Notas sobre la Escuela de Berlín

Sí, como me pasó con "Longing" y con "Everyone Else", siempre me queda la sensación que lo mejor que pasa en la Berlinale tiene que ver con el estreno (o los estrenos) de alguna película de la Escuela de Berlín. Este año me perdí la de Thomas Arslan, pero con la de Benjamin Eisenberg -a quien conocí en la fiesta de cierre gracias a mi amigo y colega Rudiger Suschland y me pareció tan inteligente como amable-, "The Robber", mi cuota anual se mantiene. Y sigo convencido que es uno de los mejores "movimientos" (ya verán que no es tan asi) del cine contemporáneo.

Aquí, links a una serie de notas sobre el tema que encontré dando vueltas por internet.

Ekkehard Knorër, en Vertigo Magazine

Andrea Picard, en Cinemateque Ontario

Marco Abel, en Cineaste (ya un texto clásico)

Eso, sólo para compartir mi fascinación y, de paso, pedirle a los programadores del BAFICI que traigan la película de Arslan. Eso, sean buenos chicos...

Berlinale 2010: Película x película (primera parte)

Lo prometido es deuda, dicen por ahí, y por más que la Berlinale se vaya transformando en un recuerdo lejano (la última película la vi, uy, el domingo a la noche), siento que me quedó pendiente hacer un reporte algo más completo de lo que vi. Especialmente lo será sobre lo que no escribí antes, ni aquí ni en el diario.

Mantengamos el orden planteado antes y veamos qué sale:

Bal (7) Ya todos saben lo raro que resulta ver una película no por lo que es sino por ser la ganadora de algún premio importante, en este caso el Oso de Oro. Eso me pasó a mí el domingo cuando fui a "recuperar" BAL, que no pude ver porque, ante la coincidencia, preferí ver la única función accesible de "The Illusionist", de Sylvain Chomet. De cualquier manera, y a diferencia de mis anteriores y algo decepcionantes experiencias con THE WHITE RIBBON y LEBANON, la película turca me convenció, entendí porqué la habían elegido como la mejor del festival, y si bien no creo que lo sea, aprecio esa combinación similar a la del cine iraní de hace ya casi dos décadas, cuando no había decantado hacia la experimentación (el lado Kiarostami) ni al folclorismo y la obviedad (casi todos los demás). Aquí, hay algo de "¿Dónde está la casa de mi amigo?", algo del Panahi de "El globo blanco", en una historia pequeña, con niños y silencios, humanismo puro pero sin ostentación. Cine sencillo, en un punto, y alguno podría decir que hasta calculado. Pero igualmente me convenció y logró emocionarme más allá de verla con subtítulos en alemán.

Caterpillar (7) Hoy se la contaba a un amigo y mientras la contaba me gustaba cada vez más y tal vez debería cambiarle la calificación a 8. El el momento, creo, se me hizo algo reiterativa (sentí, y sigo sintiendo, que la película empieza a morderse el trasero en un punto), pero también tengo la sensación que la crítica bélica brutal de Wakamatsu es cine en estado puro: sangre, sexo, sudor, lágrimas. Todo eso que le decía Fuller a Godard en "Pierrot le fou", pero con alguien sin piernas, ni brazos, ni voz, que lo único que quiere es coger todo el día y con una esposa que se venga de él sacándolo a pasear en un carrito como una presa. "El Dios de la Guerra", mi personaje favorito de Berlín.

The Robber (9) El material original, un caso real, daba para el disparate, o la comedia absurda o el drama con explicación psicológica o la película de acción. "The Robber" no es ninguna de esas cosas: es contemplación en acción, el movimiento como toda explicación, la imposibilidad de parar y pensar porque parar y pensar significa darse cuenta que casi nada tiene sentido. El ladrón corre y roba, y roba y corre, y la cámara lo sigue, magistral, en su devenir cada vez más desesperante. Algunos críticos se quejaron de porqué jamás se explicaba el motivo de su obsesión por seguir robando, y corriendo, cuando podría parar. Para mí es lo contrario: si lo explica con algún trauma originario, la película pierde la mitad de la gracia. El hombre corre, escapa, y es el cine el que lo cuenta...

