The so-called Summer Berlinale opens on Museum Island.
The joy of mild summer evenings is a few days old, but people still struggle to cope with it. It’s like tapping your way outside to see if it’s still there, the old life. So now the Berlinale opening as a “Summer Special”?
When the dignitaries march in, the sun has shifted behind the colonnades at the Alte Nationalgalerie and the Neues Museum. The approaching dusk is so beautiful that you can’t help but lose a few thoughts on the casual dress code. Hortensia Völckers, the head of the Federal Cultural Foundation, Claudia Roth, the vice-president of the German Bundestag, was cheerfully colorful. The subtle pigeon blue of Federal Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner’s dress corresponds to her mottled blonde, while State Minister for Culture Monika Grütters is dressed in sleeveless purple.
Cinema lies. Wasn’t that what you had to miss for so long? Despite the demonstrative enthusiasm that moderator Hadnet Tesfai had previously demanded from the audience with a wink, the Summer Berlinale is in many ways an emergency solution, a reward for the perseverance that everyone involved, above all the Berlinale director Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian. The board of sponsors is noticeably thinned out, so the lady of the house does not fail to commend the state minister for culture for the additional ten million euros from the federal program for a new start in culture. While everyone complains that politics may not have done enough for the artists, and that some have expressed their displeasure in the form of crude video messages, there is warm applause for the blessings from the Grütters house.
Some platitudes about film and cinema were released into the premiere society, none of which could really be blamed, not even that Monika Grütters referred to the “sky over Berlin” and confused Volker Schlöndorff with Wim Wenders.
Advantages of camping
The camping version of the opening event of the 71st Berlinale undoubtedly had its advantages. The speeches were shorter, the vanity fair was manageable, the celebrities were down-to-earth and local. Which shouldn’t sound disrespectful to the presence of Iris Berben, Maria Schrader as well as Ulrich Matthes and Peter Kurth.
Berlin’s Governing Mayor Michael Müller remarked almost resolutely that this was his last opening of the Berlinale in official dignity, as he had already said several times before the political importance of the festival, which, in addition to striving for glamor, always had to offer films with an attitude and a message. His request sounded almost pathetic not to forget the needs of those who suffer from ruthless power politics. All too often directors and actors were affected, especially during the Berlinale, and Müller referred to the Turkish publicist Can Dündar in his exile in Berlin.
The time was ripe for the evening’s main film, “The Mauritanian” by Kevin Macdonald, with a great Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch. The docudrama tells the story of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who grew up in Germany, was abducted after September 11th and ended up in the US prison camp Guantanamo via stops in Jordan and Afghanistan. Torture, intrigue, perversion of justice. The film tells the story of an innocent man whose life has been stolen and who is still not allowed to travel freely, not even to the Berlinale, where the film about his story of suffering opens the festival as a summer event. More than 120 films from 56 countries will follow as open airs until June 20th.
When leaving the colonnades, a carefully played jazz trumpet sounded in front of the Bode Museum. Just play again, summer is just beginning.
