Berlinale – of dreams and fears

This Berlinale, the first under the new American director of the festival, Tricia Tuttle, had a mission: the return of the film to its very own means. Tuttle acted comfortably calmly in this hysterically charged time, made it clear that hate speeches are not tolerated at the festival, but also that freedom of expression is also a good to protect if the opinions of other pain. Art is the place where it is neither about your own right nor is it about putting the film into political practice. Art does not simplify, it shows the complexity of a topic, often also its fragile and subjective form – this is not a luxury, but a school of the tolerance that is feeding from humanity.

Therefore, beyond the prestigious bears, a rather small price is great in their own claim to film art in all its facets. The Defa Foundation’s Heiner-Carow Prize went to »Palliative Station«, a documentary by Philipp Döring, who takes the time for those who went to this facility to die and those who accompany them. Is that a cruel scenery? Yes and no. The sadness of the approaching – and then occurring – ends are human. However, real joy and carefree in life are not obtained by closing the eyes in front of the end – on the contrary, the treasure of every moment of life is bound to the individual’s acceptance of one’s own finiteness.

As a topic, existential questions were in the room in all 19 competition films. This is of course very subjectively reflected

There was no year in which I didn’t shook my head why a film or an actor hadn’t received a price that I would have absolutely forgiven. So this year too: No price to Ethan Hawke as a dumped musical text Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater “Blue Moon”. This chamber game between fainting and Hybris is an acting course that he masters in a breathtaking way. So it takes revenge that the silver bear for the best acting performance in a leading role has no longer been assigned for men and women for the best acting, so a price falls away. Here Rose Byrne got him rightly in “If Had Legs i’d Kick You” by Mary Bronstein as a woman inside.

The silver bear for the best acting performance in a supporting role then went to “Blue Moon”. Andrew Scott received him for his role as a composer Richard Rodgers, who separated his copywriter hard. A jury decision that does not quite illustrate me and is probably a concession to the scott as a film and serial actor. If already the best supporting actor in “Blue Moon”, then please to Bobby Cannavale as a grandiose Barmann.

Are prices a matter of luck? Not quite, but you need happiness. There is a lot to do with the formative basic gesture of the respective Berlinale. There were already very political Berlinale and also prices that could be seen as ideological statements. This Berlinale was different, very consciously in the intermediate areas of human existence: expeditions into the unconscious. In the beginning I suspected that cheap effects should be operated here using esotericism (“Light” by Tom Tykwer as a failed opening film seemed to confirm). But in retrospect I have to revise myself: there was a lot of dreams and longings, including mysterious fears and ancestors. At a very high level and in the intelligent way that justifies art as poetic power in the country alone.

There were also two films in the competition that were titled “Dreams”. A Mexican and a Norwegian contribution. The latter in the direction of Dag Johan Hauberud received the golden bear as the best film. Three women in three generations get involved in a network of relationships – each acts against their own background. The focus is on the granddaughter Johanne, who is 16 and falls in love with her teacher. In her diary, she describes how wonderfully and terrible this feeling is for her, which the mother and grandmother also read. A highly interesting test arrangement.

Huo Meng received the silver bear for the best director for »Living the Land«, a film that works a kind of documentary authenticity, but as purely artificial creation. An atmospheric milieus study on the village life in China in the early 1990s. Traditions disappear, but what takes their place except the mere decay seems unclear. The new, we learn, not only has to be done, first a dream, a vision of the future. However, this is missing here. A subtle diagnosis that does not only affect China.

The Berlinale degree was politically without explicit. Radu Jude, who received a silver bear for the script for “Continental ’25”, said in his acceptance speech, he hoped that the International Court of Justice in the Hague will “do his work against all these murdering bastards”. There he was again, the war in Gaza, as at the end of the Berlinale last year in the arguments about the Israeli-Palestinian film “No Other Land”.

After this year “The Devil Smokes (And Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box)” by Ernesto Martínez Bucio, a film about five siblings in Mexico, who were left by her parents, won the new Perspective section, said jury member Meryam Joobeur: »We have seen men and women through the lens in recent times and in the present day Snip rifle looked, upside down and the heart of a child. We have seen the destruction of thousands of children who were dismissed by political and journalistic forces as pure collateral damage. “

With a view to the Bundestag election the day after the award ceremony, Jude also said, he hoped that the next Berlinale would not open with the “triumph of will” by Leni Riefenstahl.