It’s funny how nobody ever seems to stay for the actual award ceremony that’s held at the end of a festival. The winners for the 60th Berlinale are being announced tomorrow night and the whole festival seems to be almost deserted. The closing event will be broadcasted via a live video stream at least through Berlinale’s own website, here.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, first let’s take a look at the official selection. If you didn’t get a chance to check out the movies yet, here’s a recap of the all the movies in competition this year.
Bal (Honey)
Turkey, Germany
Director: Semih Kaplanoglu
This film tells a story of a six-year-old boy who ventures into a mysterious mountain forest – alone – in order to search for his missing father, a beekeeper.
Caterpillar
Japan
Director: Koji Wakamatsu
Lieutenant Kurokawa returns highly decorated from the second Sino-Japanese war. He has lost both his arms and his legs during the conflict. Before long, the attentions of everyone in his village – neighbours, friends and relatives – are focussed on his wife, Shigeko. They all look to her to honour the Emperor, do her duty to her country and provide a shining example to others by devoting herself to caring for this war hero …
Der Räuber (The Robber)
Austria, Germany
Director: Benjamin Heisenberg
Der Räuber tells the story of a multitalented man: Johann Rettenberger is a successful marathon runner and a serial bank robber. Soberly and precisely he measures his heart rate, strain, stamina and efficiency – both during training runs and bank raids, from which, concealed beneath a ludicrous mask and armed with a pump gun, he takes flight from the police.
En Familie (A Family)
Denmark
Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen
Ditte is part of a renowned family of bakers, the Rheinwalds. She is also a successful gallery owner and constantly on the move. Having been offered her dream job in New York she decides, along with her boyfriend Peter, to accept the offer and move to the Big Apple. The future is bright and life is fun and simple.
The couple are on their way when Ditte’s beloved and charismatic father, Rikard Rheinwald, master baker and purveyor to the royal court, falls seriously ill. Ditte calls off the move to New York in order to be with him and before long her own way of life hangs in the balance.
En ganske snill mann (A Somewhat Gentle Man)
Norway
Director: Hans Petter Moland
Ulrik has spent twelve years behind bars for murder. After his release he rents a small basement room. Ulrik doesn’t say much, but everyone he knows thinks he deserves a second chance. His gangster friend welcomes
him with a pot plant. They talk about the good old times and about some unfinished business that Ulrik has with Kenny, who was to blame for Ulrik’s spell in prison. Kenny will pay for this with his life.
Eu cand vreau sa fluier, fluier (If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle)
Romania, Sweden
Director: Florin Serban
Silviu, a young delinquent, is about to be released from reform school. Only five days to go. But ever since he learned that his mother has suddenly reappeared on the scene after a long absence and is determined to take his
young brother away to live with her, these five days have seemed like an eternity. Silviu himself has raised his little brother and loves him as if he
were his own son.
Greenberg
USA
Director: Noah Baumbach
Florence Marr is the Greenberg family’s personal assistant. Her day is filled with fulfilling other people’s wishes. Florence’s own modest existence is in marked contrast to the busy lives led by the Greenbergs in their elegant villa in Hollywood Hills. Florence lives in a tiny studio apartment and, from time to time, performs as a hopeful singer at open mike evenings. When her boss Phillip Greenberg and his family go away on a long trip abroad Florence finds herself with time on her hands. As usual she keeps an eye on the Greenberg’s house, takes care of their dog, Mahler … and now also Phillip Greenberg’s brother, Roger, who has been asked to house-sit.
Howl
USA
Director: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
In 1957 an American masterpiece was tried before a court of law. Standing trial was the poem ‘Howl’ by Allen Ginsberg, which he recited for the first time in public at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on 7 October 1955. Two years later, the poem appeared in print, published by City Light Books, a publishing house owned by the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The tiny print run of 520 copies was subsequently seized by the police and Ferlinghetti found himself in court, having to account for ‘distributing obscene literature’. The trial, which was to make ‘Howl’ and its creators famous overnight, is still considered to be the moment when counterculture was born.
Jud Süß – Film ohne Gewissen (Jew Suss – Rise and Fall)
Austria, Germany
Director: Oskar Roehler
Ferdinand Marian was the actor who in 1940 gave a brilliant performance in the lead in Veit Harlan’s Nazi propaganda film JUD SÜSS – but the role was to break him. The situation already begins to come to a head for Marian during the filming when his wife distances herself from him because she can’t bear to see how her husband has changed.
Kak ya provel etim letom (How I Ended This Summer)
Russian
Director: Alexei Popogrebsky
One place. One day. Two men. The place is a polar station on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. A day up here in the far north lasts weeks, since the sun never sets during the summer at this high latitude. This used to be an important research station but, Sergei, an experienced meteorologist and Pavel, a high school graduate, are now the only inhabitants. Soon a ship will arrive to pick up the two men. For Sergei this will mean the end of a sojourn that has lasted several years. He is anxious about returning to his wife and child on the mainland.
