Festivals The 74th Berlin International Film Festival: 15th-25th February, 2024.
The 74th Berlin International Film Festival:
15th-25th February, 2024
The Last Stand of the New
Once again taking place in the middle of February and the second full in-person event since the disruption caused by Covid (albeit, with hybrid festivals in 2021 and 2022), the 74th Berlinale was of further intrigue this year as it was the final festival of co-directors Mariette Rissenbeek (Managing Director) and Carlo Chatrian (Artistic Director). After the long tenure of the previous Festival director Dieter Kosslick (from 2002-2019) and before that Moritz de Hadeln (from 1980-2001), the aforementioned Covid pandemic was unfortunate timing for the new co-directors. Although their first festival in 2020 happened just before lockdown, bad luck, many challenges, not least internal unease, seemed to carry through their comparatively short five-year festival duration. After the 2023 Berlinale, Mariette Rissenbeek announced her decision not to extend her contract past the 2024 edition of the festival, and in September 2023 it was confirmed that Carlo Chatrian would also be stepping down from his role. This came after The German Ministry for Culture and Media, the main financer of the Berlinale, had announced it was scrapping the dual director set-up and would be reverting to a single festival director again from 2025 onwards, including other cuts and streamlining announcements. This led Chatrian to make the decision that he could not continue in these reduced circumstances.
As for the 2024 edition, Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o was named the Jury President for the main competition and became the first black woman ever to hold this position at the Berlinale. On the jury with her were: Brady Corbet, American filmmaker and actor; Ann Hui, Hong Kong-Chinese filmmaker and actress; Christian Petzold, German filmmaker; Jasmine Trinca, Italian actress and filmmaker; Albert Serra, Spanish filmmaker; and Oksana Zabuzhko, Ukrainian novelist and poet. The other main juries were: The Encounters Jury, International Short Film Jury, GWFF Best First Feature Award Jury, Documentary Award Jury, and the Generation International Jury.
The festival opened with Tim Mielants' Small film Things like These, based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Claire Keegan. Much of the furore was around the appearance of Cillian Murphy who had played the central role in last year’s phenomenally successful Oppenheimer (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2023). Therefore, his presence at the Berlinale with all the anticipation and glamour that an opening film brings, couldn’t have been better timed. The film is set in 1985 in the run-up to Christmas in a small Irish town in County Wexford. Murphy plays a coal merchant who has to work hard to support himself, his wife and his five daughters. When delivering coal at the local convent one morning, he witnesses something that forces him to confront both his own past and those complicit in not whistleblowing in a Catholic Church controlled town with its disguised intimidations. While an intriguing and often compelling film, and with another good performance by the main players, notably Murphy, Emma Watson, and Eileen Walsh, otherwise the effect was of a low-key and even downbeat opening film compared with many Berlinale high-octane red carpet opening films of past editions.
Generation and Forum: Consistently Challenging
Into the program sections and a very good inclusion in the Generation 14plus section was the World premiere of the German-Turkish film Elbow (Ellbogen), directed by Asli Özarslan. Set in a neighbourhood of Berlin’s Wedding district, Hazal is approaching her 18th birthday but is stuck in a job centre training program that doesn’t lead to any new opportunities. This frustration at the endless cycle of rejection she experiences will culminate in her committing a spontaneous but serious and regrettable act late one night, then fleeing to Istanbul, a strange city in a country she is unfamiliar with but where she is trapped and must somehow survive. With plenty of nervous energy and suspense, the film resonated and was a realistic account of the circumstances in which disaffected youth can easily be drawn into in an unforgiving metropolis.
In the Forum section, the Ukraine entry The Editorial Office (Redaktsiya) was the long-awaited second feature by Roman Bondarchuk and was also having its World Premiere at the Berlinale. Young biologist Yura works at the Natural History Museum and still lives at home with his mother. On the Southern Ukrainian steppe he goes in search of the marmot, a creature thought to be extinct, but suddenly he is witness to arson. From here ensues a borderline surreal turn of events as he tries to draw public attention to the injustice, but ends up on a sensationalist local news portal. The Editorial Office benefits from its focus on character development and is also an energetic and fun media and political satire that even alludes to science fiction. Shot shortly before the 2022 Russian invasion and completed afterwards, there is almost no direct reference to the war but that shadow is now omnipresent. The film therefore serves as a monument to the habitat around Kherson with its wild nature, a region that is also the director’s home.
In the foyer of Berlin’s Pelecki Insitute near the Brandenburger To, there was a multimedia exhibition related to The Editorial Office and titled Simple, Animalistic, Strong, and ran from 17th-21st February 2024, being co-current with its Berlinale screenings. The exhibition attempted to recreate the space of the Kherson editorial offices from the film and open the door to the wild Ukrainian South as it was before the Russian occupation. The exhibition also included photos of the Kherson Region and portraits of locals, as well as interviews with media members, conducted by director Roman Bondarchuk, director of photography Vadym Ilkov, producer and co-screenwriter Darya Averchenko, along with photographers Olexandr Techynskyi and Li Biletska. Roman Bondarchuk and Darya Averchenko were also present for a discussion and audience Q&A along with the star of the film Dmytro Bahnenko, who currently serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and was going back there to be available again after the Berlin event.
Panorama: Taking a Wider Viewpoint
In the Panorama section, The Outrun by Nora Fingscheidt, from the adaptation of the 2016 bestselling autobiographical book by Amy Liptrot, had its European premiere at the Berlinale. Rona involuntarily returns to her home on the remote and wild landscape of Scotland’s Orkney Islands after more than ten years in London, not because she is homesick but because she needs to get sober. At one with the nature of her childhood again, happy recollections of those innocent years juxtapose uncomfortably with memories of more recent times as an alcoholic in London. Ultimately, she will find the long road to recovery is not an easy one. Nora Fingscheidt’s film is sympathetic but avoids portraying the protagonist as victim in its transfer from book to film.