A Family (5) Sí, FIPRESCI le dio el premio y yo en ese momento deseé ser parte del club de fans de Reneé Zellwegger. No entiendo cómo un jurado de críticos se deja arrastrar por esta catarata psicologista de lugares comunes, torturas al espectador, telenovela disfrazada de drama realista, show de la actuación desbordada, del drama familiar, de las reiteraciones obvias (¿cuantas veces la metáfora sobre el pan, cuántas?), de la mala lectura de Bergman y compañía. Sí, "Una familia". Seguro que si acá la estrenan gana el Cóndor de Plata. Y le pongo 5 porque, mal que mal, la película logra algunos momentos intensos. Digo, si uno le saca la primera y la última media hora, se queda con unos 40 minutos interesantes. Pero luego, el miserabilismo vuelve con todo, para hacernos acordar, ¿cómo era?, de que algo huele a podrido en Dinamarca...

A Somewhat Gentle Man (5) Sé que a ninguno de mis colegas les gustó esta película. Y tienen razón: no es buena. Pero del trío escandinavo de la competencia me quedo con el humor ramplón y negro (un Kaurismaki light, para consumo familiar) de esta película sobre un hombre que sale de la cárcel (sí, otro más) y trata de rehacer su vida. Pero en lugar de ir hacia donde van suecos y daneses (a la depresión o a la venganza), el tipo va a cogerse a algunas viejas y tratar de convertirse en una mejor persona. No será mucho, pero es algo...

Berlinale 2010 - Breakouts from the Berlin School (The Auteurs)

Link

Anyone looking for a running motif at this year's Berlinale didn't have to look far. Prisons. More to the point, men in prisons — or just out of prison or about to land in prison. In an interview for Deutschlandradio (via Cargo, in German, but still, here's the MP3), Christian Petzold notes that opening a film with the release of a prisoner is a handy move in that our protagonist is being born, in a sense, and we, the viewers, learn the ways of the world he's heading out into as he does. At the same time, though, no one is able to start over from scratch. "Cinema knows there's no such thing as a tabula rasa," he says. "We come out and there are structures out there and we're carrying ourselves out into these structures. Always a very nice beginning. And we can usually tell after three or four minutes whether they're going to make it or not."

Petzold, who didn't have a film at the festival this year, is assigned to "the first generation of the Berlin School" in Marco Abel's taxonomy for Cineaste (Fall 2008) along with Angela Schanelec and Thomas Arslan, followed by a second generation that includes, among others, Benjamin Heisenberg, Maren Ade, Valeska Grisebach and Christoph Hochhäusler. Last March, Andrew Tracy wrote here in The Notebook, "For all that the Berlin School films evince various lessons learned from the touchstones of modern Asian cinema (wide framings, distended, single-shot dialogues, seemingly random wanderings and contemplations) and those of Europe past and present ([States of Longing: Films from the Berlin School programmer Andrea] Picard invokes Eustache, Garrel and Pialat, with the Dardennes lurking nearby), this is a decisively protagonist-driven, implicitly psychological cinema — a cinema of traditional concerns and intentions given a fresh, incisive spin by an increasingly common set of cinematic methods."

One year on, a few tweaks, a little reclassification may be in order. While the Berlin School and "mumblecore" differ in just all sorts of ways, in both cases, the filmmakers tagged with one label or the other have had to deal with the reductional impulse behind any label. On the one hand, the filmmakers probably appreciate the PR, however quietly; festival and arthouse programmers can screen packages that may include some films that might not have made the cut on their own. On the other hand, every artist naturally hopes that his or her work will be appreciated for its own merits. Here's Heisenberg, responding to Julia Teichmann's obligatory Berlin School question in the Berliner Zeitung: "I like the people who have been subsumed by this term. I thought it was a good thing that there was such a term because I had the feeling that it describes a phenomenon: Young filmmakers who set out to deal with the reality of our country. They try to be precise with minimal means. As for the actual term, I'm not too wild about it. I have noticed that there are certain resentments associated with it."

Filmmakers select projects and realize them they way they do for a vast set of reasons, but in the cases of filmmakers lumped in with one movement or another, it's difficult to resist the suspicion that among those reasons would be a desire to differentiate oneself from an involuntary collective, to step out from under the umbrella. We've seen some "mumblecore" directors make such moves while, over more or less the same period of time, that is, in the past few years, we've been seeing similar shifts among the Berlin School filmmakers as well. As for the original Berlin School model, bearing the tendencies Andrew Tracy describes, Schanelec, Ade, Griesebach and Hochhäusler carry on evolving away from it to varying degrees, each in his or her own individual direction. Petzold, Arslan and Heisenberg have gone greater distances. They've embraced genre.

