The gender issue is at the heart of the program for the first major European film festival of the year. The theme of gender-bending (reversal of the sexes) will experience variations throughout the festival, organized this year in a reduced format due to the pandemic.
The Berlinale opened on February 10 with peter von kant by François Ozon, adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film The bitter tears of Petra von Kant. But in her version, the main character, Petra von Kant, is replaced by her male alter ego, Peter, played intensely by one of her favorite actors, Denis Ménochet (Thanks to God).
In the Italian documentary Nel mio Nome, screened in the Panorama section of the Berlinale, director Nicolò Bassetti follows the lives of four friends from Bologna at different stages of their transition from women to men. Nicolò, Leonardo, Andrea and Raffaele talk intimately about their lives, their childhood experiences, their partners and the process of transition. The film’s executive producer is none other than Elliot Page, the Oscar-winning star of “Juno“, formerly known as Ellen Page before coming out as transgender in 2020.
Nicolò Bassetti, inspired by his own transgender son Matteo, 27, said his goal was to report on the “wealth of humanity”noticeable without “binary lenses”. Making this film made him realize that he “really had to stop trying to make assumptions about what it is to be male or female and what it is to be straight or gay”explains the director to AFP. “These distinctions are really outdated and no longer applicable. Instead, I tried to see the beauty of these people, of these human beings”. With Nel mio Nome, Nicolo Bassetti wants to show viewers that they don’t have to submit to “the performance of masculinity or femininity”codes according to him “became debatable for many”.
Are also presented in the Panorama section swing ride and Beautiful Beings, two other films that offer new perspectives on gender norms. In swing rideItalian film by Chiara Bellosi, a 15-year-old girl sees her horizons widen when she meets Amanda, a carnival who refuses to conform to gender stereotypes.
Beautiful Beings, an Icelandic film written and directed by Gudmundur Arnar Gudmundsson, explores the torments of Balli, a 14-year-old misfit, who meets three boys his age. But their newfound friendship threatens to turn sour as they are dragged down a dark road in a world saturated with toxic masculinity. In the Forum section of the Berlinale, the Brazilian film Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter follows the lives of three young queer friends during a fictional future pandemic in Sao Paolo.
And in the Generation 14plus section, the Portuguese short film At Sixteen explores the desire and insecurity aroused in a teenage girl by seeing two girls kissing. As a final nod to a non-binary future, the festival will award this year, for the second time, a neutral interpretation prize, thus eliminating the distinction between actors and actresses.
For Nicolò Bassettithe division of persons into fixed genders is not “only a period in the history of mankind”a transitional period and “in no way what it has always been”.