The 28 films (10 docs) that make up the main programme of 53rd Berlinale Forum “celebrate the diversity of cinematic forms, approaches and narratives and explore the predicaments of the past and present in unflinching fashion,” writes the festival. The selection includes new docs by French Claire Simon (Notre Corps), Polish Tomasz Wolski (In Ukraine, co-directed by Piotr Pawlus), Paris-based Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon (Where God Is Not) and Vlad Petri (Between Revolutions). German-language productions include Leaving and Staying by Volker Koepp and De Facto by Selma Doborac.
In its selection narrative published January 16, the festival flags up Claire Simon’s Notre Corps. “The French director looks around a gynaecological clinic in Paris with a gaze full of tenderness, collecting scenes of births and cancer diagnoses, consultations about endometriosis and hormone therapy. The film that emerges along the way starts off observational before becoming ever more personal, a film about what it means to live in a female body and a wonderful example of the power of documentary cinema.”
The festival doc narrative continues: “Paris-based Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon asks acquaintances of his, who served time in Iranian prisons, to reconstruct their experiences in an empty warehouse; Jaii keh khoda nist (Where God Is Not) allows him to take a profound look at the workings of a repressive regime…W Ukrainie (In Ukraine) by Tomasz Wolski and Piotr Pawlus takes the pulse of everyday life in a state of war. The two Polish directors deliberately avoid dramatisation and the pathos of urgency; their restraint is what makes the film’s impact all the more lasting.”
The 10 documentaries in Berlinale Forum are:
Allensworth by James Benning. USA 2022, International premiere. In 1908, Allensworth became the first self-administered African-American municipality in California. In lengthy shots, Benning surveys the buildings (school, church, library) of the now-abandoned town and looks for the traces of a Black cultural history.
Anqa by Helin Çelik. Austria / Spain 2023, World premiere. “I am not the remains. I exist.” Three Jordanian women barely survived the violence inflicted on them by men. Çelik films them from as up close as possible in their flats, which they barely leave, listening to them speak with the opaque logic of trauma.
Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait by Luke Fowler | with Margaret Tait. United Kingdom 2022, International premiere. Luke Fowler’s portrait of Scottish poet and filmmaker Margaret Tait takes its inspiration from her unrealised project about her home region of Orkney, drawing and riffing on her notes and footage to produce a blissful union of two artistic sensibilities.
De Facto by Selma Doborac | with Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya. Austria / Germany 2023. World premiere. How can cinema engage with complicity in crimes against humanity, extreme violence and state terror without conniving in it? De Facto finds answers to this question via two actors, a precisely compiled collage of texts and a deliberately reduced setting.
Gehen und Bleiben (Leaving and Staying) by Volker Koepp | with Judith Zander, Peter Kurth, Heinz Lehmbäcker, Hanna Lehmbäcker, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. Germany 2023. World premiere. Meetings with readers, acquaintances and contemporaries of writer Uwe Johnson at the places where he lived. Volker Koepp, who is also from Pomerania, looks for Johnson’s sophisticated literary voice in the landscapes of the region they both stem from.
Între revoluții (Between Revolutions) by Vlad Petri | with Victoria Stoiciu, Ilinca Harnut Romania / Croatia / Qatar / Iran 2023. World premiere. A semi-fictional correspondence between two women: one goes to Iran in 1979 to topple the Shah; the other experiences the onerous years of Ceaușescu’s Romania. Their biographies run in parallel via images of everyday life and videograms of revolution.
Jaii keh khoda nist (Where God Is Not) by Mehran Tamadon. France / Switzerland 2023. World premiere. A prison cell is set up in an empty room on the edge of Paris. Three former political prisoners from Iran re-enact how they were once interrogated and tortured. With quiet scepticism, the film asks whether their experiences can be accessed in this way.
Notre corps (Our Body) by Claire Simon. France 2023. World premiere. First observational and later hugely personal, Claire Simon’s film is an example of the sheer power of documentary cinema. With a gaze full of tenderness, she explores a gynaecological clinic in Paris to ascertain what it means to live in a female body.
Or de vie (A Golden Life) by Boubacar Sangaré. Burkina Faso / Benin / France 2023. World premiere. In Burkina Faso, young men look under the earth for gold – and a better future. As a result, 16-year-old Rasmané barely seems like a teenager any more. This mainly observational film follows him into the 100-metre abyss of small-scale mining.W Ukrainie (In Ukraine) by Piotr Pawlus, Tomasz Wolski. Poland 2023. World premiere. Bombed-out streets, destroyed Russian tanks, evening meals in an Underground repurposed into a shelter. Image by image, the directors push beyond easily reproducible images of war to enter the reality the country has experienced since February 24, 2022.
W Ukrainie (In Ukraine) by Piotr Pawlus, Tomasz Wolski. Poland 2023. World premiere. Bombed-out streets, destroyed Russian tanks, evening meals in an Underground repurposed into a shelter. Image by image, the directors push beyond easily reproducible images of war to enter the reality the country has experienced since February 24, 2022.