I’m Not Everything I Want to Be (Ještě nejsem, kým chci být) is both a unique and energetic documentary by Klára Tasovská in which she juxtaposes Libuše Jarcovjáková documents of her life with analogue photographs and spoken diary entries from the period of the Prague Spring and its suppression in 1968, through the 1970s, and into the 1980s, where her own sexual emancipation and the queer scene at Prague’s T-Club are in tandem. To document these times she always carried a camera with her but when a murder occurs related to the T-Club and the police become interested in Libuše's photos, she considers it time to leave Prague. In the search for fulfilment she first moves to West Berlin for a marriage of convenience, and later Tokyo as a fashion photographer. After the fall of the Iron Curtain her life journey will go full circle back to Prague via Berlin. With an original use of animated editing design for the still photographs that seem to come to life, particularly when coupled with Libuše’s authentically personal recollections about everyday struggles, identity, physicality, relationships and feelings, director Klára Tasovská has innovatively managed to fully document a celebrated clandestine world from an oppressive era.
A recipient of the World Cinema Fund (WCF) that was founded in 2004 on the initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Berlinale, the debut film of Colombian director Santiago Lozano Álvarez, I Saw Three Black Lights (Yo vi tres luces negras), is a slow-paced but hypnotic and engaging work about a 70-year-old man called Jose who lives in a village on Colombia’s Pacific coast. Like his ancestors, he was brought to Colombia as an African slave. He accompanies the dying and the dead on their way to eternal rest, but then the ghost of his son, who was brutally murdered years ago, appears to tell him of his own impending death and that he must not die near his home. Therefore, José embarks on one final journey to the jungle. Once there, however, he finds the area is controlled by armed groups so he must find a way to save his soul from purgatory in a film where Zen and death seem inexorably intertwined, even if murder is not considered at one with nature.
The World Cinema Fund was founded to fund high-quality filmmaking in those countries considered to have a weak film infrastructure, as well as to promote cultural diversity in German cinemas. The films that are funded by the WCF are not automatically invited to screen at a film festival but undergo the same selection process as all other films. A total of twelve WCF films were invited to the Berlinale this year across the different program sections. Another WCF recipient that was chosen for the Panorama section was the Vietnamese entry, Cu Li Never Cries (Cu Li Không Bao Giu Khóc), also the debut film of Pham Ngoc Lan, and filmed in black and white. Having retrieved the ashes of her long-estranged husband in Germany, a woman returns to her home in Vietnam. She has also brought back a pygmy slow loris, a species of primate from the Vietnamese rainforest, which she had inherited from her husband. Meanwhile, her young niece, who also lives with her, is preparing for her wedding. This loose example of a modern melodrama manages to touch a poignant nerve in attempting to portray contemporary Vietnamese culture, psychology and customs, especially through diaspora, emotional repression, and even in the occasional but inimitable dry humour that is a welcome inclusion.
Two intriguing documentaries from Africa also caught the attention. Which Way Africa? (A Quand L’Afrique?), by David-Pierre Fila, uneasily juxtaposes poetic images with harsh reality, where faces and voices give a solipsist evocation of home, country, and continent, but where joy turns to sorrow and beauty crumbles to plasticity and erosion. As the forest people stamp to the beat of the tom-toms, those in the city spin to the winds of change. In the World Cinema Fund supported documentary Rising Up at Night (Tongo Saa), in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the 17 million inhabitants have to cope with the challenges of life in an environment plagued by violence and an uncertain future. As another night is falling again we learn that Davido is just another resident searching for a place to stay after his house was flooded by the Congo River. Both films evidently benefit from the trust they give to the filmmakers who give a candid portrayal of the lives and circumstances of their subjects.
The 2022 Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear recipient Isabelle Huppert appeared in two films in this year’s festival, in two different sections and in two very different roles. For the Panorama section entry My New Friends (Les gens d’à côté) by André Téchiné she appears in her native France as Lucie, a police forensics specialist who has lived a solitary life since her partner died. When a young couple moves into the house next door with their little daughter, Lucie will find that one of the couple is an anti-police activist with a long criminal record. In the South Korean entry for the Main Competition, A Traveller's Needs (Yeohaengjaui Pilyo) by Hong Sang-soo, Huppert plays a mysterious woman from France with no means of support. When recommended to teach French she takes on two Korean women as her pupils. Despite this, the enigma of the woman remains intact. Is she hiding something or does she merely enjoy the quiet, basic and independent life? Both the very different roles carry an air of mysterious character repression that makes Huppert always compelling to watch and underlines her versatility as an actor.
Documentary and war are unfortunately two words that have often been synonymous with one another. In the Documentary section of the Panorama, war and conflict, along with other elements of dark human nature, come to the foreground. In the Albanian documentary Afterwar by Birgitte Stermose, we see images of war-torn Kosovo in 1999 as a dark chapter in modern European history draws to a close and the reality that the horror of war in Europe was omnipresent throughout the 20th Century. It is also a reminder that nothing has changed in stopping conflicts, despite the formation of the United Nations after World War 2, and later the European Union. In Kosovo we see burning buildings hidden by the fog, a dead horse on a dusty road, and people fleeing against the inconsolable Balkan mountain backdrop that is a silent but melancholy witness to the slaughter. The short but devastating war over, we see children selling peanuts and cigarettes on the streets of Pristina in order to survive. Documented over a period of fifteen years, they transform into adults before our eyes, looking back in disbelief but bravely forward.
