Festivals The 74th Berlin International Film Festival: 15th-25th February, 2024.
The Iranian narrative and found footage documentary My Stolen Planet (Sayyareye dozdide shodeye man) by Farahnaz Sharifi is an unusual hybrid that uses diary-style reflections, which are assimilated with 8mm archives of people she doesn’t know, in order to understand a national culture in an almost abstract cinema-verite style to document recorded fly on the wall scenes that are otherwise not so often attained by the world’s media. The director was born during the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979 and captures moments of joy to convey defiance in her daily life, while navigating the contrast between domestic freedom and external oppression. Once again, despite the political policy leading to formal aesthetic limitations, yet another film from Iran, even acquired and unknown footage, is able to resonate as a completed work. This ability to create something new from disparate elements meant it was another recipient of the World Cinema Fund.
The music documentary Teaches of Peaches is the debut film by Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer, also having its World premiere, and was also one of the high-profile screenings of the Berlinale this year. A biography of the internationally famous and often controversial performer Peaches, it was filmed during the Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour in 2022. The documentary seamlessly juxtaposes clips from the archive with dynamic tour footage to capture the transformative journey of the artist born Merrill Nisker in Ontario, in 1966. Starting in her native Canada in the early 1990s, Peaches was in a number of traditional musical bands before becoming a solo artist in 2000 after moving to Berlin on the recommendation of her friend and regular collaborator Chilly Gonzales, who also features here. As a solo artist Peaches embraced the more modern dance culture into her sound with provocative lyrics and stage performances, not least her costumes. Further sentiments come from Peaches other famous collaborators including Shirley Manson, Charlie Le Mindu and Leslie Feist in what is a worthwhile production that will please fans for its rare footage and performances, and is also a good introduction for Peaches neophytes.
Three further conspicuous and noteworthy films in the Panorama section included controversial director Bruce LaBruce’s The Visitor, a British-made reimagining of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema. The enigmatic protagonist, known to everyone as “the visitor”, is played here by Bishop Black. He arrives, seemingly out of nowhere, at the house of an upper-class family and seduces each family member one after the other. Otherwise, a USA production having its International Premiere was director Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. The story concerns a seemingly emotionally isolated teenager called Owen who is merely trying to make it through life in the suburbs. When his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show that serves as a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own, it provides an immediate refuge of sorts. Through the pale glow of late-night TV, the seemingly distressed Owen’s view of reality begins to submerge and he also breaks the fourth wall regularly by narrating, or opening up on his thoughts straight to camera. In another World Premiere, the German entry Every You Every Me (Alle die Du bist) by Michael Fetter Nathansky concerns a single mother called Nadine who leaves her home in Brandenburg at the age of 24 to take a job near Cologne in a factory serving the coal industry. She will soon be romantically involved with a colleague called Paul who is not only impulsive but whose personality seems so multifaceted to her that she literally sees him in many different guises. The initial surprise of seeing this on screen becomes more intriguing and understandable as the film progresses, and where the audience will see the world through the psychological stance of Nadine.
Retrospective and Berlinale Special
In the always popular Berlinale Retrospective section of German film history, there were once again many restored films to enjoy. One that particularly stood out this year was the 1963 West German production of The Endless Night (Die endlose Nacht), directed by Will Tremper, with the digitally restored version by the Deutsche Kinemathek. At the Berlinale World Premiere there was plenty of excitement on stage from those present who were involved in the film’s restoration. Made in black and white it was set (and filmed) in West Berlin’s Tempelhof airport in 1962, the main international Berlin airport at that time, and filmed without a finished script over 45 nights after closing time in Tempelhof’s central hall, with authentic diegetic sound. A German and international cast included Karin Hübner, Harald Leipnitz, Hannelore Elsner, Louise Martini, and Paul Esser. As for the plot, late one night the airport is locked in by fog which means all flights have been halted and over a dozen passengers are stranded, so have to spend the night at the airport without sleep or privacy. From here, loosely connected episodes that are highly compelling and humorous give the effect of what nowadays would be considered a documentary soap opera. Where it also works as a snapshot of the contemporary era is that the characters are plausible and the often-improvised dialogue seems perfectly in sync with the time, during the still relatively early age of mass commercial air travel and escaping the shadow of the omnipresent Cold War that was at its height, particularly in Berlin a year after the Wall was erected. To attain full artistic control, director Tremper made the film without external subsidies and even took out a mortgage on his own home to finance it. The decision worked splendidly as the characters stay in the memory long after the film ends, even to the extent that one wonders what became of them, such was the authenticity of their little sub-plots and nuances.
The Berlinale Special is a section that combines otherwise unconnected films that have special presentations at the Berlinale, such as gala screenings and related events. One of them, and probably the most conspicuous, was the documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger by David Hinton. The documentary features Martin Scorsese talking about the very positive effect that the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger had on him from childhood when he first saw them on the family television. Scorsese talks further about his lifelong love of their oeuvre and how they were able to create "subversive commercial films" such as: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), The Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). In particular, Scorsese commends the profound ways their films have influenced his own work. A tribute documentary to the work of Powell and Pressburger would be appropriate at any time, but the fact that it was presented by Martin Scorsese gave it greater leverage this year.
