Berlinale: from animated films to the ATO topic

This year’s Berlinale has no less scale than the previous. The main competition program only includes 24 films from Belgium, Chili, Finland, Germany, France, Great Britain, Lebanon, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the US. It includes a documentary bio of the famous German provocative artist Joseph Beuys (Beuys) and a Chinese animation (Hao ji le – Have a Nice Day). The living classics, Agnieszka Holland and Volker Schloendorff will compete for the Golden Bear. I can predict with certainty that the sequel of Trainspotting titled Trainspotting 2, shot again by Danny Boyle and the same actors performing the leading roles, will cause a special stir among the audience as well as the cult Finnish director Aki Kaurismaeki’s new social tragicomedy, Toivon tuolla puolen (The Other Side of Hope), which touches upon the questions of immigration and social inequality.

Of course, the festival is more than just the main competition. The sections Berlinale Shorts, Panorama, and Generation (with separate parts Generation 14plus and Generation Kplus) which show films about children and teenagers, have their own awards, too.

Ukrainian moviemakers take a regular part in the festival. In 1990 Kira Muratova’s The Asthenic Syndrome won the Special Jury Prize, the Silver Bear; in 2002 the animated film by Stepan Koval The Tram Was Going, Number Nine won an analogical award in the competition of short films, and in 2002 Taras Tomenko’s short film The Shooting Gallery won the New York Film Academy Award in the Panorama selection.

This year our country is represented by the Ukrainian-German feature film School Number 3 by directors Yelizaveta Smith and Georg Genoux in the program Generation 14plus. The film is based on the documentary play Mykolaivka, staged by the Forced Migrant Theater and later shown at several theaters in Ukraine and Germany.

In July 2014 the terrorists of the DNR were bombing the town Mykolaivka, Sloviansk raion, Donetsk oblast. The residents were hiding in basements for several days. The fire reached the School No. 3. Volunteers and local residents restored it. In the play, 13 pupils of senior classes tell what they experienced during those events, about their love, and plans for the future. According to the description of the film on the festival’s website, “In the familiar surroundings of their everyday lives, they talk about things that matter to them, about experiences that move them, about first love and loss, hopes and fears. Thirteen adolescents from a school in Donbas which was destroyed during the war in Ukraine, and subsequently rebuilt, share themselves in front of the camera. Thirteen lives inhabiting an intermediary space, both emotionally and socially. The war is only mentioned peripherally, and yet it forms the gravitational centre of this puristic and insistent narrative.”

The parallel program Berlinale Special, which is beyond competition, will screen the world premiere of the new work by Russian documentary filmmaker Askold Kurov The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov (a joint production of Estonia, Poland, and the Czech Republic). Kurov was following the Sentsov process from the beginning and has already presented the draft materials to the film in Kyiv.

The film festival will last from February 9 through 19. The awarding ceremony will take place on Saturday, February 18.

For this entire period I will be highlighting the events of the Berlinale Film Festival as a special reporter of Den/The Day.