"Upheaval" at Berlinale 2012

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 03 February 2012 05:00

Written by Renzo Adler

Upheaval; it's a subject that the city of Berlin is not unfamiliar with, and it's the motif of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, being held February 9 - 19, 2012, at the CinemaxX Potsdamer Platz, the CineStar theatres and other venues around Berlin.

The Berlinale, which has been running since 1951, will feature an expected international blend of titles in this year’s selection of over 400 films. But this year, there is a particular focus on Middle Eastern filmmakers.

Casting off the shackles of Tiananmen Square VHS-era technology, the recent Arab Spring was captured in pristine HD, provoking filmmakers from both within and outside the Middle East, to address the subject with films such as Mohammadreza Farzad’s Falgoosh / Blames and Flames.

Many of the Middle Eastern films being shown address the subject of political upheaval through the microcosm of the family unit. This includes films such as:

• My Father Is Still a Communist, Intimate Secrets to be Published
  dir. Ahmad Gossein  (Lebanon/United Arab Emirates (UAE))
• As They Say
  dir. Hicham Ayouch (Morocco/UAE)
• Bye Bye
  dir. Paul Geday (Egypt/The Netherlands)

The festival opens with the world premiere of veteran French director Benoît Jacquot’s film Les adieux à la Reine / Farewell My Queen, set during the twilight of the reign of Louis XVI and the dawn of the French Revolution, and told from the point of view of one of Marie Antoinette’s ladies-in-waiting.

There will also be a retrospective, The Red Dream Factory, screening metaphor-laden German and Russian films from 1921-36, another era of "rapidly changing conditions".

And as if it was not evident enough how inseparable politics are from this festival, a number of German politicians will be in attendance.

Continuing the theme of upheaval, Berlinale features several films from Japan dealing with the political, social and nuclear fallout of the March 11 tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Almost every entry from Japan deals with the subject of upheaval, whether past (The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate), present (Our Homeland), or future (Nuclear Nation).

Nuclear Nation, from Funahashi Atsushi, chronicles the hardships faced by the inhabitants of the town of Futaba, a town baptized in radiation after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

The documentary Friends After 3.11 by Shunji Iwai deals with a more personal side of the story, as the director conducts interviews with people affected by disaster.

Berlinale spokespeople have stated that "The programme is open for a wide range of different lengths and formats, with the works presented trying out individual forms of expression in experimental fashion in order to create new, critical perspectives on the world."

This concerted effort to generate confrontational films that address difficult subjects is sure to make the Berlin Film Festival one of the most important festivals of the year.

For more information, go to www.berlinale.de

62nd Annual Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale)
February 9 - 19, 2012

CinemaxX Potsdamer Platz
Potsdamer Strasse 5
Berlin, Germany

CineStar Cubix
Alexanderplatz
Berlin

Cinestar Event Cinema Berlin
Potsdamerstrass
Berlin

CineStar in the Sony Center
Potsdamerstrasse
Berlin

Colosseum
Schönhauser Allee 123
Berlin

Plus other venues around Berlin

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