At the Berlinale Palast there was a special Honorary Golden Bear Award Ceremony for Martin Scorsese with the presentation of the award by Wim Wenders following his tribute speech. The highest accolade of the festival for a lifetime’s work, the presentation was followed by a screening of his film The Departed (2006), the film that finally won him an overdue Oscar for Best Director, with the film also winning Best Picture (Graham King), Best Film Editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), and Best Adapted Screenplay Writing (William Monahan). In the Berlinale Classics section of digitally restored films there were screenings of his black comedy After Hours (1985), and he was also present for a Berlinale Talents event where he was in conversation with the British director Joanna Hogg for a filmmaker’s discussion. In tandem with the presentation of the Honorary Golden Bear, there was a Berlinale Camera presentation at Berlin’s Haus der Berliner Festspiele venue to 91-year-old German director Edgar Reitz, for a lifetime’s achievement in filmmaking that includes the film series Heimat (1984-2013) about life in Germany from the 1840s to 2000s through the eyes of a family from the Hunsrück area of the Rhineland-Palatinate; and a screening of his latest work Filmstunde_23 that is documentary of a class reunion at a girls school 55 years after he taught filmmaking to them as an educational experiment.
Other notable Berlinale Special screenings that resonated or were conspicuous included Turn in the Wound by Abel Ferrara. A film that features performance art, poetry, music and the experience of people at war, the usually controversial director also appears in the film and says he wanted to somehow make a contribution to recording the Ukraine conflict in some effective way. In searching for meaning in the never-ending suffering and conflicts that echo the past, the film details the lust for power within humans through poetry and text, and the endless quest for freedom against oppression and the military machine. It is notable for featuring the voice of Patti Smith, who recites relevant and poignant words in the works of Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud and Rene Daumal that are juxtaposed with the words of soldiers and people living in the combat zones in Ukraine, including Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyj.
Spaceman by American director Johan Renck (based on the 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař) was another Special Gala screening and features a well-known cast: Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, Isabella Rossellini, and Paul Dano. An attempt to give Adam Sandler a different, straight-acting, and more introspective role, he plays a Czech astronaut called Jakub Procházka who is six months into a space mission to investigate a mysterious cloud of dust and particles, called Chopra, lying beyond Jupiter. However, Jakub struggles with loneliness and misses his wife, Lenka, who has recently stopped talking with him after he left her and their unborn daughter behind to go on the mission. Suddenly he encounters a creature that helps him resolve his earthly problems. With vague allusions to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) and other space isolation films, Spaceman also grates somewhat in its minimalism, repetition, and, at times, borderline incongruity, but it does leave a lasting impression of isolation and paranoia, and even deep feelings. The German-British composer Max Richter was responsible for the soundtrack. The collaboration between Richter and the American band Sparks on the track Don’t Go Away features in the film to a solipsist and brooding effect.
Encounters: Carlo Chatrian’s Legacy
The Encounters section was introduced by Carlo Chatrian in 2020 when he became Artistic Director of the Berlinale. The reason for this was to compliment the Main Competition by including films that were more independent. Therefore, the section serves as a ‘legacy’ to the outgoing Artistic Director. However, the decision to introduce Encounters was not considered a smart move by many, nor was it without controversy. Some observers felt that the discontinuation of Perspektive Deutsches Kino and the Berlinale Series for the retention of the Encounters section did the festival more harm than good. More than this it was felt in the eyes of some that Encounters weakened the profiles of the Panorama and the Forum sections; while others felt it also damaged the Competition, with the 2024 Main Competition program being a good case for argumentation.
One of the highlights of Encounters this time was Through the Graves the Wind is Blowing, a US production directed by Travis Wilkerson. In what is a humorous look at Croatian tourism, in the city of Split, where the breakup of Yugoslavia had left an indelible mark, the son of a fisherman (played by Ivan Peric) claims that he only took the job of a police detective in order to avoid working in tourism, present-day Croatia’s only prospering industry. However, he is still very busy with a series of unsolvable murders of tourists because the local people despise them. As no one will help him it means any evidence disappears into the maze of bureaucracy, and he is even humiliated in public and online. A very funny and worthwhile attempt to extrapolate Croatian history and attitudes, it often takes the form of a documentary or guided tour as the main protagonist narrates much of 20th Century Croatian history, along with visuals, in order for us to understand the collective psychology of the country today.
A Canadian entry for Encounters, Matt and Mara by Kazik Radwanski, is an unusual take on an interpersonal relationships. Mara is a young creative writing professor who is having problems in her marriage with an experimental musician. When Matt, a free-spirited author from her past, visits her university campus the two gradually become closer again due to their shared interests and past union. After Mara’s husband untimely cancels plans to drive her to an out-of-town conference, Matt takes his place on the trip, but their undefined relationship slowly leads to tension that foregrounds, but also represses, unresolved parts of their personal history. In its 80-minute running time, despite the interest caused by complications of someone untimely turning up from an undefined past, the enigma of their past relationship is frustratingly never fully brought to the fore. Eventually both characters seem so self-involved with personal issues and petty hang-ups that it is no surprise that they cannot maintain a long-lasting relationship anyway, which, though unclear, might just be the intended message of the film.
