Press Releases 2016

The selection for this year’s Panorama is now complete: 51 films from 33 countries have been picked, of which 17 will screen in Panorama Dokumente, and 34 fiction features in the main programme and Panorama Special.
33 films are world premieres, nine are international premieres and nine, European premieres. The 30th Teddy Award is also being celebrated with an anniversary series of 17 films (see press releases from Dec 17, 2015 and Jan 14, 2016).

The Panorama main programme will open on Thursday, February 11 with the Czech directorial debut Já, Olga Hepnarová (I, Olga Hepnarova) by Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda. The film shows how a young woman in the former Czechoslovakia feels so cornered that she tries to liberate herself in a devastating act – she then faces the death penalty, which was still in effect there until 1989. Two other films also revolve around the death penalty: Shepherds and Butchers from South Africa, which is set during apartheid, and the Brazilian documentary Curumim, about an inmate on death row in Indonesia.

Europe, She Loves, a Swiss-German co-production, opens Panorama Dokumente. It examines the states of mind of heterosexual couples from Seville, Tallinn and Dublin to Thessaloniki. In passing, it also - laconically, humorously, pensively, sexily – measures the temperature of a patient called Europe.

A burning issue is introduced into the programme by Rachid Bouchareb’s La route d’Istanbul (Road to Istanbul): a Belgian mother sets out to find and bring home her daughter who has joined the jihad in Syria. Bouchareb has already presented six of his works in Berlin (five fiction features and one short film). He last participated in the 2014 Competition with Two Men in Town.

Following Hayatboyu (Lifelong, Panorama 2013), director Aslı Özge will show her first German-language film, Auf Einmal (All of a Sudden), in which one wrong decision jeopardises a young man’s entire existence.
A strong first film: the Danish-Swedish co-production Shelley by Ali Abbasi uses genre-specific means to interweave one of this year’s Panorama themes - the desire to have children - with the situation of eastern Europeans migrating for jobs.

Three Films from Brazil, Two Films from Chile

In the Brazilian film Mãe só há uma (Don’t Call Me Son), it’s a matter of blood ties versus conditioning and the discovery of a baby’s earlier abduction: director Anna Muylaert won the Panorama Audience Award in 2015 for A que horas ela volta (The Second Mother). In Antes o tempo não acabava (Time Was Endless), a young man has to deal with the cultural clash between his tribe’s Amazonian Indian rituals and the self-determined urban life which he finds so alluring. Brazilian human rights activist Yvonne Bezerra de Mello was the protagonist of Kriegerin des Lichts (Warrior of Light) 15 years ago. In Zona Norte, filmmaker Monika Treut visits de Mello again to see what has come of her alternative educational methods for working with street kids.
Two films from Chile complete this year’s selection from Latin America: Alejandro Fernández Almendras observes in Aquí no ha pasado nada (Much Ado about Nothing) the consequences of class society and corruption on a group of privileged teenagers. And in Alex Anwandter’s first feature, Nunca vas a estar solo (You'll Never Be Alone), a father seeks help in vain when his gay son becomes the victim of a hate crime in their neighbourhood.

South Korea and China, Three Films Each

E J-yong, a frequent guest of the Berlinale, depicts in Jug-yeo-ju-neun Yeo-ja (The Bacchus Lady) the story of a gentle heroine: she has devoted her life and now, in old age, her death to men - yet within the workings of patriarchy, she had more say and freedom than her clients’ wives were ever given. The Lovers and the Despot about the dream couple of South Korea’s movie scene who were kidnapped one after the other to North Korea, provides engrossing documentary insights into the lives of Koreans, as does WEEKENDS, which reveals the swift progress and growing pitfalls of the gay emancipation movement.
Shanghai: the dramatic story of a stolen baby in San Fu Tian (Dog Days) takes a modern and intimate look at a new China and its middle class – that vigorously growing segment of society which in the documentary Wu Tu (My Land) squabbles over every square meter owned by vegetable farmers and thus makes gentrification palpable. The baby theme comes up again in Inside the Chinese Closet: marriages of convenience and other societal constructions are invented to satisfy conservative family structures, whether those concerned want them or not.