Berlinale

This year the Berlinale, officially the International Film Festival Berlin, again appeared with great splendor. More than 400 films were shown, more than 300,000 tickets were sold to visitors from around the world. The Golden Bear, the top prize at the Berlinale, this year went to the Refugee Documentation "Fuocoammare". A review at one of the biggest and most important film festivals in the world.

The Berlinale in Berlin is the world's biggest public festival. Moreover, it is the most political film festival. This year's event has again proven this clearly. The great theme of the 66th Berlinale was: The Origin. Whether you grew up in a libertarian commune in Copenhagen, in an Israeli Bedouin village with patriarchal structures, or in Tunisia, which is suffering from terrorist attacks after the revolution - the question always was: Stay or leave?

The Berlinale movie tickets are like tickets for a quick trip around the world. Anyone who has watched the eight-hour film "A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery” about insurgents in the Philippine colonial period afterwards gets the feeling, to understand the language of the Filipinos. In addition, the topic of escape comes very close in many contributions. Probably in particular due to this proximity the refugee documentation "Fire at Sea" won the Golden Bear. Documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi once escaped without parents from Eritrea to Italy even as a 13-year-old. He went to Lampedusa for the film and shooted the lives of people on the island: Fishers, doctors, radio moderators, teachers, housewives, children. Here Rosi cuts his pictures tight to one another. Once the crew of a rescue ship distributes lifejackets to the refugees, while a granny seams a strip of cloth. Body bags are transferred while a child carves a spin. The mood that affects us all, it is captured in a fascinating way. Namely that we simply live on, although we know that people are fighting alongside us for their survival. On Lampedusa between all, there are just a few meters. However, also here it seems that not many are affect by the fate of the refugees.

Moreover, the Silver Bear, the jury's grand prize, went to a political film. "Death in Sarajevo" by Danis Tanovic treats the centuries-old conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Silver Bear for best cinematography went to Mark Lee Ping Bin for his work on the Chinese contribution "Cross Current". He developed a traceable interconnection from several layers of time that is memories and present, as well as various levels of reality - dreams, fears, actuality - weaving in a way so that the audience nevertheless perfectly understands the storyline.

The jury this year predominantly consisted of actors: Lars Eidinger, Alba Rohrwacher, Clive Owen and the president Meryl Streep. For this reason, many beforehand thought, the Golden Bear would go to a film that places special emphasis on acting skills. Thus, the documentary filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi Pretty was much surprised. Reality won.