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Announcing the final film line-up on Monday,
artistic director Carlo Chatrian said directors Penn and Aaron
Kaufmann were already in Kyiv filming "Superpower" when Russian
tanks rolled across Ukraine's border, opening Europe's largest
conflict since World War Two.
"The Berlinale will take place exactly one year after," Chatrian
said. "And maybe Berlin is more relevant than other places,
because we are close to Ukraine, because Ukrainian people live
in Berlin."
With its roots in the embattled enclave of West Berlin on the
front lines of the Cold War, the Berlinale sees itself as an
avowedly political festival, and Chatrian said the 73rd edition
would highlight the fights for freedom in Ukraine and Iran,
screening dozens of films from and about both countries.
Chatrian said the 18 films running in the competition were
thematically linked by their preoccupation with melodrama and
love, from Emily Atef's "Someday We'll Tell Each Other
Everything" about the danger and violence of teenage love, to
Giacomo Abbruzzese's Disco Boy, about a Belarusian who joins the
French Foreign Legion.
"We don't do the selection with melodrama in mind," Chatrian
said. "We select the films because they resonate with us."
The competition will also make space for animation with "Suzume"
by Japan's Makoto Shinkai, described by Chatrian as the "poet of
youth". Described as a journey through the Japanese archipelago,
the film stands out for its bold colouring.
The Berlinale, at home in one of the world centres of queer
culture, will continue to foreground the questions of gender and
identity that have in recent years preoccupied its juries, this
year headed by U.S. actress Kristen Stewart.
"Orlando, My Political Biography" by Paul B. Breciado will
screen outside the main competition and describes Orlando
writing a letter to Virginia Wolf, writer of the eponymous
novel, to tell her that the gender-shifting character she
created now exists in real life.
(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
(Photo: Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian and
Managing Director Mariette Rissenbeek present festival's program
including a documentary about Ukraine's President Volodymyr
Zelenskiy during a news conference ahead of the 73rd Berlinale
International Film Festival in Berlin, Germany, January 23,
2023. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch)
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