This year’s edition was back to full capacity and after missing it completely last year and experiencing the at home version in 2021, I was happy to return to Berlin. But I wasn’t expecting Potsdamer Platz, the heart of Berlinale to feel dull, and for CinemaxX to have its plush theatre seats changed to black leather recliner seats. It was a one of my few favourite cineplexes, one of the bigger theatres there had lovely red seats and golden yellow curtains on the screen. Now it looks just like any recently refurbished cineplex.

But I managed to get into the spirit of the festival and watched 40 films in total, new and old, although the retrospective section was weak in its curation compared to previous editions. The theme was “Young at Heart – Coming of Age at the Movies” and around 30 filmmakers were asked to select their personal coming of age film, most of which were digital prints.

There was a good offering of film premieres and a variety of genres and stories, but for this round up, I will focus on a recurring theme I found in the films I watched - families.

The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa) is about siblings. Eric (Michael Cera) visits his home town to see his two sisters Rachel (Hannah Gross) and Maggie (Sophia Lillis), but mostly to play poker with his old friends and to prove how good he is at it. He keeps extending his stay, not to spend more time with his sisters, but to play more poker.

Just as he bluffs during the card game, he similarly behaves that way with his siblings and friends, never giving one answer to why he's in town or extending his stay.

When the siblings are together, there’s a sense of unresolved resentments and issues. Their mother passed away a few years ago, Rachel (the eldest) lives and looks after the family home and most likely had to solely take on more responsibilities than she expected at her age. Eric has not visited his family for a while, “Hug me like you haven’t seen me for three years,” Rachel says to Eric when she greets him.

When not having awkward conversations, they reenact childhood role play with funny voices and accents (including Marge from The Simpsons) and song/dance routines. Were they child performers in the past? They seem to connect better and relate to each other when they are in that mode.

It is both funny and unsettling to watch. Close knit siblings have their own codes between them when together that is impenetrable to outsiders. One standout scene for me is at a house party and after arguing amongst themselves in funny voices, they hit the dance floor when the song Overkill by Men a Work (1983) comes on. They dance in unison, a choreographed routine they’ve clearly done many times before.

“There’s a lot unsaid throughout most of The Adults, and the thing most being unsaid is that these people used to love each other more than anything else. The fantastic world they lived together as children is no longer attainable. This unspoken tension is how a lot of families operate. It’s too painful to look directly at reality and know there really is no way back.” Dustin Guy Defa

Le Grand Chariot / The Plough (Philippe Garrel) is about a family of puppeteers and disappearing traditions with a cast that includes the directors own children Louis Garrel (Louis), Esther Garrel (Martha) and Lena Garrel (Lena). I found out later that Philippe Garrel’s father, the actor Maurice Garrel was a puppeteer before he became an actor.

“I wanted to make a film with my three children who have, one after another, become actors for other directors these last few years (I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to co-opt them by casting them first). I realize that depicting one’s family is a pleasure usually reserved for painters. Since my children are aged 22, 30 and 38, I had to find a reason to bring them together at those ages. I decided I would depict a family of puppeteers, several of which still exist, even today. When I was born, before he became an actor, my father was a puppeteer in Gaston Baty’s troupe. My godfather, Alain Recoing, also performed in the company” Philippe Garrel

A lot of fact and fiction is intertwined here. And also a lot of playacting like in The Adults, but in this case it in the form of puppets.

Puppeteering isn’t a thriving form of art in today’s day and age, when children as young as three have their own little smart device to play with.
When the family’s father (the director of the troupe) and the grandmother (who makes the dolls) pass away, they take with them knowledge, memories.

Can the current generation maintain the families legacy, an art form and craft that feels out of touch with current times, competing with limited attention spans and digital screens.

But also what about individual dreams and desires, Louis wants to be an an actor, Esther and Martha are more dedicated to holding on to their craft but are are also having to deal with declining attendance and ticket sales, and an increase in debts.

I read several reviews saying the dying tradition of puppeteers depicted in the film is a metaphor for the dying of cinema in real life. Cinema has always been proclaimed to be dead or dying for as long as I remember. For me, the film is about the disintegration of close knit families and long held family traditions when a key family member dies, things are no longer the same. A patriarchal or matriarchal figure that held the family together is no longer there, a changed family facing a changing world.

Al Murhaqoon / The Burdened (Amr Gamal) is about a family in Yemen facing economic decline amidst the civil war which has impacted jobs and salaries and everyday living like military checks in the streets, frequent power cuts, and having to haul water from the street to the kitchen. They are also faced with the pregnancy of a 4th child. Ahmed (Khaled Hamdan) and Isra’a (Abeer Mohammed) make the difficult decision to get an abortion. They can’t afford to have an additional child. The film follows them navigating the medical and religious establishments where there are differing and opposing opinions, both religiously and culturally, and their own personal conflicts and unease with their decisions.

