Berlinale Dispatch #1
Berlinale Dispatch #1
Too many films, not enough newsletters
The Berlinale is ticking over nicely now. While the start of the festival can feel like a false start, especially while waiting for scheduled posts to finally go online, the weekend lets the floodgates open, with too many films out there to merit their own dedicated newsletter. There’s even too many films to write about.
Shout out to Deborah Stratmann’s Last Things — a stunning experimental work that is an inscrutable as a PhD lecture about the intersection of geology and philosophy. Or Alex Gibney’s Boom! Boom! Boris Becker vs the World, which only presents the first half of a story, and is going to head on over to Apple TV anyway. Or the gorgeous Lithuanian classic Gražuolė (The Beauty) from 1969, presented by Sergei Losnitsa, which is deceptively simple on the surface, meaning I wouldn’t have time to do justice to its subtle use of perspective, mise en scène and social commentary. You can’t cover them all.
Before I skip on out to Disco Boy (Giacomo Abbruzzese), here are three films I watched over the last couple of days that are all worth seeking out.
Encounters: Orlando: My Political Biography
“Liberation is an act of imagination. To imagine an alternate reality, politics simply does not work. To conceive of an equal, beautiful future, poetry, grasping at the ineffable, is the only possible medium.”
Encounters: White Plastic Sky
“Humanity has failed. All plant and animal life has perished. But the people of the Hungarian capital have managed to survive, covered by a huge dome straight out of The Simpsons Movie (David Silverman, 2007). They survive thanks to a queasy moral pay-off. Once humans turn 50 years old, they must be transported outside of the city, where they will be converted into tree-like structures which can be broken down into wood and food.
Probably to avoid losing out on state funding, there’s no comment on whether Viktor Orbán is still the Prime Minister. I like to imagine him like Nixon in Futurama (1999-, Matt Groening).”
Forum: Where God Is Not
“Whether it’s a result of the Women, Life, Freedom movement or simply due to a strong field of candidates, there is certainly a strong focus on Iranian perspectives this year at the Berlinale. Before the festival has even started, I’ve witnessed a look at rape culture in Seven Winters In Tehran (Steffi Niederzoll, 2023), a woman seeking to find freedom from a repressive state in the expressive Dreams’ Gate (Negin Ahmadi, 2023) and a searching inquiry into Iran’s filmmaking culture, especially under the threat of censorship, in And, Towards Happy Alleys (Sreemoyee Singh, 2023).
But if you really want to get into the nightmarish, totalitarian hellscape that characterises life for prisoners under the regime, look no further than Where God Is Not (Mehran Tamadon, 2023) — my first Forum film of the Berlinale.”
Films to come: Manodrome, Disco Boy, Past Lives