Petzold, whose most recent film, Jerichow, is a cooly composed retelling of James M Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, reminds Deutschlandradio that Godard once said that policiers are so beloved by filmgoers because the detective is allowed to pry into private lives, into spaces usually shut off to the public. In The Big Sleep, for example, Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) penetrates the private spheres of the wealthy, the decadent, the degenerate without, for one thing, himself becoming infected, and for another, having much of a private life of his own. When audiences went from watching the detectives on the big screen to watching them on television, the detectives began to change, taking on unnecessarily complicated back stories to such a degree that they could no longer be stand-ins for *us*.

Enter the faux documentarians, reality television (I'm racing through Petzold's argument here, surely doing it a disservice), barging into the lives of the rich and famous with their cameras, and into those of the poor as well: "Here's a guy who can't pay his gas bill. We'll get to the bottom of this." We're currently seeing an absurd and unprecedented access to what was once private, "whereas before, cinema had portrayed private lives not obscenely, but as a fiction, a dream. Perhaps the return to genre has something to do with the fact that we've come to realize that in To Have and Have Not or in The Big Sleep and other films noir, there was more truth than in any obscene infiltration into private spaces, supposedly in the name of 'documentary.'"

Petzold's proposal that detectives lost their potency as figures onto which we can transfer some sense of identification once they developed personalities is actually a fascinating way into Heisenberg's The Robber, one of the best films screening in the Competition this year. Johann Rettenberger (Andreas Lust) runs and robs banks. When we're introduced to him, he's running circles around a prison courtyard. Locked back in his cell, he runs on a stationary trainer. When he's released, he runs marathons and, when he comes from nowhere and wins a few, he becomes a local hero in the Austrian press. Between runs, he slips on a mask, grabs his gun and robs a bank. Quick and easy. Takes the money and runs. The marathon trophies mean nothing to him, and as for the money, he stashes it in plastic bags shoved under his bed and seems to have no intention of ever thinking about it again. He runs. And robs banks. That's it.

There was a real Johannes Rettenberger who shocked Austrians in the 80s when they discovered that the runner and the robber they'd been following in the papers were one and the same. Martin Prinz wrote a novel based on the story, and Heisenberg worked with him on the screenplay, set not in the 80s but during no other particular period, either. The place is Austria, but Heisenberg and Prinz don't bother with social milieu or, for that matter, politics, psychology, all the rest. Rettenberger seems to have no motive, no goal, no traumatic background, no desire for personal contact. When he moves in with Erika (Franziska Weisz), it is, at first, for the sake of convenience and one senses that he doesn't have to try hard to keep it that way. For a while.

So what does drive Rettenberger? Some, like Petzold, suggest an addiction to adrenaline, hence the disinterest in running towards any destination or in the spoils of the bank jobs. My hunch, though, is that The Robber is about more than a medical condition; it's about compulsion, the doing rather than the having that results from doing, whether it be running, Twitter, shopping or seeing as many films at a festival as you possibly can before conking out.

The genre Heisenberg's referred to over and again in interviews is the nature documentary. He was determined to shoot The Robber as if he were observing a lone wolf in the wild, and yes, for the most part, the eye does remain neutral. But this is also an action film, and a technically superior one at that. Rettenberger is as fast on his feet as Jason Bourne, literally and figuratively — a spur-of-the-moment escape from a police station is spectacular — and at times, just as deadly. But Reinhold Vorschneider's camerawork is rock steady, even when chasing Rettenberger through impossible spaces, and Heisenberg's placement of that camera is as expert as the sound design, the musical choices, the editing — The Robber is an extraordinarily well-made, confident and competent film.

Which can also be said of Thomas Arslan's In the Shadows, and Neil Young has already argued the case here in The Notebook better than I could have. Besides noting that the cinematographer is once again Reinhold Vorschneider (who also shot Schanelec's Orly), I'd just re-emphasize how very consciously conventional the film is and, as Neil argues, in the best way. When, for example, Trojan (Mišel Matičević), just released from prison and out to set up his next heist, leaves his hotel room, he closes the door on a small sliver of paper so that it's caught a few inches above the floor. You've seen it a thousand times. He returns. The paper's dropped. He clenches alert and backs away. Inside the room, the two thugs quietly searching it tense up, too. Did they hear something out in the hall? Door opens, and they take a few steps out into the hall to investigate. Pang! Trojan's been hiding around the corner. He's let the first thug pass, knocked out the second one and is now training his gun on the one still standing. Classic stuff, sure, but when done right, it still works.

