The art of female filmmakers saves the Berlinale: Carla Simón harvests with her Catalonian fruit grower play “Alcarràs”.
There was a lot at stake at this Berlinale, maybe even everything. At stake was nothing less than the festival’s international reputation and its central importance in the capital’s cultural life. Under no circumstances did they want to switch to the virtual streaming space like last year, even at the peak of the incidence figures. In fact, as was to be expected, accredited people tested positive every day. In the beginning, employees at the test stations spoke of a low double-digit number, but every day there were fewer people who had to be sent home.
Of course, the quality of the selection is even more decisive than any debate about the advantages and disadvantages of online offers. And here, at the end of a mixed competition, the strengths recognized by the jury shone – and perhaps even a new unique selling point: unlike in Cannes and Venice, female filmmakers do not play supporting roles here. They play the leading roles and set standards.
Out of eight Bears and one Special Mention, six prizes went to women, most notably the main prize for director Carla Simón from Barcelona. As in her autobiographical debut “Frida’s Summer”, she looks at a world through the eyes of a child that only looks like a children’s book idyll at first glance.
A family brings in the harvest from their orchard, as they do every summer, but the leased paradise is doomed. Even the fig trees planted by the great-grandfather are threatened by the excavator, because it is more lucrative for the owners to plant solar collectors on the land. But this is not a discursive film about organic fruit growing and neoliberal agriculture. It’s an intoxicating film, tinted in peachy hues, so sensually waxing lyrical about the beauty of natural agriculture you could inhale its scent. Melancholy isn’t a cliché here, it’s inevitable.
Obviously, the jury, headed by Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan, recognized what is otherwise often overlooked: to hear the complex harmonic structures behind apparently light sounds, which are the basis for this pure sound.
The complexity of Natalia López Gallardo’s Mexican ensemble film “Robe of Gems” (Silver Prize of the Jury), on the other hand, is always in the foreground. The film is widely praised for its artificial structure, but the look at drug crime can also be seen as too superficial. Claire Denis’ art of directing (Silberner Bär), on the other hand, has long been in a league of its own. The marital drama Both Sides Of The Blade only confirmed her place in the cinematic pantheon.
Since 2020, acting awards at the Berlinale have been gender-neutral. The association Pro Quote Film called that a disservice at the time, but in the long run it will probably become a shoe. In any case, this year both prizes went to women: the Cologne comedienne Meltem Kaptan, as the leading actress in Andreas Dresen’s “Rabiye Kurnaz against George W. Bush”, brought out of the box what others strive for in vain. There is no question that she fulfills her role perfectly and carries the film – but the screenplay also requires few nuances. Anyone who has seen the film can hardly imagine it without Kaptan. Kamila Andini won Best Supporting Actress in the Indonesian drama “Nana”, a voluptuous, elegiac marriage and self-discovery drama about a member of the Indonesian upper class in the 1960s. The film itself lived too much from borrowing from Wong Kar-wai’s stylistic devices, without any similarly original approaches.
The visual language of the Indonesian Rithy Panh is undoubtedly original. In his autobiographical masterpiece “The Lost Image” (2013), he translated his traumatic childhood experiences in a Khmer Rouge work camp into tableaus of hand-made figures and models that are as disturbing as they are enlightening. In the competition film “Everything Will Be OK”, this stylistic device leads to impressive dioramas with artistic carvings that one would like to admire in the original. This illustrates the dystopia of a reign of the animal kingdom over humanity, but the only thing that keeps the story going is an increasingly redundant off-narrative.
The “Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement” honors the independence of Rithy Panh’s vision. As important as it is to cultivate film forms that go beyond traditional narrative cinema in the competition, it should be more than side works by well-known directors. Carlo Chatrian has not yet found the right balance here.
The negative effect of completely irrelevant films such as the American contribution “Call Jane” should not be underestimated either. Even when it premiered a few weeks ago at the US Sundance Festival, this cinematic monument to the merits of an underground group was not artistically convincing. In Chicago in the 1960s and 70s, the “Janes” organized illegal abortions, which is truly worthy of a film starring Sigourney Weaver and Elizabeth Banks. But in Phyllis Nagy’s conservative staging, the danger these women were exposing themselves to is not even taken into account, let alone created suspense from it.
Ultimately, the biggest triviality of the competition was the Canadian entry “That Kind Of Summer”. Perhaps director Denis Coté’s fame obscured this male fantasy about a therapeutic research project on hypersexual women: An idyllic country house sets the stage for an anthology of rather random narratives of sexual experiences and wishful thinking.
At the end of the festival, which was shortened to six days, the disappointments seem to be forgotten even faster than usual, wiped out by the treasures: films that one can hopefully see again soon under more pleasant conditions. Maskless and well rested, where they belong – in their favorite cinema.