Amr Gamal’s previous film 10 Days Before the Wedding (also starring Khaled Hamdan) was about a soon to get married couple looking for a liveable and affordable place of their own, in a city that is mostly in ruins. The Burdened can be thought of as its unofficial sequel.

In the press notes, the director talks about the decline of the economic conditions for middle class Yemenis since 2011 because of the Arab Spring and worsening in 2015 because of the civil war where living standards for many fell below the poverty line. The Burdened is based on the directors friends who were faced with the same dilemma. Not many films get made in Yemen and we’re used to the usual depiction of that country its people through the news that normally focuses on violence and poverty.

The film shows us what we don’t see in the news, the daily struggles of the middle-class who once had steady professional careers. Everyday is a struggle to survive. They are not just feeling burdened, the are exhausted (the Arabic title of the film Al Murhaqoon means exhausted), and the theme of abortion also represents the loss they feel.

“The term abortion has always been associated in Arabic literature with the expression of the incompleteness of dreams or the loss of the future and ambition for reasons beyond a person’s control, so we say: My dream was aborted, my ambition was aborted, or my future was aborted. This symbolism, for me, represents most of the Yemenis whose dreams, aspirations, and present were aborted by the war and its consequences, and I hope it will not abort their future.” Amr Gamal

Mal Viver / Bad Living + Viver Mal / Living Bad (João Canijo) is a cinematic diptych - “Viver Mal is a mirror to Mal Viver” as described by the director, where Bad Living is about a family set in the hotel they run, and the second, Living Bad, focusses on the guests in the hotel. Both films include fleeting voices and shadows from protagonists appearing in each film. We see the same instances in both films, but from different perspectives and point of views. I preferred Mal Viver after watching the two films on two different nights, but both are strong and worth watching.

The films feature dysfunctional families, and loaded with mummy issues. Canijo addresses this in the press notes:

“The film stems from the idea of how mothers determine their daughters’ disgrace, and how they, in turn, will determine their granddaughters’ disgrace. It’s a film about the anxiety of being a mother and how it undermines the ability for unconditional love. Three generations of women who fall victim to their mothers’ anxiety: a grandmother’s anxiety made her unable to be a mother to her daughter who was unable to be a mother to her granddaughter.
In a family-run hotel, by the Portuguese northern shore, lives a group of women from different generations of the same family, whose relationships with each other have grown poisoned by bitterness. They try to survive in the declining hotel, as the unexpected arrival of a granddaughter to this oppressive space stirs trouble, reviving latent hatred and piled-up resentments.” João Canijo

The setting of the hotel, the real life Hotel Parque do Rio in Ofir (Northern Portugal) is key to the story and also making it a film about architecture. The impressive cinematography and set design makes the hotel feel both alluring and claustrophobic. There’s a story unfolding in each room and space in the hotel, family tensions, sexual liaisons, emotional violence, grief and depression - a contemporary melodrama at its finest.

Strangely, the two films were presented in two different sections, Mal Viver was in the Competition section of the festival (it won the Silver Bear Jury Prize) and Viver Mal was in Encounters.

Top two stills from Mal Viver, and bottom two from Viver Mal.

Other highlights:

More favourites:
Afire (Christian Petzold) - Paula Beer’s “Club Sandwich” line delivery.
Between Revolutions (Vlad Petri)
Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait (Luke Fowler) - About what makes a place, and an unrealised film by Margaret Tate. Lovely.
Disco Boy (Giacomo Abbruzzese)
Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk) - America post Trump and digital dystopia told through 100s of film clips, some manipulated digitally. Clever and funny.
Here (Bas Devos) - Soup, friends, walking, plants. Chance encounters and human connections.
In the Blind Spot (Ayşe Polat) - Chilling.
Our Body (Claire Simon) - A tender and moving film about care in the gynecology ward of a hospital in Paris.
Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara) - Walking, dancing in parks, memories, community.
Past Lives (Celine Song) - There has been a lot of strong opposing opinions for this film, but I found myself moved by it. “If you leave something, you gain something too.”

Favourites from the retrospective/classics sections:
The Battle of a Sacred Tree (Wanjiru Kinyanjui, 1995)
Kara Kafa / Black Head (Korhan Yurtsever, 1979)
Little Fugitive (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin 1953)
Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka, 1975)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983) - didn’t love it as much as I expected, but it’s a film I’ve wanted to see since 1983!
The Devil Queen (Antonio Carlos da Fontana, 1974)
Twilight (György Fehér, 1990)
+ this line from Order (Sohrab Shahid Saless 1980) “…the people there cough too much”, about not going to the movies (and why I wore a face mask at all the screenings.)