What makes In the Shadows a film of 2010 rather than just another sturdy noir exchangeable for any other is, at least in part, Berlin. Not a pretty city. To live here, you have to have toughened up your defenses against persistent aesthetic assault. But the city also has its corners that are immediately recognizable as being of the 21st century while at the same time hinting at the 70s, particularly in the western half. And Trojan dresses accordingly, quietly outsmarting rival outlaws and the corrupted law alike. Will he make it? Pull off that heist, head out to the country and lie low for a while? Petzold says we can usually tell three or four minutes in; not this time.

Diario del Festival de Berlín: Balance (Primera parte)

The Robber, de Thomas Eisenberg

Soy de los últimos miembros de la raza festivalera no local que permanecen aquí todavía. Mañana lunes regreso a Buenos Aires desde Berlín y este domingo me sirvió para aflojar un poco el ritmo (sólo dos películas y un texto) y recorrer un poco la ciudad, ese ente semidesconocido al que veo cuando voy hacia Potsdamer Platz o de regreso al hotel.

Tampoco es que no he tenido tiempo de salir a cenar o tomar alguna copa por ahí, pero la ciudad se me abre, misteriosa, durante el día, cuando el tiempo que habitualmente me ocupan las películas y las salas de prensa (de 8am a 9pm si uno no ve la función adelantada de la noche anterior, que recién empieza a las 9.30pm y que te transforma en un zombie absoluto, con quince horas de cine, procesador de textos e internet) se abre, mágicamente, y uno siente que las horas son horas reales y que hay cosas para hacer en la ciudad.

Sentado en alguna parte, entre las dos películas que vi hoy (día en el que pude recuperar "Bal", la ganadora que siempre se me escapa), armé un listado de los filmes que vi, pero calculo que iré escribiendo sobre ellos, con más tiempo, de regreso a casa. Sobre la mayoría he escrito comentarios en el diario, y algunos acá, pero me parece que merecen ser pensados un poco más. Con más tiempo mío y más distancia con las películas.

Así que aquí abajo, sólo para dar un cierre desde Berlín, la lista de películas que vi (sólo los títulos, no pidan demasiado) y un puntaje de 1 a 10, llamémoslo provisorio. Tengo la sensación de que me olvidé alguno, pero esta lista de 46 películas (36 vistas aquí, 10 antes de llegar, sin contar clásicos) da una idea de lo que fue la Berlinale 2010. Ya desde Buenos Aires, y de a poco, irán saliendo comentarios algo más (no mucho) provechosos.

En bold están las que por ahora considero como las mejores que vi. El orden es por sección.

SECCION OFICIAL - 21 títulos

Bal - 7
Caterpillar - 7
The Robber - 9
A Family - 5
A Somewhat Gentle Man - 5
If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle - 8
Exit Through the Gift Shop - 6
Greenberg - 7
Howl - 5
Jew Süss: Rise and Fall - 2
How I Ended This Summer - 7
Mammuth - 6
On the Path - 5
Please Give - 6
A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop - 2
Shahada - 2
The Hunter - 6
Submarino - 3
The Ghost Writer - 8
The Kids Are All Right - 8
The Killer Inside Me - 6

PANORAMA - 5 títulos

Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling - 7
Blank City - 6
Parade - 5
Phobidilia - 3
Rock Hudson - A Tall, Dark, Handsome Stranger - 4

FORUM - 9 títulos

Biblioteque Pascal - 3
El vuelco del cangrejo - 5
Crossing the Mountain - 4
Sawako Decides - 4
Our Fantastic 21st Century - 6
Portrait of the Fighter As a Young Man - 5
Putty Hill - 5
Winter’s Bone - 7
Eastern Drift - 5

BERLINALE SPECIAL - 1 título

The Illusionist - 8

VISTOS PREVIAMENTE - 10 títulos

Rompecabezas - 7
Shutter Island - 8
Alamar - 7
El recuento de los daños - 6
Por tu culpa - 8
Nenette - 7
Youth in Revolt - 7
Yuki & Nina - 9
Moloch Tropical - 3
Nine - 4

