Entries by Goethe-Institut Toronto

Leaving the Berlinale with a (3 and a half hour) bang & $10 in my pocket for betting on a Silver Bear Jury Prize for Maria Speth's school documentary Herr Bachmann and His Class:

Continue reading "#Berlinale2021 #review: Herr Bachmann and His..." »

The plot is racy: A terrorist attack at the beginning of the film rocks a family to the core. Teenage Maxi – who loses her mother, her brothers and her home – tries to look ahead, but is deeply disoriented and angry. Her father Alex is shell-shocked and fragile. Former certainties and beliefs have been wiped out and the grief that comes with their loss obscures everything. Seeming sidewalk acquaintance Karl liberates gets her out of her shell, urges her to conquer her fears, promises solutions. He has organised a meeting of educated, multilingual, and dissatisfied European students called Re/Generation. The task he assigns Maxi could be the deciding factor in the success of a grand plan. Je suis Karl --the pre-manufactured faux grievance call and hashtag battle cry of the film's final scenes-- traces an insidious and seductive political takeover, picking up where the theoretical mind games of The Wave and In the Fade’s legal revenge drama left off.

Factual analysis is not at the heart of this reality, rage, hubris, and narcissism are. Who is the bomber who kills the progressive German family who recently smuggled in a Libyan refugee? Who cares, the public assumes it was an Islamist. Continue reading "Berlinale 2021: Je Suis Karl #review" »

An ongoing series of mini profiles on the blog German Film @ Canada on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and fans, from rookies to veterans. This year, two female Toronto filmmakers-programmers are attending the Berlinale with a European Film Market badge as guests of the Goethe-Institut and a joint Berlinale-Goethe initiative to strengthen festival and industry access for BIPOC/LGBTQIA+/women-led organizations, organizations working towards the empowerment, advancement and growth for marginalized film and media sectors, and towards the greater inclusion, empowerment and advancement of marginalized film professionals in the mainstream industry.

Name & role: Mariam Zaidi, ED Breakthroughs Film Festival, a not for profit organization established in 2011 in Toronto, dedicated to supporting emerging filmmakers who identify as women or non-binary. She is also Associate Programmer for Canadian films at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival.

This is my 1st Berlinale. Continue reading "#BerlinalePeople: Mariam Zaidi, Breakthroughs..." »

Accompanying our GOETHE FILMS series Radical--Exiting Extremism, we are sharing background articles on the larger global issues around radicalization and deradicalization, here an interview about anti-democratic nationalism and violent racism in post-migration societies.

Will the “Grey Wolves” soon be banned? An interview with social scientist Kemal Bozay by Nikita Vaillant, first published in German in fluter magazine.

fluter.de: Mr. Bozay, you call the Grey Wolves a fascist, ultra-nationalist movement. Ultra-nationalism, but more than 2,000 kilometres from the motherland: How do its supporters in Germany rationalize this contradiction?
Continue reading "Radical: A Turkish right-wing extremist..." »

At last year’s Berlinale, Berlin Alexanderplatz, Burhan Qurbani’s hyper-current interpretation of Döblin‘s 1929 novel, was one of my favourites. It starred Albrecht Schuch as the villain. This year, the Berlinale Shooting Star is back —in a more likeable role but similar time travel alongside Tom Schilling in Fabian: Going to the Dogs.

I love the promising beginning of Dominik Graf’s reading of Erich Kästner’s quasi-autobiographical novel. We are getting off the Berlin subway today, walk up the stairs and arrive in 1931, ailing WWI veterans and swastikas on the streets. Dr. Jakob Fabian (Schilling), who works by day in advertising for a cigarette company and by night wanders the streets of the city, falls in love with an actress (Saskia Rosendahl). As her career begins to blossom, prospects for his future begin to wane. Continue reading "#Berlinale2021 #review: Fabian (Competition)" »

The Berlinale is not exactly known to be a barrel of laughs, but Maria Schrader (Unorthodox; Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) saves our 2021 with two laugh-out-loud hours. The actor-director delivers an utterly delicious and intelligent romantic comedy 5.0 to the Competition, no less. It’s not even a guilty pleasure (never mind the genre haters) because it’s such smart entertainment that it’s just a pleasure. The co-writer on the tight, pitch-perfect script is Jan Schomburg, who already ventured into related human identity territory with his film 2014 Lose My Self, starring actress Maria Schrader.