Mammuth
France
Director: Benoit Delépine, Gustave de Kervern
A slaughterhouse worker, heavy and reticent, has just turned sixty and his colleagues have organised a farewell party to celebrate his retirement. The man began his working life at the age of sixteen; he has never lost a job, or been off sick. But then he discovers in an interview at the works’ pension fund that, during the course of his chaotic working life, no fewer than six of his employers have ‘forgotten’ to register his earnings. If he is to receive his pension he will have to furnish the necessary proof of employment. Egged on by his wife, the protagonist climbs onto his old seventies ‘Mammoth’ motorbike that has earned him his nickname, and returns to the places of his youth.
Na putu (On The Path)
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Austria, Germany, Croatia
Director: Jasmila Zbanic
Luna and Amar are a couple. Their relationship is under great strain. First of all, Amar loses his job for being drunk at work. Luna is very worried and has little hope of realising her fragile dream of having a child with Amar. But her fears for their future increase when Amar takes on a well-paid job in a Muslim community hours away from where they live. Only after quite some time has elapsed during which they have had no contact with each other, is Luna allowed to visit Amar in this community of conservative Wahhabis in its idyllic lakeside location.
Rompecabezas (Puzzle)
Argentina, France
Director: Natalia Smirnoff
It’s Maria’s fiftieth birthday and her family give her a jigsaw puzzle as a present. She is highly delighted and pleasantly surprised, because Maria has made an astonishing discovery: not only does this patient housewife enjoy doing puzzles – she’s also extremely good at them. Thrilled by her new passion, she goes straight back to the shop where her present was bought to get another puzzle, and comes across an advert on the notice board: “Partner wanted for puzzle tournament”. Maria plucks up all her courage and, ignoring her family’s reservations, decides to respond to the advert.
San qiang pai an jing qi (A Woman, A Gun And A Noodle Shop)
People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, China
Director: Zhang Yimou
Wang runs a little noodle shop in a small desert town near Jiayu Pass not far from the Great Wall. He lives in his shop with his wife and their staff. But life with Wang is far from pleasant: he’s a real skinflint who only thinks about himself, and he sometimes doesn’t pay his staff for months on end. His wife also suffers at the hands of this domestic tyrant, although a discrete affair with Li, the shy cook, helps her to bear her lot in life.
Shahada
Germany
Director: Burhan Qurbani
This episodic film revolves around Maryam, Samir and Ismail, three young Muslims living in Berlin. During the course of their stories, their faith, and their value systems begin to falter. The film portrays three people forced by circumstances to find a new path in life and to ask themselves who they are, who they love and what they believe in. Their paths cross at a mosque led by the enlightened Imam, Vedat.
Shekarchi (The Hunter)
Germany, Iran
Director: Rafi Pitts
Ali has recently been released from prison and is now working as a night watchman in Tehran. This factory job now means that he is at least able to support his small family comprising his wife Sara and their daughter, Saba. One day, Ali comes home from work to discover that Sara and Saba have disappeared.
Submarino
Denmark
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
The story of two brothers who lose track of each other after an unstable childhood until they meet up again in prison is the focus of former ‘Dogma’ director Thomas Vinterberg’s film based on a book by Jonas T. Bengtsson, a Danish novelist celebrated for his unflinching realism. The film’s title refers to an horrific method of torture known as ‘submarino’ in which the target’s head is held under water to just before the point of drowning.
The Ghost Writer
France, Germany, United Kingdom
Director: Roman Polanski
‘The Ghost’ – a successful British ghostwriter – has been asked to write the memoirs of Prime Minister Adam Lang. The publishers have promised Lang millions for his book and time is running out. For the ghost the assignment means a giant leap in his career, and a princely fee. But the project is ill-fated from the outset, not least because the first writer, Lang’s long-standing advisor, has just been killed in a tragic accident.
The Killer Inside Me
USA, United Kingdom
Director: Michael Winterbottom
A neo-noir adaptation of a hard-boiled pulp classic, Michael Winterbottom’s new film is based on a novel by Oklahoma-born crime writer Jim Thompson (1906 –1977) who worked as a screenwriter for Stanley Kubrick and furnished screenplays for films such as THE GETAWAY (Sam Peckinpah, 1972), COUP DE TORCHON/CLEAN SLATE (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981) and THE GRIFTERS (Stephen Frears, 1990). ‘The Killer Inside Me’, which appeared in 1952 and was brought to the screen in 1976 by Burt Kennedy with Stacy Keach in the lead, is one the most personal works by this often underestimated writer, whose father was a sheriff in Oklahoma until he was accused of embezzlement and escaped to Mexico.
Tuan Yuan (Apart Together)
People’s Republic of China
Director: Wang Quan’an
Over fifty years after the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China on the Chinese mainland and the founding of the island republic of Taiwan, permission is given for the first time for a group of ex-soldiers of the National People’s Party or Kuomintang to travel from Taiwan to China and be reunited with family members in Shanghai. These soldiers fought bitterly against Communist troops during China’s civil war from 1927 onwards, until they were forced to retreat to Taiwan in 1949. One of the comrades-in-arms travelling with the group to his former home in Shanghai is an ageing soldier named Lui Yansheng. His reason for embarking on this journey is not to see the family members he left behind on the mainland but to find the one and only love of his life, Qiao Yu’e, whom he was obliged to leave behind in Shanghai without a word of farewell, and their son, who was born after he took flight.
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Like I said the award ceremony is tomorrow night and I will be posting the results in Zombie Room naturally.