Berlinale 2010 - Los premios oficiales

Oso de Oro – Mejor Película: “Bal”, de Semih Kaplanoglu (Turquía)

Oso de Plata – Gran Premio del Jurado: “Si quiero silbar, silbo”, de Florin Serban (Rumania)

Oso de Plata – Mejor Director: Roman Polanski, por “The Ghost Writer” (Francia/Alemania/Gran Bretaña)

Oso de Plata – Mejor Actriz: Shinobu Terajima, por “Caterpillar” (Japón)

Oso de Plata – Mejor Actor: compartido entre Grigori Dobrygin and Sergei Puskepalis, por “Como terminé el verano” (Rusia)

Oso de Plata – Mejor Guión: Wang Quan’an y Na Jin, por “Tuan Yuan”/"Apart Together"(China)

Oso de Plata – Contribución Artística: Pavel Kostomarov, director de fotografía de “Como terminé el verano”.

Premio Alfred Bauer: “Si quiero silbar, silbo”, de Florin Serban

Mejor Opera Prima: “Sebbe”, de Babak Najafi (Suecia)

Película que no veo, gana...

Dicho y hecho: no la vi y ganó.

Tengo entradas para mañana igual...

Berlinale 2010: Oso de Oro - "Bal", de Semih Kaplanoglu (Turquía)

Berlinale 2010: mejor actriz para Japón

Mejor actriz, Shinobu Terajima por "Caterpillar", de Koji Wakamatsu.

Perdió María Onetto, esto es...

Berlinale 2010 - Siguen los premios

Oso de Plata - Mejor Guión: "Apart Together", de Wang Quan'an (China)

Mejor actor (ex aequo) Grigoriy Dobrygin y Sergei Puskepalis, por "How I Ended This Summer" (Rusia)

Oso de Plata a la Contribución Artística: Pavel Kostomarov, Director de Fotografía de "How I Ended This Summer" (Rusia)

Berlinale 2010: los premios online

Desde la Berlinale, los premios oficiales, online. La ceremonia empieza a las 19 hora alemana (15 de la Argentina). También en Twitter (@dlerer)

Berlinale 2010: Más premios paralelos

The members of the Children's Jury Generation Kplus

Antonia Appel

Johan Bauch

Jakob Götz

Sophia Greiwe

Klara Hirseland

Joshua Krüger

Jonas Mileta

Zoë Noack

Elsa Rother

Gwendolyn Yma June Weber

Iwan Zinkovski

give the following awards:

Crystal Bear for the Best Film: Shui Yuet Sun Tau

by Alex Law, Hongkong / China 2009

With its loving attention to detail, atmospheric lighting and emotional music, this film succeeded in creating a special atmosphere. The excellent actors gave us deep insight into a moving story about two brothers.

Special Mention: This Way Of Life

by Thomas Burstyn, New Zealand / Canada 2009

A window opens to a wonderful different kind of world: A happy family living freely in nature. Respect for life and joy of being are what count in this film.

Crystal Bear for the Best Short Film: Franswa Sharl

by Hannah Hillard, Australia 2009

We couldn’t help laughing when we saw this charming and funny story based on a true story. Non stop fun! For a moment we forgot the world around us. The actors were simply great.

Special Mention: Indigo

by Jack Price, Great Britain 2009

We were captivated by this fantastic and complex story about a boy’s special gift, in just 18 minutes.

The members of the International Jury Generation Kplus

Margret Albers

Kylie Du Fresne

Philippe Falardeau

Hana Makhmalbaf

Rowan O’Neill

give the following awards:

Grand Prix of the Deutsche Kinderhilfswerk for the Best Feature Film, worth 7,500 Euro: Boy

by Taika Waititi, New Zealand 2010

With a genuine voice and a remarkable spirit, the winner is a film with bold direction, a fearless risk-taker. It tackles difficult subject matter not with preaching, sentimentality or self-pity but with humour, often treating tragedy and comedy simultaneously. Because it’s so enjoyable it is easy to underestimate the depth of this film. It is a rich mix of ideas which strike and collide to create poetic moments that speak, despite the remote location, to all of us today. With fantastic charismatic performances all around, including a striking moustache on the director.

