“I would suggest a sturdy mindset when walking into this film,“ was Berlinale head Dieter Kosslick’s recommendation for the only German film in competition at the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. In the German capital, that of course is a badge of honour more than a viewer discretion warning. "Many of the 400 films this year are claiming the right to happiness,“ is Kosslick’s common denominator, and he expressly mentioned the “gigantic conflict” fought out in
newcomer Anne Zohra Berrached’s 24 WEEKS.
It all starts with a good laugh.
Protagonist Astrid is a successful TV standup comedian, doing a shtick about her pregnancy. I was skeptical about this choice, but it works well as a foil throughout: It grounds Astrid, it gives the audience a way in, it adds public scrutiny on her private decisions. Her partner Markus is played by Bjarne Mädel, a well-known and outstanding German TV comedian himself, who adds another layer of normalcy and warmth to cushion what’s to come.
The first few scenes establish a loving, supportive, playfully happy and carefree private world. Astrid and Markus have sex, their 9-year-old daughther Nele bursts in, a pillow fight ensues. The husband-manager cuts Astrid‘s toe nails when she can't reach down anymore as they tease each other. The drop height is high.
The sudden unfairness of the baby’s Down syndrome diagnosis hits like a sledge hammer. The doctor’s staff talk pancake recipes while the couple’s world stops.
We don’t hear the bad news, we only see the processing on the parents’ faces. What are we going to do? The couple carries on, they fall back on their shared sense of humour, discussing the political correctness around derogative names for disabled children and finish with every parent's question: "I wonder what he’ll look like,” says the father. “He will look like you. But with Down,” says the mother.
In the car after the initial shock, the couple are singing “Happy People” together, “say hallelujah!” Immediately, they are punished with an accident. An obvious metaphor, but dramaturgically it works (mostly) and keeps the film engaging in its ups and downs and shades of gray, instead of taking us on one long down-hill ride.
Their environment's reaction ranges from a shocked “Oh fuck” to a desperate "Perhaps it's a chance." But as the fortune cookie on the table reads: "
The strong are stronger than their bitter losses,” the parents announce they will have their son. The overwhelmed babysitter quits with the words “That’s gross!” A barrage of impressions and perspectives for the viewer as for the couple on screen, nearly too much, but always just nearly, as Zohra has a knack for catching herself before it might get kitschy. She backs every scrutiny of her choices with the research derived from her numerous parent interviews.
Cry you will, but because the film is intense, gripping, tough, fearless, heart-breaking and empathic. It runs the gamut of doubt, fear, being overpowered, but it never loses its audience along the way.
We are getting nervous when the (real) doctor is getting nervous at the next exam. Again, we only see the close-up of Astrid's face. A
gut-wrenching, never ingratiating Julia Jentsch, who was Oscar-nominated with SOPHIE SCHOLL, is a contender for her (second) Silver Bear for best actor. The silent news of a severe heart defect remains off camera. "What can we do? -- Nothing. You have to respect the power of nature, it's a matter of fate,” is the cruel but necessary truth.
A myriad of simple but tough questions beautifully permeate the film and Astrid and Markus‘ painful decision-making process around the question of a potential late-term abortion: How can you be the mother you want to be? Can I handle it? What is right or wrong? There are no answers to be had. Every protagonist is stunned and troubled in their own way, down to the little girl who yells “Why do you never tell me anything?". Legally, the final big decision in the room, of abortion after the 24th week, when an embryo is viable, is not based on the child’s diagnosis but the mother’s physical and mental capacity for dealing with a severely disabled child.
The prenatal images that intersperse what the director calls her
“collage” style --a feature film with documentary elements, mostly reflected in the real-life experts in the medical scenes and the hand-held camera-- look like CGI but are real and marvellous and shown on film for the first time. You can tell that the filmmaker burns for her film and the topic, which she said the doctors were more than happy to finally talk about. The surprising statistic that triggered the project, she reports: 90% of women in Germany facing this news choose a late-term abortion. The audience get a sense of how much this arduous process after the diagnosis of a genetic glitch challenges one's personality, how much it rattles the cage of one's convictions and humanity.
Zohra continues, more polished and streamlined, where she left off with her debut TWO MOTHERS, which won an award at the 2013 Berlinale and looked at the contentious personal and legal questions surrounding sperm bank access for lesbian couples (The couple from TWO MOTHERS unnecessarily appears in 24 WEEKS, with their now newborn preemie in the ICU).
What we take away from this film —
a film that doesn’t judge and doesn’t position itself beyond being pro-choice— is that you can't know others’ suffering (although Zohra gets us startlingly close) and that you can’t make this decision abstractly.
The (real) midwife who comes in towards the end is a substitute priest figure, taking confession, the first person Astrid can make some sort of peace with.
And when you think the film is over there's an intriguing, courageous and forward-thinking coda.
Four years ago, we showed you Andreas Dresen’s harrowing drama STOPPED ON TRACK at the European Union Film Festival Toronto. To this day, it is my favourite Dresen, but not a film I will lightly see again. 24 WEEKS falls into this category (it actually has a bit of a Dresen feel to it). You might never revisit it, but you should definitely see it once.
Germany might have had only one film in competition in Berlin this year, but that one got it right. The heat is on for Anne Zohra Berrached as one of the big new hopes of German arthouse cinema.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
Anne Zohra Berrached was born in Erfurt, East Germany, in 1982. After receiving her degree in social education in Frankfurt am Main, she worked as theatre educator in London for two years. She then lived in Spain and Cameroon before working as an assistant director in Berlin for Theater Ballhaus Ost and on the film MUST LOVE DEATH by Andreas Schaap. After an internship as a production assistant at a Berlin TV show, she shot her first short film. DER PAUSENCLOWN was broadcast and opened the doors to film school. Since 2009 Anne Zohra Berrached has been studying directing at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg. Her fictional and documentary shorts are being shown at festivals nationally and internationally and have won numerous awards, including the No Fear Award for "vision, commitment and willingness to take risks."
