72nd Berlinale | Like an act of faith

(Berlin) As everywhere else in the world, the Omicron wave made its own in Germany and almost compromised the holding of the Berlinale. Since the start of the festival, many have spoken of the importance of cinema and culture in general. And who want to send an important message to the whole world.

Marc-Andre Lussier
The Press

Yes, it’s more complicated. Perhaps not as much as for the brave colleagues covering the Olympic Games in Beijing, but the fact remains that the health protocol that professionals and journalists must follow at the Berlinale is very strict. Accreditation is granted only to fully vaccinated persons, and they must present a negative antigen test every day in order to have right of passage in the places where the activities take place. The simple “badge” is no longer sufficient to gain access to films either, insofar as tickets must also be reserved online, two days in advance, to attend screenings intended for the press, which take place in halls where only 50% of the seats can be occupied.

For the moment, everything is going well. Most of the festival-goers make a good heart against their fortune, being all gathered here for the same communion, that of the love of cinema. Even before the festival officially opens on Thursday, professions of faith in the seventh art marked all the speeches.

Like a “return to the church”…

During the press conference held by the members of the jury, chaired this year by the American filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, several of them also underlined how much the absence of cinema on the big screen had been experienced as a deprivation over the past two years. And forced them to reflect after which their conviction increased. Franco-Tunisian producer Saïd Ben Saïd, who has films by Paul Verhoeven and David Cronenberg to his credit, believes that in his eyes, cinema is a religion and, as such, he sees the holding of the festival as a “back to church”.

Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, whose film Drive My Car is a triumph, evoked for his part the cleavage between commercial cinema and auteur cinema, which a festival like the Berlinale can try to narrow by building bridges.

“In the past, this divide did not exist. The Berlinale is there to remind us that a film qualified as “art and essay” can also reach the public,” he said. For her part, the Zimbabwean filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga, also a member of the jury, argued that by recently reviewing the films in which the late Sidney Poitier played in their chronological order, she realized how much, during the 1950s and 1960s , the major American studios produced films that dealt with major social themes. “The question is to know when this divide began and where it comes from,” she said, praising the work of the organizers of major festivals, “well aware of the transformative power of cinema”.

cinema matters

On the stage of the Berlinale Palast, during an opening night where the emotion was palpable, the co-director Carlo Chatrian pleaded for a return to “normality”.

“Films have kept us going for the past two years,” he said. The pandemic is not over and no one knows when it will end. We know to be careful and take the appropriate measures. But we believe it is also time to finally take back what we have missed so much. »

Germany’s Minister of Culture, Claudia Roth, for her part paid tribute to the health workers, invited by the Berlinale (they received a hearty ovation), and launched a vibrant message:

“This year, the Berlinale sends an important signal to the whole world: culture matters, cinema matters! “, she said.

Female violence

Presented in official competition on Friday, Line traced a particular furrow at the start of the festival. The new film by Franco-Swiss filmmaker Ursula Meier (Home, The child above) indeed explores the phenomenon of violence in a female character. The film also begins with a fit of rage filmed in slow motion to a tune by Vivaldi, during which Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud), a young musician, violently attacks her mother (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), to the point that the latter ends up in the hospital to treat her injuries.

This frontal scene will serve as a pretext to also explore the more muted forms of violence that can arise within a family. The drama is all the more exacerbated as music is at the center of the lives of the two women. This attack has indeed made Christina half deaf, so that she can no longer practice the profession that makes her live. Her daughter is no longer allowed to approach her mother less than 100 meters from the house (hence the title of the film), to the chagrin of Margaret’s two sisters.

The idea for the film was born out of a desire by Stéphanie Blanchoud and Ursula Meier to work on a project together and focus on a violent female character.

“It is more rarely shown in the cinema, argued the filmmaker during a press conference held on the sidelines of the presentation of the film. It is often done on the men’s side, or for teenagers animated by a feeling of revolt. But the portrait of an adult whose violence does not stem from a drug or alcohol problem seemed more unusual to us. »

Stéphanie Blanchoud, who also does music and directing, adds that this starting point forced the two women, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Antoine Jaccoud, to ask themselves questions they would never have -not be thought if the protagonist of their story was a man.

Sometimes peppered with tints of humor, also sprinkled with songs that really contrast with the intrinsic heaviness of some scenes (Benjamin Biolay participated in the musical score in addition to playing a role), Line is distinguished by this way of exploring a more complex situation than it might seem at first glance. The overall quality of the interpretation, dominated by two remarkable actresses, is also to be underlined.