Special Mention: Yeo-haeng-ja

by Ounie Lecomte, Republic of Korea / France 2009

Starting from a perfectly balanced screenplay which deftly avoids the pitfalls of melodrama, this film pushes us into the perspective of an unhappy little girl undergoing terrible change and confusion. The sure, precise direction and the subtle, affecting performances allow us to share the young girl’s struggle as she confronts adversity not with passive acceptance, but with a raging life-force; an urge to die, yet a will to live. This jury was deeply moved by this film.

Special Prize of the Deutsche Kinderhilfswerk for the Best Short Film, worth 2,500 Euro: Apollo

by Felix Gönnert, Germany 2010

The winner is a delightfully unpredictable film which playfully creates two coherent worlds using simple yet dense imagery. Technically brilliant it is stylishly cinematic and results in a unique vision giving the viewer a completely satisfying experience.

Special Mention: The Six Dollar Fifty Man

by Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland, New Zealand 2009

Featuring powerful performances throughout the cast, our special mention is driven by a lead actor who is a real force of nature. With confident direction which re-energizes a familiar story, subverting expected outcomes, the film positively bubbles with emotion, anger and ultimately a small boy’s triumph.

Berlinale 2010: Premios paralelos

Prizes of the Ecumenical Jury

Since 1992, the international film organisations of the Protestant and Catholic Churches - INTERFILM and SIGNIS - have been represented by the Ecumenical Jury. It consists of six members and awards its main prize to a film entered in the Competition. It also awards two other prizes, both worth 2,500 Euros, one to a film from the Panorama and one to a film in the Forum. The prizes go to directors who have succeeded in portraying actions or human experiences that are in keeping with the Gospels, or in sensitising viewers to spiritual, human or social values. The jury members for the Berlinale 2010: Werner Schneider-Quindeau (president), Philip Lee, Ylva Liljeholm, Markus Leniger, Edgar Rubio und Alberto Ramos Ruiz.

The prize for a film from the Competition goes to

Bal | Honey

by Semih Kaplanoglu

The prize for a film from the Panorama goes to

Kawasakiho ruze | Kawasaki's Rose

by Jan Hrebejk

The prize for a film from the Forum goes to

Aisheen [Still Alive in Gaza]

by Nicolas Wadimoff

Prizes of the FIPRESCI Juries

The juries of the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique (FIPRESCI), the international film critics association, view films from the Competition programme and the Panorama andForum sections. They award a prize for the best film in each of these sections. The three FIPRESCI juries at the Berlinale 2010 are as follows: Samir Farid, Vladimir Ignatovski, Dita Rietuma (Competition); Rui Tendinha, Rolf-Ruediger Hamacher, Pierre Pageau (Panorama); Ronald Bergan (jury president), Caroline M. Buck, Robert Köhler (Forum).

The prize for a film from the Competition

En Familie | A Family

Director: Pernille Fischer Christensen

The prize for a film from the Panorama

Parade

Director: Isao Yukisada

The prize for a film from the Forum

El vuelco del cangrejo | Crab Trap

Director: Oscar Ruíz Navia

Prize of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas

The jury of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas is composed of three members who run cinemas and are members of the Guild. The jury awards its prize to a film screened in the Competition. The jury members for the Berlinale 2010: Adrian Kutter, Hans-Werner Renneke and Christopher Bausch.

The members of the Jury award the Prize of the Guild of German Art House Cinemas to

Shahada

by Burhan Qurbani

C.I.C.A.E Prizes

The Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d’Art et d’Essai (C.I.C.A.E.), the International Confederation of Art House Cinemas, forms one jury for the Panorama and one for the Forum. Each jury awards one prize in its section. Jury members 2010: Nikos Grigoriadis, Volker Kufahl, Rosa Maino (Panorama); Julien Moeschler, Benjamin Scholz, Davide Zanza (Forum)

The members of the Panorama-Jury award the C.I.C.A.E. Prize to

Kawasakiho ruze | Kawasaki's Rose

by Jan Hrebejk

The members of the Forum-Jury award the C.I.C.A.E. Prize to

Winter’s Bone

by Debra Granik

"Label Europa Cinemas"

Launched for the first time in 2003 within the Cannes Film Festival, the Europa Cinemas Label has been created in order to help European films increase their distribution and raise their profile with audiences and media. The Label is since then awarded by a jury of 5 member exhibitors to a European film selected in the Directors' Fortnight section in Cannes and since 2004 in the Venice Days. Since 2005, Europa Cinemas has been cooperating with the Berlinale to award the Label in the Panoramasection. The jury at the Berlinale 2010: Mark Cosgrove, Christophe Maffi, Iris Praefke, Laure Bacqué.

