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FILM FESTIVAL

Hungarian slaughterhouse love story wins Berlin fest Golden Bear

Hungary's "On Body and Soul", a tender love story set in a slaughterhouse, won the Golden Bear top prize Saturday at the Berlin film festival, Europe's first major cinema showcase of the year.

Published: 20 February 2017 08:20 CET
Hungarian slaughterhouse love story wins Berlin fest Golden Bear
Ildikó Enyedi with the Golden Bear win. Photo: DPA.

The drama by Ildiko Enyedi, one of four female filmmakers in competition, features graphic scenes in an abattoir set against the budding romance of two people who share a recurring dream.

The win marked an upset at the 11-day Berlinale, where a European refugee comedy by cult Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, “The Other Side of Hope”, had been the odds-on favourite.

Kaurismaki took the Silver Bear for best director.

Enyedi thanked the festival for embracing her first full-length feature in 18 years but said working conditions in Hungary were growing more difficult under Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

“We live in a more and more absurd country, frighteningly absurd country,” she told reporters after the ceremony, while adding that the state film fund served as a “sort of island”.

“We can work there at relative freedom, peace and we get professional support.”

The runner-up jury prize went to Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis for “Felicite” about a Kinshasa nightclub singer who has to scrape together funds to pay for her son's treatment after a serious road accident.

South Korea's Kim Min-Hee, the star of Hong Sang-Soo's intimate drama “On the Beach at Night Alone” about a failed love affair with a director, won best actress.

And Austria's Georg Friedrich scooped best actor for his role in the German drama “Bright Nights” as a mourning father who takes his teenage son on a road trip through Norway.

'Fight the dark ages'

Best screenplay went to another favourite of the festival, “A Fantastic Woman” by Chile's Sebastian Lelio, starring transgender actress Daniela Vega.

Lelio, joined on stage by Vega, said the film about a singer fighting for her right to attend the funeral of her much older lover was a call for tolerance in trying times.

“We have to fight the dark ages with beauty, with elegance, with poetry,” he said.

Best documentary, awarded for the first time at the festival, was picked up by Palestinian director Raed Andoni for “Ghost Hunting”.

The film recreates a notorious Israeli interrogation centre – and has ex-prisoners re-enact experiences in a bid to free them of their demons.

“We still have 7,000 Palestinians living in those jails… They never get the recognition as I do,” said Andoni, who also served time behind bars in Israel.

Capping a politically charged year at the festival, US documentary jury member Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”) said filmmakers must stand up for basic freedoms.

“Yesterday the president of the United States described the press as the enemy of the people,” she said, referring to a tweet by Donald Trump on Friday.

“As documentary filmmakers we're here to say that we're the enemy of nationalism and of exclusion.”

Jury 'fell in love'

A seven-member jury led by Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct”, “Elle”) and including US actress Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Dark Knight”) and Mexican director and actor Diego Luna (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story”) selected the main prizes among 18 contenders.

Last year, jury president Meryl Streep gave top honours to Italy's “Fire at Sea”, a portrait of the refugee crisis on the island of Lampedusa. It is nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary this month.

Presenting the Golden Bear, Verhoeven said the jury “fell in love” with “On Body and Soul”, adding that it was about “two people connecting in quite an amazing way”.

The enigmatic film features Endre and Maria, who by day work in a slaughterhouse but by night have the same dream about a male and a female deer nuzzling in a snowy forest.

Endre, the abattoir's financial director, has a deformed hand that makes him self-conscious while Maria, the new quality control inspector, is crippled by shyness and an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Enyedi contrasts the growth of their relationship and the petty squabbles at the company with stomach-churning scenes of the cattle bound for the butcher's hooks.

Film industry bible Variety said the film “blends mournfully poetic whimsy with stabs of visceral brute reality”.

WOMEN

7 ground-breaking German movies made by female filmmakers

To celebrate the works of women in the German film industry, and at the conclusion of this year's special outdoor Berlinale, we have compiled a list of seven must-watch German films directed by women. 

Published: 21 June 2021 17:09 CEST
7 ground-breaking German movies made by female filmmakers
A scene from System Crasher. credit: picture alliance/dpa/ZDF | Peter Hartwig

This year’s Oscars marked the first time in its almost 100-year history that two female filmmakers – Chloé Zhao and Emerald Fennell – were nominated in the Best Director category. Only five women have ever been nominated for this award. Zhao took home the gong, becoming just the second woman ever to do so.

In 2021’s Berlinale Festival, 60 percent of the films in the Generation category were directed by women — with 75 percent of female filmmakers making up the Kplus selection (a category for younger audiences).

