Line-up
Eccentric, whimsical or foreboding

Berlinale promises to be a wild ride with diverse range of films and documentaries on a smorgasbord of themes ranging from coming-of-age tales to gritty neo-noirs.

By Prathap Nair

To understand how wide-ranging the competition line-up at Berlinale this year is, you only have to hear how excited Jury President Kristen Stewart sounded at the opening day press conference. “I can’t wait to see who we all are at the end of the [watching and judging] experience,” she gushed. The nineteen films competing for the golden and silver bears in the Competition section this year range from idiosyncratic animated films to sweeping documentaries and grandiose dramas.

Coming of age tales to commentary on capitalism

There are animated films about campus life in 1990s China and a near-apocalypse scenario in Japan, saved by a teenager in a school dress. There are coming-of-age tales, commentaries on the relentlessness of capitalism, relationship dramas, commentary on libertarian masculinity, gritty neo-noirs set in deserts and exploration of maternal love. Spanning the world from the Australian outback to the conflict-ridden Niger Delta and the sunny streets of New York, the competition films are setting the tone of the festival – the mood is eccentric, whimsical, and sometimes even foreboding.

Which is perhaps why it's hard to pick whom to root for in the section. The German Iranian filmmaker Emily Atef’s Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything is a contemporary nod to German romanticism while Christian Petzold’s Roter Himmel is touted to be a down to earth, tragicomic relationship drama. Celine Song’s Past Lives is already winning over critics with its portrayal of long-last friendships in a film reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy. Arthouse gets a nod with Christoph Hochhäusler’s Bis Ans Ende der Nacht, At the End of the Night, a genre-blending drama.

Matt Johnson’s Blackberry, a film from Canada, chronicles the rise and fall of the eponymous smartphone company while Asia is represented by Liu Jian’s Art College 1994, Zhang Lu’s Bai Ta Zhi Guang and Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume. All this notwithstanding, the bears could find home in the arms of (or rather, on the saddle of) a dark horse like Rolf de Heer’s survivalist drama The Survival of Kindness or the Australian noir about the murder of an Aboriginal woman, director Ivan Sen’s Limbo.

Politically charged Panorama

The traditionally political section of Berlinale, Panorama, has more reasons to be robust this year with the war on Ukraine and the people’s revolution in Iran underway. Rich pickings from India are at display in the section with contributions from debut director Chhatrapal Ninawe whose Ghaath will be screened alongside Sreemoyee Singh’s And, Towards Happy Alleys in the Panorama documentary section.

Radically relevant themes pervade the documentary section that takes viewers through Ukraine (Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies), Syria (Heba Khaled, Talal Derki, and Ali Wajeeh’s Under the Sky of Damascus), Guinea (Thierno Souleymane Diallo’s The Cemetery of Cinema) and Columbia (Joris Lachaise’s Transfariana).

Headlining radically relevant documentaries

The twenty-eight films in the Forum section are replete with themes that are both contemporaneous and from the past. Peppered with documentaries such as the poignantly powerful W Ukraine by Polish filmmakers Piotr Pawlus and Tomasz Wolski that portrays the aftermath of the war on Ukraine, the Forum section offers a surreal collection of work of artists striving to push the proverbial envelope on filmmaking. Suffice to say, the documentary jury have their hands full.

Yet another noteworthy section, the competitive Encounters boasts of sixteen narratives from around the world vying for top prizes. Other significant award categories include Best First Feature award, Short Film award, Series award, Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus awards.

Asked about her reaction on being the head of the Berlinale jury, Kristen Stewart confessed to have been shocked that she was asked to head the jury. She went on to state, “it’s an enormous opportunity to have a hand in highlighting beautiful things in a time where that’s hard to hold.”

Art is essential, like Oxygen

Iranian-French actress Golshifteh Farahani had an even more emotional message. “Art is not only an intellectual, philosophical thing – it’s essential, like oxygen.” Referring to the Iranian people’s revolution, she added, “your existence is put into danger, that’s why it’s so amazing to be here this year.”

Berlinale opened on the 16th Feb with an impassioned speech by Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky followed by the premiere screening of Rebecca Miller’s quirky romantic comedy She Came To Me at the Berlinale Palast.