The jury awards:

Die Fremde | When We Leave

Director: Feo Aladag

Teddy – Queer Film Award

The Teddy Awards go to films that have a gay and/or lesbian context. The nine members of this international jury - for the most part, organizers of gay and lesbian film festivals - view films screened in all sections of the Festival. Chosen from a list of films selected by the jury, a 3,000-Euro Teddy is awarded to a feature film, a short film and a documentary. The Teddy Jury at the Berlinale 2010: Laura Coppens, Bard Yden, Michelle Mangan, Michael Gamilla, Sridhar Rangayan, Doris Senn, Pau Guillen and Gulya Sultanova.

Best Feature Film

The Kids Are All Right

by Lisa Cholodenko

Best Documentary Film

La bocca del lupo | The Mouth of the Wolf

by Pietro Marcello

Best Short Film

The Feast Of Stephen

by James Franco

Teddy Jury Award

Open

by Jake Yuzna

Dialogue en perspective

In 2004, the prize "Dialogue en perspective", initially sponsored by TV5Monde in cooperation with the German-French Youth Office, was awarded for the first time to a film entry in the section Perspektive Deutsches Kino. In 2010, the German-French Youth Office will be the exclusive sponsor of the “Dialogue en perspective”. The prize is the result of an intercultural dialogue on film between young people from two different countries: France and Germany. It is awarded to the film that equally impresses the young and critical jury members from both nations. The prize jury has seven members and is headed by a president. The French and German members are selected by the prize donators by means of a public call for application. The president of the jury is a professional whose work represents the cinematographic dialogue between France and Germany. This jury is the only one at the Berlin International Film Festival which is constituted after a public invitation to tender. In 2010, the jury will be headed by producer Roman Paul (Paradise Now) from Berlin. The other jury member: Lisa Aylin Berns, Mara Helena Klein, Nicolas Oxen, Maximilian van Aertryck, Severine Beaudot, Jonathan Rescigno and Sofiane Ouaret.

Caligari Film Prize

A three-person jury awards the Caligari Film Prize to a film in the Forum. The prize is sponsored by the "German Federal Association of Communal Film Work" and “filmdienst” magazine. The winning film is honoured with 4,000 Euros, half of which is given to the director, the other half is meant to fund distribution. The 2010 jury: Dörte Küll, Axel Röthemeyer, Esther Buss.

La bocca del lupo | The Mouth of the Wolf

by Pietro Marcello

NETPAC Prize

The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) is an alliance of festival organisers and film critics whose aim is to support Asian film. The jury awards a prize to an Asian film screened in the Forum. Jury members this year are Tuck Cheong Wong, Vicci Ho and Jane Yu.

The members of the Jury award the NETPAC Prize to

Yi yè Tái bei | Au revoir Taipei

by Arvin Chen

Peace Film Award

The jury is composed of 9 members and views films from every section. The 5,000-Euro prize is donated by the Peace Film Award Initiative in association with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). The Peace Film Prize Jury can also award Special Mentions. The jury members for the Berlinale 2010: Monica Ch. Puginier, Marianne Wündrich-Brosien, Christoph Heubner, Christian Ziewer, Harriet Eder, Christoph Wermke, Oliver Passek, Mehdi Benhadj-Djilali, Jan Engelmann and Alice Ströver.

Son Of Babylon

by Mohamed Al-Daradji

Amnesty International Film Prize

The German branch of Amnesty International has awarded the Amnesty International Film Prize for the first time at the Berlinale 2005. This award has already been presented at other international film festivals. The prize is worth 5,000 Euros. The jury will view films entered into the Competition,Panorama and Forum sections, paying special attention to documentaries. The aim of the prize is to draw the attention of audiences and representatives of the film industry to the theme of human rights and encourage filmmakers to tackle this topic. The jury members at the Berlinale 2010: Barbara Sukowa, Pagonis Pagonakis, Chloe Baird-Murray.

