FESTIVAL FILES Berlinale 2021
Thoughts on the 71st edition of the Berlin International Film Festival.
In a different world, February 2021 would have marked my tenth consecutive trip to Berlin to attend its annual film festival, which is my overall favorite of the three major events in Europe: whereas Cannes and Venice feel like their own microcosms (one by design, the other due to geography), the German event encompasses the entire city, to the extent that some screening venues require extensive use of public transport, and my favorite experience is seeing films with the regular audience, be they ardent cinephiles or locals who are just looking for a fun night at the movies, albeit in a more festive setting.
Alas, that did not happen this year, a stark reminder of how the world has changed since last year’s Berlinale, which was the final major event to occur under pre-pandemic circumstances. Cannes famously stalled for almost two months, before canceling altogether (but not without labeling a few dozen films, thus making them ineligible to play at rival festivals), while Venice managed to pull off a more subdued edition, without any big studio titles and with strict health and safety protocols (50% capacity in all theaters, mandatory mask-wearing in all festival areas), and Toronto did a hybrid event with select on-site screenings in the city and online-only access for press and film professionals.
Having initially announced a physical edition in the usual February slot, the Berlinale then decided to split its 71st edition in two: an industry event in March, and a physical festival in June (assuming German authorities will give the go-ahead when the time comes). Journalists – including yours truly – spent the better part of a week (March 1-5, with repeats of the award winners on the 6th and 7th) watching a truckload of films – the overall selection was approximately 100 titles, roughly a quarter of what usually plays during a normal edition (though the new management, with Carlo Chatrian as artistic director, already made an effort to slim down the selection last year).
I do believe the festival team made the right choice: if the June event does take place, it will almost certainly be with social distancing and other measures in place, so it makes sense to prioritize the paying audience (a large chunk of the Berlinale’s revenue comes from ticket sales), while the press and EFM (European Film Market) attendees have already seen the films (the only addition during the summer will be the retrospective, focusing on Mae West, Carole Lombard and Rosalind Russell).
That said, the schedule was grueling, to say the least: each batch of films had a 24-hour viewing window, which is unreasonable for that amount of movies over a five-day period (as opposed to the usual ten or eleven days). For the sake of comparison, Toronto offered 48 hours, and Rotterdam (which happened last month) had a 72-hour window for each film. Clearly, the Berlinale system had been conceived with the EFM as the primary reference point (from personal experience – I’ve attended a couple of EFM screenings in the past – I can tell you a lot of Market attendees don’t watch movies in their entirety during the festival).
Nevertheless, with the priceless help of various publicists who were kind enough to supply screeners ahead of time, I put in the hours and managed to watch a whole lot of stuff. Specifically divided by category:
Competition: all 15 films
Encounters: 11 out of 12 films (The Beta Test was not made available for accredited press, and screener requests went unanswered)
Berlinale Special: 8 out of 11 films (two were not made available for accredited press, and one was geo-blocked in my region)
Berlinale Series: 2 out of 6 shows (excluding It’s a Sin, which I saw when it aired on Channel 4)
Berlinale Shorts: 3 out of 20 films (excluding Your Street, which I saw as part of the Kurzfilmtage Winterthur program last November)
Panorama: 4 out of 19 films
Forum and Forum Expanded: 1 out of 45 films
Generation: 6 out of 15 films
(I completely skipped Perspektive Deutsches Kino, because there are only so many hours in the day and I had non-festival stuff to do as well)
So, that makes for a total of 48 films and 8 television episodes, roughly the same amount I would watch during an in-person version of the event. And in terms of quality, it was a very good selection, especially the Competition, which boasted the best line-up I’ve seen since I started attending the Berlinale back in 2012. The films maintained their power even on a computer screen, although I can’t wait for Céline Sciamma’s Petite maman to wreck me emotionally a second time when it becomes possible to see it in the cinema.
Similarly, Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (my overall favorite of the entire festival, and the first time in my years of attendance that my personal choice for the Golden Bear matched the jury’s) is a film that demands collective viewing, not least to observe people’s reactions as the structure shifts in interesting ways. And Denis Côté, whose hilarious Social Hygiene won the Best Director award in the Encounters section (jointly with The Girl and the Spider), assured me over Facebook that the film – which looks like a pandemic-imposed project but was actually conceived, in its current form, back in 2015 – is even funnier on a big screen, with a large crowd.
And that’s what I missed the most: everything beyond the simple act of watching a film. I missed the daily ritual of queueing for tickets at the press counter, having breakfast/coffee with my girlfriend and then going to the early morning press screening. I missed chatting with friends and colleagues over lunch or dinner about the film we’d just seen. I missed the thrill of sitting in a packed cinema amongst people who are excited to be the first to see some new, undiscovered gem (or, more rarely, something far less enticing). I missed walking back to my hostel after the last screening of the day, perhaps with a quick stop at my favorite local bookshop if it was still open at that hour. I missed the melancholy mood of the Berlinale Kinotag, when the cinemas are still packed (it’s the final day of the festival, with catch-up screenings for most of the films) but the city feels deserted, and it dawns on you that the party is over. I missed the intro that plays before each film.
Hopefully, all that will return in 2022, as opposed to just being a memory evoked by Hong Sang-soo’s Introduction (where two characters embrace in front of the Arkaden, the mall right next to the Berlinale Palast). And we will once again be able to laugh, cry, applaud, boo and squirm together, in a darkened room surrounded by one of the greatest cities in the world. Bis bald, Berlin!