Berlinale Talent Campus, Goethe-Institut and FIPRESCI organized in the framework of the festival for the sixth time the "Talent Press" workshop that allowed young critics from all over the world to attend the festival, and to win experience in writing, on a daily basis and on one of the biggest film festivals of the world. We publish their daily coverage of the festival. Talent Press 2009

Globalization. German filmmaker Tom Tykwer made a Hollywood thriller (The International). Very French cineaste Bertrand Tavernier shot a film in the swamps of Louisiana in the English language (In the Electric Mist). Imagine. German Florian Gallenberger's new film develops a Chinese background (John Rabe). On the other hand, the very German story of a former Nazi woman was filmed by British director Stephen Daldry (The Reader). What a mess! Not that the films were bad. They were unexpected. They paid for certain professional skills with a certain absence of a director's handwriting. It may be the economic crisis on the horizon which lets some filmmakers avoid risks, and lets them test-drive popular forms of genre cinema. It's maybe not (yet) a tendency. It may, however, indicate a transition — a transition which this-year's Berlinale showed clearly though probably not intentionally.
   The classics of modern cinema. One still knows what one gets from a film by Manoel de Oliveira, Andrzej Wajda, Theo Angelopoulos. What an elegance and composure of narration (Oliveira's Eccentricities of a Blond Haired Girl). What an eye-catching move through times and places (Angelopoulos' The Dust of Time). What a painful look back to his and his films' own history, in Andrzej Wajda's Sweet Rush. Maybe their time is over — Angelopoulos was born in 1935, Wajda in 1926, Oliveira in 1908. Their films are still there, and among the best ones in Berlin — even if a younger public and the zeitgeist may have problems with them.
   The next generation. It couldn't be better. The international jury, headed by British actress Tilda Swinton and with, among others, Swedish writer Henning Mankell, German enfant terrible Christoph Schlingensief and Spanish filmmaker Isabel Coixet — awarded the main Bears consequently to young directors, to films far from the temptations of the industry and from the necessity of being popular: The Milk of Sorrow by Claudia Llosa (born in 1976, Peru), Gigante by Adrián Biniez (born in 1974, Argentina), Everyone Else by Maren Ade (born in 1976, Germany). Berlin '09 marked the arrival of a new generation of filmmakers.
    For the rest, fest head Dieter Kosslick, whose contract has just been extended until 2013, manages to make the Berlinale bigger from year to year (this year, he added Friedrichstadt-Palast to the festival venues, a famous and even legendary Berlin revue theater). He enriched the four classical sections of the Competition, the Panorama, the Forum and the Retrospective ("70mm — Bigger than Life") with a series of additional sections, events, panels, screenings of German films, homages (to composer Maurice Jarre), and a gigantic (but useful) Talent Campus which included "Talent Press", a workshop for young film critics co-organized by FIPRESCI. (Klaus Eder)

Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), Germany, February 5-15, 2009,
www.berlinale.de, Forum: www.arsenal-berlin.de/en/forum/

"The Milk of Sorrow"
"North"		"Love Exposure"

FIPRESCI Prizes:

Competition:
The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada) by Claudia Llosa (Peru/Spain, 2009).

Panorama:
North (Nord) by Rune Denstadt Langlo (Norway, 2009).

International Forum of New Cinema:
Love Exposure (Ai no mukidashi) by Sono Sion (Japan, 2008).

Reports

A Journey from Fear to Freedom. Sergi Sánchez gives clear reasons why the allegorical Peruvian drama The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada), directed by Claudia Llosa, won the Golden Bear and the FIPRESCI prize.
An Off-Road Movie. In North, Rune Denstad Langlo's first feature film, Nils Saeveras embarks on a snowmobile with lone character Jomar on an amusing and thought–provoking off-beat journey across Norwegian snow.
"I'm a pervert with dignity". Enrico Bosten is intrigued and amused by Sono Sion's Love Exposure, "a wild genre mixture of martial arts and splatter movie, high-school drama and pure love story with a lot of allusions to other movies".
True Stories. "There was a strong vein of real life running through the Berlinale Panorama this year through biopics, autobiographical narratives and of course documentaries", writes Rich Cline in his overview.
Older Women, Younger Men. Daldry's The Reader, Delpy's The Countess and Frears' Chéri come under the scrutiny of Mihai Chirilov, who analysizes the motives behind these films pivoting over OWYM relationships.
A Newcomer in Berlin. After a great reception at Sundance, Oren Moverman's The Messenger goes beyond the clichés of the returning soldier bringing all kinds of traumas and neurosis in his backpack, claims Carlos Augusto Brandão.
Borders Inside Us. The seven-year war between Georgia and Abkhazia is the background of ths story of a child refugee from Abkhazia in search of his father. The Other Bank, says Gulnara Abikeyeva is a remarkable Georgian film and a rare exception in this year's program. 
Portraits of Broken Souls. Margit Tõnson throws light on three intimate dramas about traumatized women and their unique paths towards healing: Naked of Defenses (Japan), Can Go Through Skin (The Netherlands), and My Only Sunshine (Turkey).
Borders and Chaos. A sometimes inscrutable chaos would be the appropriate way to describe Human Zoo by Danish director Rie Rasmussen, according to Andreas R. Becker.
An Elegy of Solitude. Borislav Andjelic is impressed by Gigante, the first feature of Adrián Biniez, an interesting study of a lonely man, a figure that is often present in recent Latin American films.
In the Berlinale Again. Myrna Silveira Brandão interviews José Padilha (whose The Elite Squad won the Golden Bear in 2008) about Garapa, his latest documentary film shown in the Panorama program.

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