Berlinale: the award ceremony of the bears – culture

The fact that actors have or at least should have screen presence is part of the craft. If you don’t have it, you have to learn it. The effect of Meltem Kaptan, however, is far from being described, not the effect when she enters a stage like that of the Berlinale Palace for the award ceremony of the 72nd International Film Festival, not this energy that goes straight into her from the earth – and which she transmits directly to other people as if she were a medium.

Kaptan, born in Gütersloh in 1980, grew up in Harsewinkel, Westphalia, studied in Istanbul (acting), Washington (performing arts) and Marburg (literature, painting). She moderates, appears as a comedienne and is the star of this Berlinale as the title heroine in Andreas Dresen’s “Rabiye Kurnaz against George W. Bush”, her first leading role. Many had expected that she would be awarded a Silver Bear for Best Actress for her portrayal of the militant mother of Guantanamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz. So bubbly was her wit in the role, so precise was her timing, that she was a natural candidate for the award. In her acceptance speech, she interspersed a short declaration of love to everyone in Turkish and then dedicated her award to the real Rabiye Kurnaz and to all mothers whose love “is stronger than all borders”. Year after year, new and more diverse female roles are demanded. This is a.

“Start like a Turk, but finish like a German” – award-winning screenplay sentences

And another Silver Bear went to Dresen’s film. The author Laila Stieler, who had already written the book for “Gundermann”, received the prize for the best screenplay. For “Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush,” she summed up the sound of the German-Turkish community in sentences that urgently need to become part of future integration debates. One reads: “Start like a Turk, but finish like a German.”

If there’s such a thing as emotional temperature in a film, Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush isn’t that far removed from the Golden Bear grand prize winner for Best Picture. “Alcarràs” by Spanish director Carla Simón is the portrait of a family in Catalonia who spend what will probably be their last summer on their peach plantation because solar panels are to be erected there.

At the beginning of the film, a huge crane carries away the car in which the children were playing spaceship. And one senses that something is coming to an end, that the Solé family’s fight for their country doesn’t stand much of a chance. Simón gives each generation a loving look: the grandparents who always sing the same songs about friendship and homeland and war; Father Qumet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet) and mother Dolors (Anna Otin) – he is no longer up to the job and his role as head of the family, she intervenes in order, while Qumet gets completely lost, for example comes with the women to pick, because that’s okay is that men cannot do it alone.

And the children. Qumet’s teenage son Roger (Albert Bosch) tries to please his father, copy his father, and still find his own way. Mariona (Xènia Roset) practices karaoke, and little Iris (Ainet Jounou) bosses her cousins ​​around, throws lettuce, plays war and is the real energy field of the film.

There are tensions in the family, from outside, from inside. It doesn’t work very well between father and son. An aunt is a lesbian, which nobody makes public. An uncle has sided with the solar panel operators. But all of this may shake the traditional architecture of the extended family, but not collapse it. As the women share recipes, they indulge in their mothers’ cooking, but sentimentality is balanced with realism. “Mom didn’t use a blender,” says one. “She didn’t have one,” replies another dryly.

There is a constant hustle and bustle in this film, a total lack of detachment. Everyone watches everyone, eating, changing, everyone has an opinion and is happy to share it. And as if that wasn’t close enough, they huddle closer together for a photo or throw each other into the pool, and when Iris sings Grandfather’s favorite song, some wipe away a tear. After the pandemic experiences of the past few years, these pictures seem like a promise. The loneliness and forced distance won’t last forever. The human community is still there and it is still intact.

The magnetism of this social structure is so strong that the family even treats the African seasonal workers like old acquaintances, which in view of the stark social realities is a little euphemistic.

The most important scene of all the movements and relationships is the field, the trees, the land. Harvesting together brings everyone together, because people live with the fruit, from the fruit, from peaches, tomatoes, watermelons, which have to be picked individually and carefully packed into boxes that are weighed, transported and transshipped. After all, the integrity of creation doesn’t come naturally, and the Garden of Eden is a pretty brutal place to work. Not all bear films were so compelling.

Jury Prize, Grand Jury Prize – there are quite a few awards at this festival

The Silver Bear for Best Supporting Role went to Indonesian actress Laura Basuki for her fine acting as an enigmatic and freedom-loving friend in Kamila Andini’s film “Nana/Before, Now & Then”. Unlike in the past, leading and supporting roles at the Berlinale are no longer awarded separately for male and female, but gender-neutral for the “best acting performance”. So what does it mean when two women were honored this year? If at all almost only women got bears? Maybe this: In the coming year, men can have more hope.

Open detailed view

Another powerful contemplation of man and nature, Michael Koch’s alpine drama “Drii Winter/A Piece of Sky” deserves more than just an honorable mention. Natalia López Gallardos’ “Robe of Gems,” a study of drug-related crime and violence in rural Mexico, won the Jury Prize, while South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s “The Novelist’s Film” won the Grand Jury Prize, with the greatest mystery being arguably the best , what exactly is the difference between these two awards.

Rithy Panh’s diorama story “Everything Will Be OK” about animals in power who become liars and butchers just like the people before them (Silver Bear for an outstanding artistic achievement) is impressive with its self-carved figural ensembles, but the content is frayed. And the Silver Director’s Bear for Claire Denis’ love story with Juliette Binoche (“Both Sides of the Blades”) is more than benevolent.

It was certainly not the most glamorous Berlinale, the number of stunning films was limited, Hollywood was almost completely absent, the crowd of stars was even clearer than usual. Not even Isabelle Huppert, who received an honorary bear, was able to travel, she was positive shortly before the award ceremony been tested for the coronavirus. Cannes and Venice, in spring and late summer, will certainly be able to shine again, with fewer restrictions on low incidence and more well-known names. Berlin’s February problem hasn’t gotten any better thanks to Omicron. That it was a tour de force to pull this festival through was evident to the two bosses, Mariette Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, over the past few days and also at the award ceremony. Now they have done the most important thing, even if the festival runs until the end of the week for the Berlin audience.

Was it worth it? Well, for the filmmakers, who could hardly find words for their gratitude and who were given a big stage that would otherwise have been denied to their small films, certainly. And if you consider that the Berlinale began in the midst of the pandemic, but that “almost normality” was promised in time for the award ceremony, then perhaps one day this festival will be remembered as the Berlinale, which was the beginning of the end of the restrictions . There are worse things that can be said about a Berlinale.