Here is a look at seven films by some of the most influential female directors in German cinema.

Never Sleep Again (1992) — Pia Frankenberg

Featured in Berlinale’s Retrospective series, meant to showcase female filmmakers, this film is written, directed and produced by Cologne-born filmmaker, Pia Frankenberg.

The film follows three female friends through post-unification Berlin, who are making their way to a wedding when their car breaks down. They wander through the streets of former East Berlin, roaming in and out of bars meeting men. 

The dilapidated sites of the former Cold War frontier city, still scarred by World War II, become a place for sheer endless personal experimentation where the women begin to reconfigure their lives and loves.

Frankenberg’s impressionistic portrait of three women in the city reflects on the state of the newly unified Germany, where for a moment all possibilities seemed radically open. (Available on Mubi, Binged)

The German Sisters (1981) — Margarethe Von Trotta 

Considered one of the classics of the New German Cinema movement, The German Sisters tells an intimate story of Germany. 

Based on the real-life story of the Enslein sisters, it is an expression of director Margarethe Von Trotta’s combination of the personal and the political. It’s the story of Juliane, a feminist journalist and her sister, Marianne, who is a terrorist revolutionary. The film, which won six awards at the Venice Film Festival including the Golden Lion, was Margarethe Von Trotta’s third film and first collaboration with Barbara Sukowa. The director-actor duo went on to do six more films together. (Available on Mubi, Prime)

Margarethe Von Trotta on set in 1975. Photo: dpa | Bertram

Toni Erdmann (2016) — Maren Ade 

Toni Erdmann is a German-Austrian comedy which was directed, written and co-produced by Maren Ade. The film, which premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, was named the best film of 2016. 

Meant to showcase the intricacies of a father-daughter relationship, the film pairs carefully constructed, three-dimensional characters in a tenderly funny character study. A hard-working woman reluctantly agrees to spend time with her estranged father when he unexpectedly arrives.

As a practical joker, the father does his best to reconnect by pretending to be her CEO’s life coach. (Available on Mubi, Kanopy, Prime, Vudu)

I Was at Home, But (2019) — Angela Schanelec 

I was at home, but (Ich war zuhause, aber) is a 2019 German drama film directed by Angela Schanelec. At the Berlinale that year, Schanelec won the Silver Bear for Best Director. 

The film is a story about a 13-year-old student, Phillip, who disappears without a trace for a week and suddenly reappears. 

It maps the existential crises his mother and teachers are confronted with that change their whole view of life. The film features several plots, which tell the stories of several people who are all connected to Phillip in some way. It has scenes with long silences, to contrast ones with heavy dialogue, which critics believe makes this film a cinematic masterpiece. (Available on Apple iTunes, Google Play Movies, Vudu, or rent on YouTube).

The Audition (2019) — Ina Weisse

This film has been described as a symphonic study of human behaviour. It’s the story of a violin teacher, who takes great interest in mentoring a student for an audition. Anna, the violinist and teacher played by Nina Hoss, shows plenty of compassion toward the boy at first, but their relationship becomes much more strained as the date of Alexander’s audition nears and Anna begins to put him through musical torture. Come the day of the exam, events take a tragic turn. (Available on Amazon Prime Video)

Pelican Blood (2019) — Katrin Gebbe 

Pelican Blood is written and directed by Katrin Gebbe, who won the 2014 Preis der Deutschen Filmkritik (German Film Critics’ Prize) for her first film.

It tells the story of a woman who trains police horses. She adopts her second child, a severely traumatised five-year-old girl. When the girl shows violent and anti-social behaviour, her new mother becomes determined to help her.

The film has been described as raising fascinating questions – how do you draw boundaries for a child who seems to ignore them or even takes a perverse pleasure in overstepping them? What can you do as a parent when you realize that your love and protection aren’t enough? (Available on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime)

System Crasher (2019) — Nora Fingscheidt

Another film about a rebellious child, System Crasher picked up a whopping eight German Film Awards after its release in 2019.

The film has a powerful political message about the inadequacies of the universal child care system. The protagonist, Benni, is a violent nine-year-old girl who suffers from psychotic episodes. Her key social worker, Frau Bafané, tries to get Benni into special schools or facilities; dozens turn her down and Benni is too young to be effectively sectioned as an inpatient.

In an interview with The Guardian, Fingscheidt says, “There’s a very German dimension to the film in the obsession with bureaucracy, with rules that need to be adhered to. Rules like, ‘this child cannot stay in this home because they are getting too emotionally attached,’ when that institution may be the first place where a child has begun to open up.”

The film has received an incredible amount of international recognition, garnering 45 international awards. (Available on Netflix)

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