The Berlinale is just like its director Dieter Kosslick: Technically pension age but not slowing down, and wittier, slier, bolder, more comfortable with itself than before.
As the Berlinale celebrates its 65th anniversary,
Golden Bear-honoured guest Wim Wenders turns 70 with a new film and is enjoying his third Oscar nomination.
We have a
new Andreas Dresen world premiere to look forward to, 25 years after he was the first young East German filmmaker to show at the 1990 Berlinale, in a not-yet-reunited Germany. Another first: A Terence Malick world premiere in the German capital. Kosslick promises his friend’s elusive presence (in 2006, both men stood outside during THE NEW WORLD premiere, so you might have to look for his “presence”).
Within the framework of a strong European Competition,
the DOWNFALL’s Oliver Hirschbiegel stays with his previous preoccupation in the Hitler assassination attempt drama
ELSER - 13 MINUTES ,
with a (in his case out of) Competition spot and the programmatic subtitle “He would have changed the world” (had the worker Georg Elser succeeded in killing Hitler in 1939).
Five German competition films make it the strongest German Berlinale in years, with 69 very diverse German films overall only in second place after the US (and with Daniel Brühl on the jury).
UNE JEUNESSE ALLEMANDE is a recurring theme, to borrow the title of Jean-Gabriel Periot’s Panorama opening doc, which will take a stroll down memory lane to the revolutionary 60s. Dresen returns to post-1989 Leipzig to follow a disoriented group of friends between boredom and Neonazis in his literary adaptation. The next German Competitor, director Sebastian Schipper (who you might remember as an actor in Tykwer’s menage-a-trois THREE or from his cult film ABSOLUTE GIANTS) follows a gang of youngsters through today’s Berlin in
VICTORIA, the Berlinale’s longest film – and a real-time one-take at that.
“The film is not about a bank robbery. It is a bank robbery,” declares the director.
The
Perspektive Deutsches Kino program, initiated by Kosslick in 2001, has more Germany and wants you to “Play”. On-the-ball head programmer Linda Soeffker proclaims: “German film is happening, that’s the buzz everywhere. We want to push the envelope and show striking features that explore differing styles in new ways. It will be
magical, energetic, sad, bloody, demanding, as well as funny — and above all playful.” She will likely deliver and push formal innovation (and strong content) as in previous years, with
three debut films --all in wide-screen cinemascope— as well as four documentaries, all cementing the current strength of German film academies such as Munich’s HFF.
441 films are on offer (and 300,000 tickets to catch 975 screenings) --116 by women, many about women, including the opener-- plus 700 in the market. A number that speaks to the Berlinale’s long-term strategic success is that 86 former Talents --"emerging creatives"-- are back with 63 official films. Clearly a year of jubilation and no retirement plans in sight, with perhaps the strongest announcements in years and a promising focus on
class over glamour (not that Juliette Binoche is not glamorous, but no Clooneys or Pitts in sight this year).
I am heaping on the admiration also because the festival in previous years hadn't always put forward a coherent profile, or seemed to serve too many masters/tastes/expectations to really blow one away overall. Perhaps this year I am just blinded by the astounding number of
coups Dieter Kosslick and his programmers have scored.
Thus the Berlinale could have called a sidebar
New German Cinema Revisited, a dizzying reunion some five decades later: Wim Wenders gets the lifetime honour, a 10-film retro, and an (
out of but) Competition world premiere of his first 3D feature EVERY THING WILL BE FINE, which promises to be
“emotionally" 3D as well, as the first reviews revealed.
Werner Herzog, who won the Silver Bear in 1968 with his debut film, premieres QUEEN OF THE DESERT, his first feature in five years. It stars Nicole Kidman as Gertrude Bell and Robert Pattison as TE Lawrence, not inconsequentially shaping the future of Iraq to this day. The first stills hint at a return to the visual splendour of the Kinski films, just think desert instead of jungle.
Margarethe von Trotta (HANNAH ARENDT) joins her former bandmates with her world premiere as writer-director of THE MISPLACED WORLD starring her favourite Barbara Sukowa, also now 65. (Spain’s Isabel Croixet this year is only the second woman after von Trotta to open a Berlinale.) For
your Fassbinder fix, spend an afternoon with the grandmaster in FASSBINDER - TO LOVE WITHOUT DEMANDS by Denmark's Thomsen — or get a Teddy poster with Fassbinder smoking.
Speaking of Teddy, the Berlinale’s gay award, as well as Fassbinder:
Udo Kier, who has worked with RWF, Warhol, Schlingensief, van Sant, Madonna, and was Lars von Trier’s wedding planner in “Melancholia”, will be honoured with a Special Teddy. In stellar related Canadian news (other than the German-Canadian Wenders co-pro):
Guy Maddin’s new THE FORBIDDEN ROOM, starring Kier, opens the coveted avant-garde Forum section, which will show a whopping two thirds of its films as world premieres.
That makes Maddin the festival’s most played director (someone counted 11 official visits).
My
(rekindled) #Berlinale15 crush: Dieter Kosslick, self-proclaimed "Guardian of Films” aka “Lord of the Bears” (Berliner Morgenpost), feminist, film support networker, entertainer. His contract just extended until 2019, he has stamina, chutzpah, thick skin, and no computer (to avoid “senseless communication”). To add to his accolades,
North Korea just called him a terrorist, albeit erroneously. THE INTERVIEW, which will be playing German cinemas in February, opens with but not
at the Berlinale. But what would the festival, a post-WWII baby birthed by the destroyed city's US film officer, be without its scandals (like in the photo above, documenting Shia LaBeouf’s unclear red carpet protest last year).
Read my interview with Kosslick here in a few days.
Enjoy the Best Berlinale Ever. No hyperbole.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: Shia LaBeouf photo Siebbi RF
