For some people, the Berlinale is the most important event of the year. I’m here for the first time. And I have questions.
1. What do people keep lining up for?
It’s Thursday, the official start of the Berlinale. A crowd of people has gathered in the form of a queue in front of an exit of the Hyatt Hotel. I see cell phones pulled out, so I stand next to them. “What are you queuing for?” I ask the man next to me. “I don’t know,” he says and smiles sheepishly. “What are you queuing for?” I ask the woman in front of me, who is holding up a cell phone. “I don’t know exactly,” she says and laughs. “Celebrities are probably going to come out.” “What are they queuing for?” I ask a police officer behind me. “I have no idea,” he says. “I’m just doing my job here.” “What are they standing for?” he asks his colleague. He shrugs his shoulders. “Any celebrities.”
A few seconds later, several cars with darkened windows drive out of the driveway at walking pace and past the queue. As if under a secret command, everyone’s hands and cell phones are raised into the air at the same time. I squint my eyes and strain to look through one of the windows. I don’t see anything. There could also be a chimpanzee sitting behind it. Or a celebrity who looks back at me at that exact moment and laughs at me.
2. Why can’t I eat popcorn?
As soon as I entered the Berlinale cinema, the familiar smell of sweet popcorn wafted towards me. I follow the smell to the counter. There I hear the words that will haunt me for a long time: “You are not allowed to eat popcorn during the Berlinale performances.” I haven’t eaten anything that day. All I want is popcorn. I stare at the man behind the counter because I can’t believe it. For me, popcorn belongs in the cinema like the screen. “Why can’t I eat popcorn?” I ask, probably sounding like a five-year-old child. The man behind the counter puts on a stone-faced smile. Then he says a sentence that he must have memorized for hard cases like me: “If you want, you are welcome to enjoy the popcorn in the entrance hall before our performances.”
I don’t want to enjoy the popcorn in the lobby before the shows. I can just stand in front of the freezers in the City Rewe and take it there. So no popcorn. In contrast to the Zoo-Palast, visitors to the Cinemaxx cannot even enjoy it in the entrance hall. The popcorn machines are completely disabled. What a bitter loss for the popcorn industry.
I’m briefly annoyed that I didn’t bring my own popcorn. Then I read that singer Herbert Grönemeyer came up with the same idea in 2006. He showed up to the Berlinale with a family pack of popcorn in his arms. “An affront,” everyone agreed at the time. The smell of grease and “popping noises” would be annoying, said former Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick. He apparently failed to notice that the delicious scent had long since settled in the walls. Even without popcorn, the smell wafts through the cinemas. Or it comes from Grönemeyer, who has hidden in the hall with his family portion, trying to eat it without making any crunching noises.
3. Where has the Berlin style gone?
In everyday life, many Berliners either look as if they have spent hours looking at their outfit, or as if they have spent hours looking at their outfit but wanted to appear as if they had not bothered with it at all, or as if they had really doesn’t bother with it at all. No matter how they handle it, for some reason passers-by always seem a little more casual than in other cities. At the Berlinale, the supposed glamor event, there isn’t much left of it outside of the red carpet.
Every press representative or other very important person hangs their Berlinale ID card, with their own face emblazoned on it, on a ribbon around their neck, clearly visible, almost proudly. Some men combine the dangling card with a suit and look like participants in a management seminar in Eisenhüttenstadt. It would be understandable if they only walked through cinemas and events like that, but no: you also wear your face around your neck on the street, even in cafés, even on the subway. Everyone should see who is going to the Berlinale.
Of course, the card around your neck also has advantages, that makes sense to me. You don’t forget it, after all it hangs at belly button height like a primary school child’s wallet. You can hold it up with a casual hand gesture as you walk briskly into the next cinema. Everyone knows what your name is and what photo you thought was okay enough to have printed on a card that you put around your neck and don’t put down until you go to bed. At least I hope the latter. Not to forget, the card jumps excitedly as you rush to the next appointment.
Every time I dig them out from the depths of my bag and test the patience of the people behind me who are prepared for anything. Luckily no one can tell what my name is from my stomach. Things are different for the journalist who fell asleep in the cinema and is snoring blissfully: his name hangs around his neck and slowly moves up and down with every snore.
4. Why is everyone so strict?
Some Berlinale visitors walk around with such grim expressions on their faces that you would think it wasn’t a film festival taking place today, but the G7 summit. The Berlinale, I quickly realize, takes itself very seriously. By Berlin standards it is unusually strict, at least during the day. Berlin airports or schools should think about poaching the organizers of the Berlinale.
It’s not enough that eating popcorn is forbidden: if you arrive a minute late, you won’t be allowed into the cinema. Anyone who cancels more than two films too late can be blocked and not allowed to see any films at all. If you don’t sit down in front of your laptop and log on to the Berlinale website in time in the morning, you’ll find yourself with sold-out tickets. Journalists also have to try to get a new ticket for every film. This is included in the entrance fee of 70 euros, but if you’re too slow, you’re out of luck.
Film Festival
A minister in love and daring outfits: pictures from the opening of the Berlinale
This thinking seems to become second nature to some visitors. It can happen that a cameraman turns around in a hurry on the red carpet and rams the camera into your head. Or the PR woman shoos you away like an insect with hectic, dismissive hand movements so that you don’t appear in the celebrity protégé’s photos. Or desperate visitors ask you where a random film is playing, you take too long to answer and they run away without saying a word.
5. Who are these celebrities?
I’m standing next to other journalists on the red carpet at a Berlinale party. One celebrity after another walks up and poses in front of the wall printed with advertising logos. The cameras click at a record pace. “Here, here, look here!” “Put a hand on your pregnant belly! Great!” “Look over your shoulder! Sexy, stay like that, stay like that!” Two hours later we are still standing there. It seems like the fairy tale about the self-refilling pot with the celebrities that night. Every time I think it’s over, now it’s done, ten more celebrities appear out of nowhere.
The later the evening, the more important the guests – I can’t confirm that. Another hour later, a group of women I’ve never seen in my life strut across the carpet. The cameras start clicking again. “Look here, here!” A journalist next to me also pulls out her cell phone to take photos. “Tell me,” I say hesitantly. “Who are they then?” “I have no idea. I don’t know any of them,” says the woman. “But they could be important.” Following are young men in bright suits who don’t look remotely familiar to me. The other journalist lowers her cell phone. “I’m going home.”