57th Berlin Film Festival Report
Hendrike Bake reports from the international film event, that this year combined audience pleasers with tougher fare.

Ten days (8–18 February, 2007) of cinemania have passed over Berlin. The Berlin International Film Festival is unique in its appeal to the general audience. There is hardly a student household without the festival programme, detailing almost 400 films, lying around somewhere. People who don't care about hardcore arthouse cinema during the rest of the year start queuing for obscure Mongolian documentaries. Hardened enemies of the controversial Potsdamer Platz, where the heart of the festival beats, take a trip there just to get a whiff of the excitement, and all local newspapers sport three extra pages daily dedicated to film. Plus, of course, a daily update on the current influx of stars and parties on the society pages. It is only public transport that hasn't caught on yet – every year, when there are thousands of foreign visitors in Berlin, some crucial line is interrupted for repairs.

For the audience, 2007 has been a good year. 200,000 Berliners and 19,000 professionals watched a diverse range of interesting films, mostly in the slightly less overcrowded sections Panorama, Forum, Generation, and Retrospective. A favorite among the many contenders was Hal Hartley's sequel to Henry Fool. The very fast paced triple agent comedy Fay Grim unravels new layers of Henry's past in every sequence, while drawing Henry's ex-wife Fay deeper and deeper into unfathomable international secret service entanglements. Filmed at odd angles throughout, the film leads into a fake universe where lies are layered upon lies. Also well received was Hounds, the German debut by Ann-Kristin Reyels, about a taciturn father and son in the remote East German region Uckermarck; the Taiwanese Spider Lilies by Zero Chou about the friendship between a tattoo shop owner and a girl hooked on cybersex (Teddy Award for Best Queer Picture of the festival); and Pascale Ferran's three hour long adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. Lady Chatterley describes in meticulous detail the extremely slow process of mutual sexual discovery as well, as the fine power structure of 1920s society that resonates in every sentence the Lady and her gamekeeper exchange. The Panorama Audience Award 2007 was given once again to a documentary: Blindsight by Lucy Walker about a blind mountaineer leading blind kids up the Lhakpa Ri at the north side of Mount Everest.

So there wasn’t a lack of good and exciting movies. The flagship of the festival however, the competition with its 22 pictures, screened few of them. Torn between director Dieter Kosslick’s many and often mutually exclusive ambitions – to make the Berlin Festival a local and international glamour event, to present cutting edge political cinema, to welcome famous directors and to cover filmmaking worldwide  – the selection seemed arbitrary.  Next to friendly topical films like The Year My Parents Went on Vacation by Cao Hamburger and new works by François Ozon, Jacques Rivette and Robert de Niro stood star vehicles like The Good German by Soderbergh and such oddities as the lame depression-in-middle-age drama When a Man Falls in the Forest (starring Sharon Stone without make-up) and Bordertown, a B-picture presenting the plight of women maquilladeras at the Mexican-American border (starring Jennifer Lopez).

On the other hand, the high-profile jury headed by Paul Schrader took a clear stance for the uncompromising arthouse picture. Jury members Willem Dafoe, Gael García Bernal, Mario Adorf, Hiam Abbass (actress in Paradise Now), Nansun Shi (producer of Infernal Affairs) and Molly Malene Stensgaard (Lars von Trier’s favorite cutter) awarded the Golden Bear for Best Film to the Chinese film Tuya’s Marriage by Wang Quanan. In the bright tones of the clear Mongolian sky and the colourful Mongolian costumes Wang tells the story of a family torn between emotional and material needs. Tuya’s husband Bater is handicapped. When Tuya herself collapses and is told by her doctor to work less hard, the survival of the family is in danger. Tuya and Bater decide to divorce and Tuya tries to find a new husband who will look after Bater as well. A line of suitors appear offering wealth and education in the city but unwilling to look after the ex. A tight script, humour, warmth and low-key emotional cliffhangers make Tuya’s Marriage an engaging film, while never glossing over the extreme hardship the family endures. Interestingly, the second Chinese film of the competition, Lost in Beijing by Li Yu, although opposite in style and location, touched on similar issues. In the breathless film about a young rural couple trying to make their way in the megacity, private happiness fights a loosing battle against the demands of a rapidly changing society.

The acting awards too, were bestowed upon non-topical films with a clear atheistic concept; films that locate the political in small private stories; films dealing in the language of cinema. The Silver Bear for Best Actor went to Julio Chávez for his performance in the strictly non-commercial Argentinian film El Otro by Ariel Rotter (which also received a Silver Bear). Chávez plays a 46-year-old man who is told by his girlfriend that they are expecting a baby. The news send him on a contemplative journey through sombre bars and hotels. He toys with the idea of changing his identity, he fucks with a stranger and saves an old woman pretending to be a doctor. After maybe two days in this silent and dark other world of thought he returns home to his girlfriend and his old father. For a similarly austere performance, German actress Nina Hoss received a Silver Bear for Best Actress. In Yella by Christian Petzold (Wolfsburg) she plays an East German woman running away from a failed marriage and material hardship to an unearthly steel-and-glass world of venture capital and big business. The decision came as a big surprise since press and public alike had seen Marianne Faithful as the most likely contender, followed by Marion Cotillard as Édith Piaf. In the europudding production Irina Palm about a grandmother becoming a sexworker to save her grandson, Faithful is delightful to watch as the ‘wanking widow’. In fact her performance of a woman who is forced to overcome her shyness and discovers new horizons in a sleazy sex shop saves an otherwise rather shallow comedy that nevertheless charmed audiences.

The Silver Bear for Best Director was awarded to the Israeli drama Beaufort by Joseph Cedar. In his film Cedar portrays the last unit to be stationed at the famous seafarer fortress Beaufort in Lebanon before the complete retreat of the Israeli army. The story of a group of men defending and dying for a hill that will be given up soon anyway concentrates on the lethal absurdities that political decisions force upon the ordinary soldier. Without discussing those decisions as such. In a similar vein, Clint Eastwood’s sequel to Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima, portrays the kamikaze fight of the Japanese Army against the Americans on the island of Iwo Jima, in which 20,000 Japanese soldiers died.

The Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Achievement went to the ensemble cast of The Good Sheperd by Robert de Niro, the Bear for the Best Film Music was given to the coming-of-age drama Hallam Foe by David Mackenzie and the weird computer animated asylum extravaganza I Am a Cyborg, But That’s OK by Old Boy director Park Chan-wook received the Alfred-Bauer-Price for ‘new perspectives in the art of filmmaking’.