Alma is a scientist at the famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin. In order to obtain research funds, she is persuaded to participate in an extraordinary study: For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot tailored to her character and needs, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be the perfect life partner for her. Alma meets Tom, a machine in (fine) human form and in a class of its own, created solely to make her happy. Continue reading "#Berlinale2021: I'm Your Man #review (Competition)" »

SPOILER ALERT!

In 2013, German(-Algerian) filmmaker Anne Zohra Berrached made her debut in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino with Two Mothers. In 2016, she was invited into the Berlinale Competition with her second female-centric feature, the lauded late-term abortion drama 24 Weeks. Five years later, Berrached is celebrating the world premiere of Copilot in the Berlinale Panorama section.

The film tells the love story of Asli and Saeed, a young Turkish-Arab couple studying in East Germany, before "the world becomes a different place” (as the film’s original title literally translates) because of Saeed's actions on September 11, 2001. Continue reading "Berlinale 2021: Copilot #review (Panorama)" »

Accompanying our GOETHE FILMS series Radical--Exiting Extremism, we are sharing background articles on the larger global issues around radicalization and deradicalization, here an interview with German star author Daniel Kehlmann about how (fictional) extremist characters translate from page or stage to film. Kehlmann, about to have his Berlinale Competition premiere as the writer of Daniel Brühl's directorial debut Next Door, penned last year's political drama Das Verhör in der Nacht (Interrogation in the Night). In it, a philosophy professor suspected of left-wing terrorism trades intellectual barbs with a police officer:

Susanne Burg, Deutschlandfunk: Whether Me and Kaminski, Measuring the World or Fame, Daniel Kehlmann’s novels are international bestsellers. In the last three years the author has also increasingly appeared in the theatre and film world. He has increasingly written screenplays – for example adapting his two-person play Christmas Eve. The film can now be seen on Arte and ZDF as Das Verhör in der Nacht. Continue reading "Radical: Daniel Kehlmann's Interrogation in the..." »

An ongoing series of mini profiles on the blog German Film @ Canada on the movers and shakers that make the Berlinale one of the most important events in the international film calendar: the filmmakers, programmers, curators, industry promoters and fans, from rookies to veterans. This year, two female Toronto filmmakers-programmers are attending the Berlinale with a European Film Market badge as guests of the Goethe-Institut and a joint Berlinale-Goethe initiative to strengthen festival and industry access for BIPOC/LGBTQIA+/women-led organizations, organizations working towards the empowerment, advancement and growth for marginalized film and media sectors, and towards the greater inclusion, empowerment and advancement of marginalized film professionals in the mainstream industry.

Name & role: Rolla Tahir, Artistic Director Toronto Arab Film & Toronto Arab Film Festival; filmmaker

This is my 1st Berlinale.

Why is Berlinale (market) access important for your work?
You'd be hard pressed to find an emerging filmmaker that has no ties to Berlinale. I've been in and around the film festival circuit for over a decade now, in various capacities, but I've been confined to the local circuit for the most part. Canada, no doubt, has a robust and thriving film festival scene, however, when it comes to Arab cinema, Berlinale, is unmatched in programming and opportunities available through its market. As the artistic director and co-founder of the Toronto Arab Film Festival, I speak to many filmmakers, emerging and established, and I'm always intrigued as to which opportunities they had access to, and the majority of them have participated either in Talents, the Market or simply had their films screened in Berlin, which then propels their careers forward. When programming for the festival, my first research stop is the Berlinale programme. Continue reading "#BerlinalePeople: Rolla Tahir, Toronto Arab Film" »

Read up on the program here.