final instalment of a trilogy which started with Sex and then Love. In this Golden Bear winning feature, a young girl falls in love with herteacher and starts to write about it. Haugerud mentioned the importance of reading, both in his stage acceptance speech and at the independent jury award ceremony, where it triumphed too.
The festival had some starry galas – Timothee Chalamet rolled into Berlin with his Bob Dylan biopic, ‘A Complete Unknown‘.
premiere of ‘A Complete Unknown’
©AlexanderJanetzko
Star director South Korean Jong Boon Ho of ‘Parasite‘ fame brought another hot Hollywood property to Berlin – Robert Pattinson plays the lead in Bong’s new ‘Mickey 17‘ which will be out in theatres in the UK on March 7. (Our review is here).
www.asianculturevulture.com Associate Editor Suman Bhuchar was among the first people to see it and reviewed it positively.
Of the Indian films, none won awards or were cited in the any number of independent and newspaper reader awards Berlinale seems to specialise in.
Leela Varghese, an Indian Australian did triumph with the first prize, Teddy Award, presented to the best LGBTQIA+ film screened at the festival.
Co-written and co-directed with her animator partner Emma Hough Hobbs, the film is a much deserved winner for its humorous, quirky and energetic tale – ‘Lesbian Space Princess‘. It is all set to be a cult hit and make international stars of Varghese and Hough Hobbs – who are already a known quantity, we believe, in their native Australia. We saw it at its world premiere screening and the love for the film was as palpable. (Here is our review of the film).
Robert Pattinson ©AlexanderJanetzsko
‘Letters from Wolf Street‘ is a timely and critical distillation of what it feels like to be a newish immigrant in Eastern Europe.
Filmmaker Arjun Talwar combines humour, honesty and reflection in his documentary shot with his neighbours in a street in Warsaw, Poland.
He befriends a Roma Gypsy family and there is an immediate connection. It is widely believed that this community left India some centuries ago and their Roma language is derived from Sanskrit. Talwar spoke to us in a video interview about the many concerns old and established immigrant communities also have about the tide of feeling against those whose original ethnicity is not white (western) European. (You can see the interview here – below)
The General Election held in German on Sunday (February 23), which saw the centre and hard right triumph was hardly visible or noticeable personally – apart from street posters – but several filmmakers did more than allude to its worrying dimensions.
‘Lesbian Space Princess’ ©Kyahm Ross
Of the South Asian (Indian) fictional fare – ‘Baksho Bondi‘ (‘Shadowbox‘) was well received and acv gave it three stars – (Read the review here). Directors and couple Tanushree Das and Saumyananda Sahi show that the Bengali cinema continues to be in rude health. Unfortunately, both were ill in the later stages of Berlinale and we couldn’t speak to them.
Auteur director Rima Das is well known for her global festival debut feature, ‘Village Rockstars‘ and screened her follow up, ‘Village Rockstars 2‘ here. Picking up the character of Dhunu (Bhanita Das), Das- no relation to her lead character – filmmaker Das displays much sensitivity, skill and care. An aspiring guitarist in India’s north-east region of Assam, Dhanu has to contend with an ailing widow mother who has been the sole breadwinner in the family, while her feckless older brother is more interested in drinking, than he is in improving the family’s precarious finances. Dhanu comes of age and there are echoes of Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, following a single character’s life journey effectively.
‘Village Rockstars 2‘ premiered at Busan late last year and won the prestigious Kim Jiseok award there. We have an interview with Das done shortly after her win there. It wasn’t possible to catch up with her in Berlin but we sincerely hope she and her film will come to London
Film Festival in October.
© Vincent Prochoroff
More widely, we were not able to see any of the prizewinning films. ACV did see the Spanish ‘Sorda‘ (‘Deaf‘) which was an independent award winner and deals with a new deaf mother contending with her hearing partner and the changes that come with the first birth of a child.
On a more personal note, the public transport strikes (February 19-21) caused some disruption – a day of cab rides and one long walk!
But the weather in this half of the festival was better – from about Wednesday (February 19) it got milder and the sun shone and sunglasses would have helped.
All the cinemas are warm (in temperament and temperature – an important consideration early on with the sub-zero conditions), distinctive and Bird No1 was surprised (on its first visit) that the introductions and subtitles are often in English only.
It was easy to gain entry through the live ticket website and enables entry into public screenings. Like London Film Festival (LFF), the cinema-going public are all important – the fest has tickets to
sell and on that score, it was hugely successful.
The festival saw more paying customers than it did last year – a reported 336,000 – a triumph for any festival and Tuttle can take heart from this. All the screenings we attended – more public with only one press one (‘La Cache/ (‘Safe House‘) – had good support.
Bravo Berlinale!
Tuttle does consider the possible change in political climate in an interview with Deadline (before the result of Germany’s General Election) and it will be interesting to see how such sensibilities do or don’t play out next year. (Sailesh Ram)
There are further reviews to come ‘Village Rockstars 2’; ‘Vaghachipani’ (‘Tiger’s Pond’) and Sorda, Yunan, La Cache (Safe House), The Incredible Snowwoman, The Settlement and Honeybunch.
https://www.berlinale.de/en/home.html
We are celebrating 10 year of making videos at the Cannes Film Festival this year (May 13-24). If you want to know more subscribe here please!
Winners of the independent juries – Panorama section Audience winner: ‘Sorda’ (‘Deaf’) – review coming – https://www.berlinale.de/en/festival/awards-and-juries/further-prizes.html