Wish I watched:
BlackBerry (Matt Johnson)
The Echo (Tatiana Huezo)
Reality (Tina Satter)
Samsara (Lois Patiño)

Wish I skipped:
AI: African Intelligence (Manthia Diawara)
The Beast in the Jungle (Patric Chiha)
Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything (Emily Atef)

Everywhere I go, Dubai follows:
A line from Till the End of the Night (Christoph Hochhäusler), “I thought you were in Dubai”. A few hours later, the receptionist in my hotel asked a man who was checking in where he’s from, he replied “Originally I’m from Lithuania…living in Dubai for 13 years.”

Berlinale 2023 Music:
Fav mic drop, Overkill by Men at Work in The Adults. Funniest mic drops Macarena from Inside.
I created a Berlinale 2023 YouTube playlist here. A few missing, including the song from the dance scene in Remembering Every Night.

Pre Berlinale, I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin and realsed why it didnt get released in the UAE, and post Berlinale I watched Tar in Kino International (3rd viewing in a cinema for me) which also makes a brief appearance in the film.

Also pre-Berlinale:
Monologues for a Revolution - Films by Julius-Amédée in SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, followed by a discussion between him and Steve McFarlane (who co-commissioned the restoration of the two films)

Cinema of Care – Who looks after Film Culture?, the opening conference for Berlin Critics’ Week 2023 with a panel talk that included included Claire Denis, Marek Hovorka (Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival) and film curator/critic Abby Sun. You can listen to the discussion here.

Claire Denis saying she doesn't trust the word 'aesthetic'.

Claire Simon complaining loudly how fascist it was saying it’s fascist (I later learned she wasn’t allowed to enter a screening that had started).

Meeting and hanging out with Abby Sun, Jesse Cumming, Edo Choi (I teared up when he told me Hou Hsiao Hsien isn’t well and unlikely to make another film), Joost Broeren, and catching up with Steve McFarlane, Amber Heard, Neil Young, Alex Fuller and Matt Mansfield.

Other Berlin highlights:

I had only intended to visit the William Eggleston exhibition at C/O, but thanks to Jesse Cumming, I also visited Sky Hopinka’s Sunflower Siege Engine at Tanya Leighton Gallery and Karen Lamassonne exhibition at KW. and introduced to a bookstore gem, Hopscoth Reading Room.

Thanks to Steve McFarlane, I visited the recently re-opened Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery).

Spotting James Benning at C/O Berlin.

Watching a guy watching Dirty Harry on his phone on the S-Bahn.

A complete list of all the films I watched:

Competition
Afire (Christian Petzold)
Disco Boy (Giacomo Abbruzzese)
Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey Into the Desert (Margarethe von Trotta)
Mal Viver (João Canijo)
Manodrome (John Trengove)
Music (Angela Schanelec)
Past Lives (Celine Song)
The Plough (Philippe Garrel)
Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything (Emily Atef)
Till the End of the Night (Christoph Hochhäusler)

Encounters
The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa)
Here (Bas Devos)
In the Blind Spot (Ayşe Polat)
in water (Hong Sangsoo)
Viver Mal (João Canijo)

Panorama
After (Anthony Lapia)
The Beast in the Jungle (Patric Chiha)
The Burdened (Amr Gamal)
The Cemetery of Cinema (Thierno Souleymane Diallo)
Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk)
Inside (Vasilis Katsoupis)
Passages (Ira Sachs)
Perpetrator (Jennifer Reeder)

Berlinale Special
Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg)

Forum
Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait (Luke Fowler)
Between Revolutions (Vlad Petri)
Our Body (Claire Simon)
Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara)

Forum Special
A Rainha Diaba / The Devil Queen (Antonio Carlos da Fontoura, 1973)
Kara Kafa / Black Head (Korhan Yurtsever, 1979)
The Battle of a Sacred Tree (Wanjiru Kinyanjui, 1995, 35mm)
A Lover and Killer of Colour (Wanjiru Kinyanjui, 1988, 16mm)
Order (Sohrab Shahid Saless 1980, 16mm)

Forum Expanded
AI: African Intelligence (Manthia Diawara)
The Man Who Envied Women (Yvonne Rainer, 1985)

Retrospective - Young at Heart
Little Fugitive (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin 1953, 35mm)
Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka, 1975)
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan, 1961, 35mm)

Berlinale Classics
Twilight (György Fehér, 1990)

Previous Belrinale Roundups:
Berlinale 2014
Berlinale 2017
Berlinale 2018 (Preview)
Berlinale 2018
Berlinale 2019
Berlinale 2020
Berlinale 2021 (Home Edition)

www.berlinale.de

Berlinale 2023 Roundup