About Animals, People and Togetherness

Contrasting cinematic forms and subject matters enter into dialogue with one another in the Berlinale Shorts programme. Familiar things are examined more closely, unfamiliar ones approached in an open way, feelings are expressed and doubts permitted. This interview with section head Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck is about visions of communal life, sincerity in storytelling and the role of art in difficult times.

Which motifs and themes did you encounter when selecting the programme?

The large number of animals is the first thing that catches the eye, whether in the title, the setting or as characters – it’s a trend that can also be observed in feature films. And animals even take on the leading roles in the animated films We Will Not Be the Last of Our Kind, Les animaux vont mieux, Preoperational Model and Kawauso. At first, we were worried there might be too much duplication in the programme, but then we decided to let the animals roam free.

The films featuring animals can be interpreted as a reaction to climate change, to human recklessness and abuse of power. Would you agree?

Yes, absolutely. However, rather than expressing a call to action, the films capture a feeling. Kawauso, for example, turns out to be a deeply sad farewell song to the extinct Japanese otter. It does this by using an idiosyncratic cinematic device: whenever the protagonist wants to talk to the otter, the sound in the film cuts out completely. The two cannot communicate with each other because they do not exist in the same time plane.

In the press release for your programme, you stated that art can help us to align the compass for our own actions. What did you mean by that?

I think we too often operate in narratives that have long become outdated, are unhelpful or sometimes even dangerous. Art can compensate for this shortcoming by challenging narratives and showing us alternatives. The way we interact with each other is currently so defined by assumptions and mistrust that I find it very touching, for example, when people trust each other on screen, especially when they don’t even know each other.

Are there any films in the programme that express this particularly well?

In Adieu tortue, two very different people meet – a five-year-old girl and an adult woman – and help each other without realising it or even planning to do so. The novelist in That’s All from Me is willing to give advice even though she has never met the person who is seeking it. In the temporary community created on a film set in Shi ri fang gu, moments of solidarity arise between those right at the bottom of the hierarchy. In the drawn animation Circle, passers-by – who otherwise have nothing to do with each other – try to position themselves within a circle in a way that leaves enough room for everyone.

This interplay between the individual and a public space or a city is also a recurring motif this year.

Yes, and these cities are located all around the world. Al sol, lejos del centro accompanies two women on a walk through Santiago de Chile. Only at the end do we realise that they have been looking for a place for their love. In Jing guo (Goodbye First Love), two men in a holiday apartment in Frankfurt remember a love that first began in distant Beijing. City of Poets starts by telling the story of a fictional, possibly Persian, city and then becomes a portrait of the first-person narrator’s mother. And Stadtmuseum / Mon Rai is an autobiographical homage to the city of Berlin, to its chaos and its residents.

City of Poets and Stadtmuseum are also portraits of their respective societies. Are there any more of these?

Un movimiento extraño uses dry humour to depict the living conditions in Buenos Aires before the pandemic; The Moon Also Rises describes an atmosphere that could be interpreted to be the one in China during the pandemic; Re tian wu hou captures the feeling of life in an extended family, this time in the China of the late 1990s. For these latter two films, the filmmakers’ own families served as inspiration.

Who is on the Berlinale Shorts International Jury this year?

We’re delighted to have Ilker Çatak, Xabier Erkizia and Jennifer Reeder on the jury. The American filmmaker Jennifer Reeder is a long-time friend of the festival: her film Blood Below the Skin screened in Berlinale Shorts in 2015 while Crystal Lake and Knives and Skin were presented in Generation, and Perpetrator was part of the Panorama programme last year. She’s also a regular mentor at Berlinale Talents and was a member of the Generation 14plus International Jury in 2017. Xabier Erkizia is a sound artist and researcher from Spain. He has worked on over 100 films including El sembrador de estrellas (2022 Berlinale Shorts) and Samsara (2023 Encounters) as well as being a filmmaker himself. Ilker Çatak is a German-Turkish director and screenwriter from Berlin. He has made over a dozen short films and is currently causing quite a stir with his feature film Das Lehrerzimmer (The Teachers’ Lounge). The film premiered in Panorama in 2023, has won numerous awards and is nominated for the 2024 Oscar for Best International Feature Film.