For the second time in a row, a documentary has won the Berlinale. This year it was Mati Diop whose “Dahomey” won the Golden Bear. Dahomey was a kingdom where Benin is today – but for Mati Diop, who was born in Paris, it is not about the objects in Germany, some of which have since been restituted, but about 26 that will be in the Musée Quai Branly in Paris until 2021 had been issued.
A wooden statue of King Ghézo gives the film a fictional setting – he whispers out of his transport crate and ponders his journey and whether he still has a place in today’s Benin. In between, and this is actually exciting, you can see public debates in the former royal city of Abomey, where a museum was built for the art objects. And the public argues with art historians about how important the statues are – for some the symbolic repatriation is a boost for self-confidence, others see it as an affront to celebrate the repatriation of 26 objects when many thousands are still in European museums. And still others wonder whether the country’s predominant culture isn’t something completely different from these objects.
It could have been worse
Unfortunately, as is often the case with honors of this kind, this victory is more about political content than about the question of whether “Dahomey” is really a highlight of film art (it is not). But it is no compliment to the competition in which he prevailed to say: It could have been worse.
But there was little in this competition that was thoroughly convincing or even overwhelming – and some of the festival’s highlights just weren’t shown there. Does it matter whether there are a few film gems hidden in Encounters or the Panorama or the Forum, perhaps even in the rows of children’s and youth films, and not in the actual competition? That’s it, because that’s where you can see the curation most clearly. Around three hundred films were shown at the Berlinale, of course there are some worthwhile ones, but if the competition is the most important of all sections, the density should be the highest there.
Mathias Glasner was awarded the best screenplay for “Die”, and he wrote really great scenes for the broken, emotionally disturbed son-mother couple Lars Eidinger and Corinna Harfouch; and the prize for best camera went to Martin Gschlacht for “Des Teufels Bad” by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. That’s deserved – the film tells the story of a young woman who is slowly becoming desperate in an Austrian village in 1750, and the film has a truly rousing, inhospitable atmosphere – Gschlacht shot the most impressive images in the competition. The award for best supporting role was given to Emily Watson, who played the cold, manipulative Mother Superior in the film “Small Things like These” about the Magdalene Homes for morally challenged women in Ireland. The award for best leading role went to Sebastian Stan for “A Different Man “, where he is first disfigured and then experiences a miraculous healing that does not make him happy.
Nice, but inconsequential
The further decisions are then more mysterious. The Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo received the Grand Jury Prize for “A Traveler’s Needs,” where Isabelle Huppert staggers through Seoul giving very strange French lessons and no one really knows how she got there. It’s nice to see, but a bit inconsequential, and even the filmmaker had little to say in his acceptance speech other than “I don’t know what you saw in my film.”
The winner of the directing award, Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias, was surprised that his film, “Pepe”, was even invited into the competition – not entirely without reason. In “Pepe” a hippopotamus swims through Medellin, and you should know in advance that the drug lord Pablo Escobar had it kidnapped there from Africa. The film leaves this in the dark – and the hippopotamus tells the story. This is a joke without a punch line. But on the other hand, there were a whole series of mental short-circuits in the competition, and at least that’s not what “Pepe” stands for. When “Gloria!” about female composers in the 18th century, so why does the film not focus on their music, but on a kind of Italo-pop?
“Architekton”, the second documentary in the competition, is a nice essay about the cycle of building and destroying, which, however, raises the question of why people no longer build for eternity and then doesn’t deal with it at all; But there is an equation between earthquakes and war that is speculative at best.
Or “Shambhala” from Nepal, which somehow talks about a particularly strong woman, but then doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test. There is a second woman with whom the heroine Pema communicates – but everything she says and does has to do with her husband Tashi. Even when she wanders lonely through the wastes and loses her child, she only does so because she is looking for Tashi. He, in turn, ran away because he heard that she was having something with another man – but he didn’t even ask her if that was true.
Why don’t the prison authorities in the Danish competition entry “Vogter” understand that the guard Eva is tormenting a prisoner who, as is definitely stated in his file, has killed her son, which the viewer knows after twenty minutes? He might get the idea that “Vogter” was mainly shown because there was no other Scandinavian cinema.
It was the last Berlinale for the current management, artistic director Carlo Chatrian and managing director Mariette Rissenbeek, who is stepping down due to age. At the beginning of the ceremony, the new festival director Tricia Tuttle was introduced, who was sitting in the audience and will already lead the next edition of the festival.
So it’s time to hope again – like the last leadership change in 2020. It’s best if Tuttle follows the advice of Matthias Glasner’s daughter, which he repeated when he accepted his Silver Bear for best screenplay: You should listen to your heart.