Film festival
Strange films at the Berlinale
The hippopotamus Pepe from the private zoo of the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar tells his sad story in “Pepe”. photo
© -/Monte & Culebra/Berlinale/dpa
There are big names and Hollywood glamor in Berlin too. But the Berlinale can also be different.
The length doesn’t matter
You have to take two days of vacation for the film “Exergue – On Documenta 14” by Dimitris Athiridis – because it is watched in two sessions on two different days. In total, the documentation about the series of exhibitions in Kassel in 2017 lasts a full 14 hours. The announcement for the film promises a “look behind the scenes” of curator Adam Szymczyck’s several years of work. “Dostoevsky” by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo is not quite as long – only about four and a half hours. Admittedly, it’s a six-part series – about the search for a serial killer. But it also works the other way around: at six minutes, “Tako Tsubo” by Fanny Sorgo and Eva Pedroza is one of the shortest films.
Films without conversations
Speaking of short films: In some short films, such as “Circle” or “Sacrophagus Of Drunken Loves”, there is no dialogue. But even a feature-length US film at least foregoes human words. “Sasquatch Sunset” by David and Nathan Zellner with Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg (“The Social Network”) is about the life of a Sasquatch family – that’s the Canadian name for the mythical creature Bigfoot. There’s happy grunting here for 90 minutes.
The biography of an animal
A film about Pepe made it into the Berlinale competition. This was the name of the hippopotamus that lived in the private zoo of the Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. In the film of the same name by Nelson Carlos de Los Santos Arias, the hippopotamus’s supposed speaking voice tells its sad story. Pepe is not the only animal at the Berlinale (apart from the prize bear). For example, the Japanese documentary “Gokogu No Neko” by Kazuhiro Soda is about a shrine inhabited by cats.
Worthy mentions
Films about sex can hardly cause a stir anymore. In addition to the Norwegian film “Sex” and the biopic series “Supersex” about the Italian porn star and producer Rocco Siffredi, “The Visitor” by Bruce LaBruce will also be shown – in the film, refugees hatched from suitcases seduce entire families, including explicit sex scenes. On the other side of the extroversion-introversion scale is the Japanese film “Hako Otoko” by Gakuryu Ishii – in it a man changes his life and from then on lives with a box over his head.