Reunion with the big screen under the auspices of Fassbinder: the race for the prestigious Golden Bear is launched this Thursday, February 10 at the Berlinale with the first film in competition, a passionate reinterpretation of the master of German cinema, signed François Ozon.
After an ersatz festival, only via the internet in 2021, the Berlinale is back with red carpets, official screenings and an international jury, chaired by the great American name of thriller Night Shyamalan (“Sixth Sense”, “Unbreakable”), who will discuss “in person”. The big Berlin film festival is being held from February 10 to 16 with limited gauges, pushed by the Omicron variant, after a 2021 edition entirely online.
Eighteen films are in competition until the ceremony on February 16 and it is director François Ozon who opens the ball, a regular at this event where he received the Grand Jury Prize in 2019 for Thanks to God.
The most eclectic Stakhanovite of French cinema promises a beautiful story of devouring passion and a (self)portrait of a filmmaker, through a rereading of Bitter Tears by Petra von Kant, work of one of its models, the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died forty years ago.
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The presence in the credits of this peter von kant by the French actress Isabelle Adjani, brings a modest touch of glamor to the start of the festival which risks running out of it: the big American productions and their processions of stars will be largely lacking in the German capital where the number of contaminations linked to the variant Omicron of Covid-19 is at its highest.
Among the other films in the running to succeed the Golden Bear 2021, awarded to the Romanian Radu Jude, a promotion of eighteen filmmakers including seven female directors, with a particularly marked presence of French cinema. The Berlinale finds in competition well-known personalities, sometimes already awarded, like the Italian veteran Paolo Taviani, 90 years old, with Leonora Addio, his first film since the death of his brother and lifelong sidekick, Vittorio. They had together won the Golden Bear ten years ago.
The presentation of the first feature film around the attacks of November 13 in Paris, centered on a story by a survivor of the Bataclan, will necessarily be scrutinized. One year, one night”is signed by the Spaniard Isaki Lacuesta, with the Argentinian Nahuel Perez Biscayart and the French Noémie Merlant. Filmmaker Claire Denis will be in competition for the first time, for a film co-written with author Christine Angot (With love and determination) and, in general, French cinema and actors (Juliette Binoche at Claire Denis, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Emmanuelle Beart at Mikhaël Hers…) will be well represented.
Apart from the official competition, the Berlinale awaits the sulphurous king of “gialloItalian Dario Argento for a new film Occhiali Neriwhere he once again directs his daughter Asia, or the latest absurd comedy by Frenchman Quentin Dupieux, “Unbelievable but true.
French actress Isabelle Huppert is to receive an honorary Golden Bear for her entire career. The arrivals of the film crews and the first words of the jury, which also includes the Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the Brazilian Karim Aïnouz or the Franco-Tunisian producer Saïd Ben Saïd, will not make us forget the very precarious health situation in Germany.
Masks, daily tests and gauges were put in place and the organizers had to resolve to plan the competition, which is held over six days against ten usually. In total, the number of films screened in Berlin is down by 20 to 25%. But it was high time for the Berlinale to return to an edition “physical”, at the risk of becoming marginalized. Because if American festival-goers continue to be chomping at the bit, with a second edition “Virtual” of Sundance which has just ended, in Europe, the major meetings of Venice and Cannes were held in theaters in 2021 and are already preparing their next editions on the Lido and the Croisette. The competition, which opens on Thursday, is due to end on February 16 with the award ceremony, including the Golden Bear, awarded last year to Romanian Radu Jude.