Fiercely Supportive Realms of Experience

Melika: The films in this year’s programme clearly display a supportive view of the interpersonal, especially in the relationships between the protagonists and their friends or families. For example, Last Swim by Sasha Nathwani, which is opening our 14plus programme. I caught myself repeatedly looking for romantic relationships between the friends in this film, but they never really turn out to be that. Instead, it focuses on a strong sense of connection and closeness between the friends and depicts a world in which the girls treat each other in a warm and supportive way. The short film Sukoun by Dina Naser takes hearing viewers into the world of a girl who has a hearing impairment and makes her realm of experience tangible to us rather than the plot revolving entirely around her disability.

S: Another example of a film that opens up perspectives on what can be is the Colombian short Uli by Mariana Gil Ríos. It’s about a young girl who meets an older person by chance and, in doing so, discovers new possibilities, for example, in relation to her own gender identity. “What can be” is not necessarily an idea of the future in the temporal sense but about the possibility of seeing things differently, putting them into a different relationship to each other and opening up realms of experience.

S: The short film Un Pájaro Voló by Leinad Pájaro De Hoz tells an autobiographical story about a Cuban volleyball team where one player has died. It makes palpable how there is no room for mourning in the processes of the sport, the training and routines. However, the film’s visual and sound design creates its very own, cinematic space for grief. And the community-building viewing experience in the cinema opens up the opportunity to deal with this topic.

It seems to me that the topic of coming of age, on the other hand, is less present in the programme. Are films for young people already much more than just about coming of age?

S: In the narrower sense, coming of age is a genre in which a character is in the process of growing into or out of a certain world. They have a momentous experience that forces them to make a decision and this leads them to become the person that they actually already are. What’s particularly interesting are the stories that deviate slightly from this model – for example, in queer coming-of-age films in which certain concepts of identity are challenged. Huling Palabas is a good example of this. For the main character in this Filipino film, the question of his own identity is closely linked to the mystery of his father. When he then meets two young people in his small Filipino town, this process heads in a completely different direction, so that the question about his place in the world is suddenly no longer connected to his origins but instead to his relationships. The film also shows how cinema can give us images that can help us to rethink our own present or desired future.

It's Okay! is characterised above all by the protagonist’s sense of humour. Which other light-hearted films do you have in this year’s programme?

M: Heavy and light topics are often not very far apart. Despite its seriousness, Last Swim has many moments that create an incredibly good feeling. And a very obvious example is Fox and Hare Save the Forest – a film which will hopefully bring great lightness and laughter to everyone.

S: I would also say that they aren’t two polar opposites: the problem films and the entertainment films. There are a few films in 14plus that, although they deal with relatively serious topics, still have a strong sense of humour. For example, The Great Phuket, which is set in a southern Chinese city filled with a great energy of change. The story is about a young protagonist who accidentally discovers a kind of cave tunnel that becomes a space for his imagination. His inner experiences are presented in animated sequences, creating a fantastic montage effect. But the film also has funny moments. Humour can be one way of detaching yourself from something that is worrying you. In this way, humour can be an empowering element.

M: Another film I’d like to mention is the short Aguacurario. Two young people meet by chance, have a wonderful exchange of blows and then spend the entire day together without having known each other beforehand. It’s a lot of fun to watch them sparring with each other.

S: I’m also very much looking forward to experiencing Beurk ! in the cinema. It’s a short film in the Kplus programme with a recommended age of eight and above but it addresses something very universal. It’s an animation set in a summer campsite that shows a group of kids watching adults kissing each other, which all the kids find completely gross, hence the title of Yuck! – but then there is also something beyond disgust: a fascination. The film has a very keen eye for the emotional worlds of children and their way of dealing with semi-public displays of affection...

M: ...and for the absurdities of camping and summer holidays in general, as the T-shirt-shaped sunburn shows – that alone is such a wonderful detail that makes it fun to watch.

There seems to be a mini-focus on Wedding in the programme: the two transnational German films, Sieger sein and Ellbogen, are both set in the Wedding district of Berlin and you are also holding a presentation of the programme at Sinema Transtopia. How did this cooperation and the new format come about?

M: When we took over, our goal was to come into closer contact with the individuals and initiatives that come to the Generation section every year. We attract huge audiences and a great deal of attention during the festival but that’s over a very limited timeframe. So we also want to think more about how we can reach the target groups for whom coming to the Berlinale is not such an obvious thing to do and to engage in a deeper dialogue with them. The programme presentation is a new format that we’d like to establish in addition to our early publication of the Generation programme so we can present our film selection and engage with the audience outside of the festival. Sinema Transtopia was the first location we both thought of because it’s important to us to continually create connections with people and organisations in the city who are involved in film education all year round. In this context, we have also slightly redesigned our Berlinale school project so that the internal final presentations – which is an important event for the participating school classes – can be presented in a Berlin arthouse cinema that is also involved in film education. In this way, we want to create cross-connections and show young audiences that they can actively shape such locations.

S: Sinema Transtopia is also very special because, in a short amount of time, it has managed to become an important place for film culture in Berlin – not just a post-migrant one – and it has very strong links to the community. However, the overlap in Wedding arose by chance. Sieger sein and Ellbogen are related to each other because they both focus on protagonists who are socially marginalised and tell stories that aren’t easily confined to national borders but instead reflect the problem with national borders. We’ve noticed that Ellbogen is one of the most highly anticipated films in the programme. It finds its own way to tell the central story – the specific subjectivity of the protagonist, the pressure she’s under, her experiences of being marginalised and the anger she feels – in a completely different form. The film has a great way of handing over the screen to a complex protagonist who is allowed to exist in all her complexities and retains her ambivalences to the end.

M: I’m trying to refrain from comparing the book with the film. But in the case of this film, I find it intriguing to think about the images I created in my mind’s eye while reading the book from the perspective of a non-marginalised person, how they are realised in the film and how the work holds up a mirror to myself.

Which perspectives do you have, for example, in the selection committee?

S: We’ve changed a few things in the selection process this year, also to act on our experiences from last year. In 2023, we had an animated film in the programme that people told us was reproducing racist stereotypes in a form of blackfacing. Unfortunately, we failed to recognise that during the selection process. We’d like to apologise for the fact that something in our programme had a discriminatory or hurtful effect. We’re still in the process of coming to terms with what happened. One of the consequences is that we’ve invited new people onto our selection committees who, alongside their curatorial experience, bring anti-discrimination expertise and non-white perspectives. We’ve also tried to make the selection process more based on a collective discussion to ensure that the films are seen from a variety of different perspectives.

S: We’ve found that, for a significant part of the 14plus audience, English is not the second, but the third or fourth language and that barriers can be lowered if we provide additional German subtitles. That’s why we’re trying to strengthen this area. This year, we’re also planning to have a complete short film programme from Kplus interpreted live into German sign language.