Berlin 2006

It seems that the Berlinale gets bigger every year — more films, more stars, more events, more guests. Fest director Dieter Kosslick, go-getting and good-tempered as always, managed that the whole city of Berlin celebrated cinema, in spite of the extraordinarily cold temperature outside the festival venues around Potsdamer Platz (the historical center of the city, re-built after reunification). Besides the red-carpet competition show, two sidebars found the interest of critics and public: Panorama (headed by Wieland Speck) and the "International Forum of New Cinema" (headed by Christoph Terhechte).
   The critics forming our jury write about German films (which showed German cinema on the upswing), and about their discoveries. Contents
Young critics were invited to the "Talent Press" and reported daily on the festival. Contents
Details of the prizes

FIPRESCI Prizes:

"Requiem"
(Hans-Christian Schmid) (left)

"Tough Enough"
(Detlev Buck) (upper right)

"In Between Days"
(So Yong Kim) (lower right)

Festival

The Sad Song of a Religious Trauma. Nils Olav Saeveras discovers far more than the story of an epileptic girl and an ordinary exorcism in Hans-Christian Schmid's film Requiem: an extraordinary work about family mechanisms. Review
Tough and Tender. Detlev Buck's film Tough Enough is a moving and strong social study of a teenager in Berlin who lives with his mother, tries to make friends and money and becomes a drug courier and changes his live. Read Christiane Dancie's review
A Waste Land Between You and Me. Gabriele Barrera explains the cinematographic paradox of the young Korean director So Yong-Kim offering the struggle of an Americanized Korean girl between her love and her dreams in her movie In Between Days. Review
Two Daring Films. Different in many aspects, the Argentine movie El Custodio and the German Longing revels in the ordinariness of daily life, the simple things what some people call the boring aspects of life, and they are both extraordinary — states Diego Lerer. Continue
Silence, Candy Colours and Outsiders. "The centre of the present world cinema definitely lies in Asia", writes Rüdiger Suchsland. He adores, in Asian cinema, "an artistic revolution, a rebirth of fantasy, a reinvention of the language of cinema". Read more
Settling Accounts with the Generation 68. Oskar Roehler, the German director of the film The Elementary Particles  (Elementarteilchen) feels a strong relationship with the French author Michel Houellebecq who in 1998 published a novel with the same title. Angelika Kettelhack sees Houellebecq and Roehler as brother-in-arms. Review
Passionate Relationship. The gay Movie Broken Sky shows a love story that may also please viewers beyond the gay community because of its atmosphere and its two endings, as Zlatko Vidakovic explains. More
Specificity in Diversity. The main impression Nenad Dukic takes back from Berlinale about the new German films is that the movies of the current production are specific, authentic and thematically diversified. Continue
Questions on the Road. Beyond the fine artwork and the political statement in Michael Winterbottoms' film The Road to Guantanamo, Vladimir Ignatovski is disturbed by the clichés concerning the Islamists. More

Talent Press

Within the "Talent Campus", young critics from all over the world attended the "Talent Press" initiative, co-organized by Berlinale, Goethe Institute and FIPRESCI. The 'talents' were: Hugo Salas (Argentina), Oleksiy Radynskiy (Ukraine), Vera Brozzoni (UK), Maria Antonia Velez Serna (Colombia), Leo Mirani (India), Olga Aylarova (Russia), Tamás Bella (Hungary), Katie Kohn (USA), Anne von der Goenne (Germany), Laurence Reymond (France), and Soumaya Beltifa (Tunisia). They reported daily on the festival, its films, its guests, its events.

The Talents
Daily reports (from February 11 to 17)
Saturday, February 11th
Sunday, February 12th
Monday, February 13th
Tuesday, February 14th
Wednesday, February 15th
Thursday, February 16th
Epilogue: Friday, February 17

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