The Jury awards the Amnesty International Film Prize to

Son Of Babylon

by Mohamed Al-Daradji

ex aequo

Waste Land

by Lucy Walker, João Jardim, Karen Harley

Femina Film Prize

The prize honours the “outstanding artistic contribution of a female technician” in a feature film from a German-speaking country in the areas of set design, camera work, costumes, music or editing. The aim of the prize is to highlight the contribution of the creative work of women towards the final result of a film. The prize is worth 3,000 Euros and is awarded annually by the Femina Film Prize Association, since 2005 within the scope of the Berlinale. The jury is comprised of three women working in the film industry. The jury members at the Berlinale 2010: Silke Fischer, Angelina Maccarone and Sabine Timoteo.

The Jury awards the Femina Film Prize to

Reinhild Blaschke

for the production design in Im Schatten (In the Shadows) by Thomas Arslan (Forum)

With subtle perfection Reinhild Blaschke takes us into a world “in the shadows”, into the places behind the places. Cars as mediators between characters and outside world, between city and surrounding countryside. The sanctuary in the forest still maintains a connection with urbanity by its angular forms and therefore keeps a unity. With just a few minimalistic escapes from functionality the rooms reveal the characters longings and still preserve an overall discretion.

Elements of red break gently through the blue and grey until it culminates in the blood of a bullet wound. Beyond stereotypes Reinhild Blaschke succeeds in translating film noir atmospheres into contemporary Berlin.

Readers' Juries and Audience Awards

Panorama Audience Award

All Berlinale visitors can vote for the Panorama Audience Award by filling in a vote sheet. The prize was started in 1999 and is made possible by a joint initiative between the Berlin city magazine "tip", the radio channel "Radioeins" and the Panorama section itself.

Waste Land

by Lucy Walker, João Jardim, Karen Harley

The "Berliner Morgenpost" Readers' Jury

The jury is made up of 12 readers of the daily newspaper "Berliner Morgenpost". It is awarded to a feature film in the Competition section. The 2010 jury includes Alexandra Lucht, Holger Kühne, Felix Feistel, Dr. Holger Mirek, Aline Noack, Sindy Schödel, Benjamin Teske, Arzu Tuncel Rollenhagen, Manuela Tischendorf, Katharina Hauck, Waldemar Mross and Olaf Marnczek.

This year’s Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Prize goes to

En ganske snill mann | A Somewhat Gentle Man

by Hans Petter Moland

The ELSE Siegessäule Readers' Choice Award

The jury, which is made up of seven readers of the Berlin gay and lesbian magazine "Siegessäule", takes into account all films with gay or lesbian content, regardless of which section they are in. The prize is awarded to a feature film. The 2010 jury: Jörg Michael Fehlhaber, Matteo Lodevole, Inga Pylypchuk, Katayun Pirdawari M.A., Ainara Katharina Tiefenthäler, Moritz G. C. Sander and Klaus Schrader.

Postcard To Daddy

by Michael Stock

The "Tagesspiegel" Readers' Jury

Since the Berlinale 2007, the Berlin-based national daily newspaper "Tagesspiegel" has awarded a Readers' Prize. The jury consists of nine members and the prize is given to the best film in the Forum - along with 3.000 Euro.

This year’s Tagesspiegel Readers’ Prize goes to

Winter’s Bone

by Debra Granik

Prizes of the Berlinale Talent Campus

Berlin Today Award

For the Berlin Today Award, Campus participants must form international teams and develop an idea for a short film which has something to do with Berlin. Three projects are selected and produced in co-operation with the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Boxfish Films. The films are shown at the next year’s Berlinale Talent Campus. The jury gives the best of these films the Berlin Today Award. British director Stephen Daldry will chair the jury in 2010.

Bryn Chainey (Australien)

for Jonah and the Vicarious Nature of Homesickness

Score Competition

The Score Competition offers three young composers or sound designers the opportunity to compose new scores for a pre-selected short film and record them with the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg, with final mixing at the Film and Television Academy (HFF) "Konrad Wolf". The scores will premiere during the Berlinale Talent Campus, and the best score will be chosen by a jury and awarded during the Closing Ceremony. The winner will receive a trip to the finest sound studios in Los Angeles, sponsored by Dolby. French composer and Golden Globe winner Alexandre Desplat has committed to mentor the Score Competition 2010.

Camilo Sanabria (Colombia)