AFTER a few days of gentle snowfall, a serene blue sky graced the 75th edition of this year’s Berlin Film Festival, as if the weather itself aligned with Germany’s “no-conflict” cultural policy.
The Golden Bear went to Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud for Dreams (Sex Love). The film is the final episode of a thematically related trilogy, concluding with a female coming-of-age story. Johanna, the protagonist, narrates the film in voice-over as she writes a novel about her experience of falling in love with her new language teacher, a charismatic and attractive young woman.
A first-love story depicted with impeccable delicacy and a distinctive directorial style, the film is elegant, sensitive and emotionally rich, creating a strong sense of intimacy that perfectly captures the dynamic between student and teacher, highlighting the student’s quest for attention and approval. The plotting is complex and dense, involving numerous literary and cinematic references. An impressive achievement, admired for its overall lightness of touch.
The Silver Bear went to Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro’s The Blue Trail. Partly set in the Amazon, the film challenges societal treatment of its elderly citizens. Tereza, a 77-year-old woman, works in a factory, content and independent, but soon her country, Brazil, plans to confine older people in colonies.
Tereza escapes and pursues her lifelong dream, embarking on a gentle riverboat journey into the Amazon. This journey serves as a metaphor for venturing into the unknown and subtly protests against ageism and warns of potential authoritarian futures in Brazil and beyond. In an inhumane world, The Blue Trail radiates love and is cleverly balanced with wit, poignancy, sweetness and bitterness.
Rose Byrne won the Best Actress for her role in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You. This film tells the story of an overwhelmed mother balancing her work as a therapist with the demands of raising a special needs child. Filled with humour, it combines a wide range of elements to delightful effect.
Irish actor Andrew Scott won Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Richard Rodgers in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, a biopic of US lyricist and Broadway songwriter Lorenz Hart. It is March 31 1943, the opening night of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!
Hart attends the premiere. The show is a success, but Hart, a homosexual in an era when it was unacceptable, struggles with depression and alcoholism, facing a world that has irrevocably changed and the seeming impossibility of finding love. This film is a tribute to the artist and his solitude, battling cultural impoverishment. It is a marvellously written and acted piece, rich in clever details, and is an outstanding and brilliant work.
Another noteworthy film that received the Best Screenplay is directed by Romanian film-maker Radu Jude, titled Kontinental ’25. The story follows a homeless man who commits suicide by hanging himself from a radiator after bailiffs come to carry out an eviction.
This drama-comedy touches on themes such as post-socialist economics, the housing crisis, nationalism and media. Shot on a low budget using Jude’s iPhone, it is an urgent piece of film-making, a dark fairy tale that speaks eloquently about modern times.
Best Documentary award was given to Brandon Kramer’s Holding Liat. The film portrays the struggle of the Berlin-Atzili family after Liat was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Much of the film centres on Liat’s father, a left-leaning Israeli, who continues to hold hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Emotionally gripping, it is a heart-breaking true story.
The film critiques the Israeli government while showing compassion for the victims. It presents a contrasting tone to last year’s documentary winner No Other Land, which openly condemned the genocide in Gaza, and prompted Culture Minister Claudia Roth and Chancellor Olaf Scholz to consider placing the festival under scrutiny.
The increasingly censorious and repressive climate in German society seems to have influenced this year’s festival programme to adopt a non-political stance, focusing on “inclusiveness” and “listening,” and against all forms of discrimination. This led it into a kind of no-man’s-land, avoiding controversy and maintaining neutrality at all costs.
And yet politics intruded. A group of artists held a vigil calling for the release of Davide Cunio, an Israeli actor who was one of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 2023, from Nir Oz kibbutz. Cunio is also the subject of a documentary screened at the festival, A Letter to David by film-maker Tom Shoval. And at the opening ceremony, actress Tilda Swinton made a political statement as she accepted the Berlinale Golden Bear for Lifetime Achievement.
In a poetic speech, Swinton praised the festival as “borderless and real with no policy of exclusion, persecution, or deportation.” Referred to as “the great independent state of cinema,” she acknowledged the “internationally enabled mass murder, currently actively terrorising more than one part of the world.” However, she remained unspecific, maintaining the festival’s policy of “neutrality.”
This year’s Berlinale occurred amid political upheaval in Germany, just ahead of the crucial general election on February 23. Given the ascent of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) into second place, sparking controversy and particularly regarding views of immigration, the festival was poised on a political knife-edge between alternative views of the past and the future.
However, certain themes remain taboo in Germany, and it’s intriguing to note the general detachment to the extent that among the cinephiles, some are unaware of the notorious nazi director Veit Harlan (Suss the Jew, 1940) or even Thomas, his son (Wundkanal, 1984), whose struggle with his father’s legacy is documented in the remarkable film Unser Nazi (Our Nazi, 1984) by Robert Kramer.