Violence, Trauma and Acceptance of Deep Pain

74th Berlinale 2024 – Mediocrity and a Lack of Festival Atmosphere

“…In contrast to the fleeting images that we take for personal, immediate use and delete from our screens with a swipe, film images continue to accompany us. They are part of our active memory. Signs that attest to the past and hint at the future.” At the beginning of the 74th film festival in Berlin, Carlo Chatrian once again invoked the importance of cinema, even though the number of films was reduced to 239, the lowest number in a long time. His selection of 20 films in the competition does not live up to this claim – too much mediocrity, too little aesthetically coherent attitude – but nevertheless offers a series of films whose imagery has a somewhat more lasting effect than in the film selection of previous years. In Mé el Ain (To Whom I Belong), Tunisian-Canadian director Meryam Joobeur takes up the fate of a farming family in the Tunisian mountains whose two older sons have joined the IS in Iraq. When Mehdi, the older one, returns, a veiled, heavily pregnant woman in a niqab that he brings with him becomes a symbol of guilt and retribution, while his mother Aisha (Salha Nasraoui) experiences visions of pain and healing in her dreams. The film addresses the atrocities committed by IS and their impact on everyday life far away with unprecedented consistency: nothing is concealed or glossed over without the images becoming a flat illustration of the horror. With impressive cinematic sequences, the film by young director Meryam Joobeur, who for the film returned from Canada to the country of her birth Tunisia, oscillates between the harsh reality of the family and the ghostly counter-world in which violence, trauma and acceptance of deep pain are concealed.

The other series of the festival, e.g. Berlinale Special, also contained films whose images burn themselves deeply into the memory. I would like to pay special tribute to Brandt Andersen’s film The Strangers’ Case. In five episodes, the director, who is an activist for more compassion for refugees, tells the story of people fleeing the devastated city of Aleppo. At the center of the story is a doctor and her young daughter, the only members of her family to survive the destruction of their home and have to cope with the flight from Syria, the journey from Turkey across the Mediterranean and life in exile. Their fate is linked, as if in a chain reaction, with that of other people who help them and pay a price for it. The film draws the audience into the reality of war and its consequences in a way that is impossible to forget, comparable to the way Agnieszka Holland puts her finger in the wound in Green Border, with harshness but without false pathos, with a differentiated view but without the self-assurance of those who believe themselves to be on the ‘right’ side and who unfortunately also disrupted the festival with one-sided and even anti-Semitic actions in the sense of post-colonial pseudo-theories.

Finding images for the reality of life in other worlds or times is the challenge, and the Austrian film Des Teufels Bad (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala) in the competition comes oppressively close to the relentlessness of peasant life in the mid-18th century with its leading actress Anja Plaschg. (Silver Bear for Best Cinematography) Strict hierarchies and a panicked fear of sin and damnation prevail in the Upper Austrian village. After her marriage, Agnes falls into a depression because her husband won’t touch her and life in the solitude of the forest brings nothing but work, poverty and the fear of hell. To avoid eternal damnation for suicide, women commit murder in the certainty of forgiveness. A dark film that reminds us secular moviegoers of the religious madness not only of the past through the images of the young woman’s despair. Andreas Dresen’s film about a group of resistance fighters against Nazi rule in the ‘Red Chapel’ environment also focuses on its main character Hilde Coppi (Liv Lisa Fries), also with great success, albeit without a Bear award.  In his competition film In Liebe, Deine Hilde, he traces her path into the resistance in flashbacks, while she gives birth to her child in prison and is allowed to accompany the baby for a few more months. Hilde Coppi was murdered with a guillotine on August 5, 1943, and the film pays tribute to her as a tough, quiet person without being charged with heroism. Unheroic and unassimilable, as was later attempted in the GDR, and without, as Dresen, who grew up in the GDR, emphasized at the press conference, making people feel small in the face of the heroes. Dresen succeeds in making the inner decency of the historical figures visible by purifying the material and bringing the narrative to a poetic, human level. He dispenses with the Nazi stereotypes that have unfortunately become common in German films and paints a picture of young people that allows young viewers today a new and more truthful approach to history. At the press conference for his film, Andreas Dresen also insisted that the Berlinale must not become a festival of politics, but a festival of films, contrary to the current trend towards ideologization. This year, however, this was only achieved to a limited extent.

Another film with a strong leading actress became a favorite of audiences and critics right from the start: My Favourite Cake with Lily Farhadpour, who plays the 70-year-old widow Mahin. From a somewhat embittered pensioner, the woman, who lived through times before the coercive religious regime, is transformed into a resistant and fun-loving person. No one wears a veil at home, the film makes no secret of this, and the Iranian authorities tried to prevent the film from being screened in the competition program. Mahin defends her right to happiness, even if the favorite cake she bakes for her chosen husband of longing is never eaten.  The directing duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha were not allowed to travel to the Berlinale, and their movie, begun before Meena Amini’s violent death, does not refrain from criticizing the misanthropy of the mullah regime. Artists in Iran are aware that opposition members are being executed time and time again: “We are sad and tired, but we are not alone,” reads a statement from the directors, “Films unite us, that is the magic of cinema.” In the end, the surprisingly humorous film received awards from the critics’ federation FIPRESCI and the Ecumenical Jury.

The second German director in the competition program, Matthias Glasner, also emphasized that he wants his films to provide life experiences that people will never forget. His film Sterben (Dying), with which he was invited to the competition for the third time, is close to the German present, a family story with many facets that nevertheless does not disintegrate into episodes. Glasner’s acting ensemble, with Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Ronald Zehrfeld, Lilith Stangenberg and others, develops over three hours the image of a society that offers little support and yet forces parents and children and those close to them to make decisions and develop. The way this happens is carried by a great sense of form, surprising, sometimes gracious, sometimes hurtful, but not without comic moments, with big themes such as dementia, depression, alcoholism, suicide, failing relationships and even dying. Glasner maintains an effortless balance in all of this, and we haven’t seen such great dialogs as in this artistic and truthful film in German cinema for a long time. After all, the film was awarded a Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.

We will have to wait and see how the Berlinale develops under new management after the end of the Chatrian/Rissenbeek era. It will not be easy in view of Potsdamer Platz, which is marked by clear signs of decline and the exodus of many cinemas and film institutions, because even a Berlinale that is still successful as an audience festival needs a lively center. In any case, the Berlinale’s claim to be a political festival is not fulfilled by political statements and declarations of opinion. We can only hope that Tricia Tuttle will succeed in making a new start.

Lore Kleinert
© FIPRESCI 2024