I was visiting friends and family, sledding with the little ones in Winter Wonderland on the few hills in famously flat Berlin (entrance at Hasenheide was not easy) and visiting the Berlinale. Without accreditation it wasn’t easy to get tickets to the films of my choice. As soon as the webpage opened at 10a it said not available although some of the 30 venues all over Berlin are huge. The Uber Eats Music Hall has 2,250 Seats where I saw 2 films both packed, although the screening of HELDIN, a German language film, was during a 2 day strike of busses and U-Bahn and everybody there uses public transport. But the Verdi union did not care about the Berlinale or perhaps wanted to give their workers a chance to see a few movies. Berliners love the festival. Old and young came from afar despite snow and ice and strikes to watch the 1000 movies on the 10 day program. (Ticket prices varied between 9 and 15 Euros) Here some from my list, worth watching if they come to a theater near you.
IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU premiered at Sundance and was shown in the Official Competition. Starring Rose Byrne, Mary Bronstein’s high-energy dark comedy takes a deep dive into the nightmarish pressures and surreal horrors of a woman who attempts to navigate a life that came crashing down on her. Byrne was awarded with the Silberne Bär for Best Performance – very well deserved.
HELDIN/LATE SHIFT, starring Leonie Benesch (Lehrerzimmer) in Petra Volpe’s portrait of a nurse working a late shift with unwavering dedication in an understaffed hospital (in Switzerland, in German and Swiss German) A high wire balancing act, emphasized by a camera that is always on the move, swinging from one patient to the next, never resting, not even when on the phone with relatives as far away as Boston to inquire about the patient’s needs.Leonie Benesch captures the increasing frustration and tension that builds up throughout the film in a compelling breathtaking performance. It is not an advertisement for nursing school applicants, rather a slice of a nurse’s stressful, relentless but vital work.
ISLANDS German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s first English-language film reminiscent of his compelling debut feature OH BOY (2012), is carried by a fine performance from Sam Riley, playing a tennis coach on a Canary Island. Drenched in sun, surrounded by tourists in luxury hotels, clubbing into the mornings and waking up with women he can’t remember and will never see again, his dissolute life takes a turn when Anne (Stacey Martin), shows up that seems oddly familiar. Her young son wants tennis lessons. He excels immediately and bonds with his teacher while the kids father, an aggressive, competitive sucker, shows no interest in his family or wife. When he disappears mysteriously Tom follows Anne on an ambiguous search that becomes less and less that of a wife looking for her assumed dead husband. A character study turned into an open ended thriller. After 2 hours the viewers are left guessing.
ZIKADEN Isabell (Nina Hoss), in the midst of a crumbling marriage needs to take care of her aging parents. Her father, an architect, refuses to leave the big house he built for the family but caretakers are hard to find. Isabell meets Anja, a single mother (Saskia Rosendahl) who attempts to keep herself and her young daughter afloat with all kinds of odd jobs. Their encounter turns into a romance and when Anja’s new job is to take care of the parents Isabell’s husband wants his wife back and she welcomes him back. Director Ina Weisse created an enigmatic but muddled drama that even Germany’s top actresses Nina Hoss and Saskia Rosendahl could not save.
BERLIN & BEYOND is coming back March 27 to 31. Flipping through the program 2 films caught my eye. THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG by Mohammad Rasoulof, an Iranian filmmaker who directed the film when locked up in Iran and it was Germany’s Oscar bid. That alone is worth watching it – if you haven’t seen it in theaters.
And a documentary on LENI RIEFENSTAHL by Andres Veiel, a frequent guest to B&B. When Riefenstahl’s A MEMOIR was published in the US in 1992 the Goethe-Institut invited her to San Francisco hoping to achieve what many previous interviewers had tried: to acknowledge her close relationship with Hitler and that she contributed with her films, especially TRIUMPH OF THE WILL to his rise. City Arts and Lectures was on board to interview her at Herbst Theater. But after finally getting the approval of the mostly Jewish Board of City Arts and Lectures Riefenstahl asked Sidney Goldstein if she could assure her that she would not be attacked during the interview verbally and physically with rotten tomatoes. The answer was no and Riefenstahl withdrew. She was 91 and died 10 years later.
