Berlin format

Everything you need to know about the Berlinale

This week, on Thursday, the 58th Berlin Film Festival begins. The most honored guests are expected at the opening - director Martin Scorsese and the Rolling Stones, led by Mick Jagger. The occasion was the premiere of a documentary film about the history of the group, in which concert footage of the recent tour was generously used. However, the main advantage of "Shine a Light" promises to be the work of lesser-known, but no less talented people - cameramen. The camera crew, led by Oscar-winner Robert Richardson (“The Aviator”), includes two other Oscar winners and three Oscar nominees. The relatively new genre of spectacular documentary has not yet fulfilled its purpose - to attract viewers to documentaries in cinemas, but has managed to win the favor of festival selectors.

Berlin is an indispensable member of the “Big Three”, one of the three largest film forums in the world. Disputes about who occupies second and who occupies third place in this hierarchy have been going on for more than half a century and, like any old disputes, have no meaning. In fact, there is only one competitive festival in the world, and that is Cannes. Only there, for many years in a row, the best and most relevant films have been unmistakably selected, only there the world ranking table is formed. The remaining several thousand film screenings, including Berlin and Venice, are forced to be content with a more or less successful imitation of the competition, inventing various legends for this purpose. Films that have a guaranteed place in the history of cinema, in Berlin, as everywhere except Cannes, are the exception rather than the rule (however, there were also such: “Head on the Wall” by Fatih Akin and “Capricious Cloud” by Tsai Ming-Liang, for example) .

If Venice likes to be called “highbrow”, then Berlin mainly focuses on social significance. If we forget about the quality of the organization, the Berlin festival is a very big brother of the Moscow festival. They are both characterized by statist rhetoric, declarative protectionism, and a love for everything big and serious. It is customary for us to blame the Berlinale for being politicized, which is not entirely fair. More precisely, talking about social engagement, which is also not a piece of cake: for the “correct” topic, the competition can take such a crap as “Border Town” with Jennifer Lopez (as happened last year). But there are also advantages: every time the great English social realists Mike Leigh and Ken Loach are not attractive on the Cote d'Azur, you can meet them in Berlin. The talented French writer of everyday life Robber Guedigian (“Walks along the Champs of Mars”) also became a regular. We regularly come across not too bright, but worthy social Asian films like last year’s winner “Tui’s Wedding”. So this time in the competition program Happy-Go-Lucky Lee, “Lady Jane” by Gedigian, “Song of a Sparrow” by one of the leading Iranian directors Majid Majidi, “We Believe in Love” by the Chinese Wang Xiaoshuai... Much is expected from a rarely directed Frenchman Eric Zonchi (“The Imaginary Life of Angels”), who, after almost a ten-year pause, will present the thriller “Julia” with Tilda Swinton in Berlin. The strong craftswoman Dorris Dery will be in charge of the hosts. Political relevance will be ensured by the documentary “Standard Procedure” - about the prisoners of the Abu Ghraib prison.

But the biggest stir will probably be caused by the European premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, There Will Be Blood. A loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel There Will Be Oil! has already managed to get into eight Oscar nominations and take 15th place in the list of the most beloved films of all time. The author of “Boogie Nights” and “Magnolia,” apparently, as always, is going to give the audience a powerful blow in the gut, after which some will spit and curse, while others will admire and sob in enlightenment. Be that as it may, the patriarch of American film criticism, Roger Ibert, has already compared “Blood Will Spill” to a natural disaster raging before your eyes.

Russia in Berlin will be represented by Anna Melikyan (Panorama will show her “Rusalka”, which has already won a directing prize at the Sundance festival), producer Alexander Rodnyansky (jury member) and Sergei Garmash, who played one of the main roles in “Katyn”. Andrzej Wajda. It is not interesting to write about the absence of a domestic film in the competition. If the format of Berlin is “big and serious,” then what will you find in a country where only cynical blockbusters are “big” and they prefer not to think about serious social problems. Both in the cinema and outside it.

Alexey MEDVEDEV