The 73rd edition of the Berlinale ended. There is talk of winners, it is said that it was a prize list almost without injustices and there is no shortage of other indications of the ceremony that have as much to do with cinema as astrology with astronomy.
That he has won a documentary like On the Adamant by Nicolas Philibert is excellent news. It happens that there are still people, who may even be film critics or filmmakers or members of a jury, who do not consider non-fiction cinema as cinema with a capital letter.
In a competition dominated by fiction (two were even oriental animations), the decision of the jury chaired by Kristen Stewart is distinctive.
Maybe a movie like the extraordinary Music by Angela Schanelec deserved more than the award for best screenplay; the same might be said of the honorable award for best director that was awarded to Philippe Garrel for his beautiful The Big Chariot. You can question what each one got, but not those chosen to reward. There was no shortage of rumors regarding the deliberation, and whoever has observed the awards ceremony will be able to read a position in some gestures.
The Bear of the sections, or the Bear for “Sur l’Adamant”
With conviction and appealing to her experience as a spectator, Stewart expressed the limitation of the vocabulary to praise the winning film. As an exponent of the documentary, On the Adamant It is located in the traditional line of the observational modality, although it is not orthodox with the guidelines of that non-interventionist poetics of registration: most of its characters interact on many occasions in front of the camera, referring to their life trajectories, when the camera stops to be a ghostly register eye that only absorbs what reality proposes to it.
Who are the ones who speak? Where are you? In an age of psychoactive drugs and tenuous but efficient discipline like ours, in an age in which people are delirious 24 hours a day but do not acknowledge it, watching a film like Philibert’s in which those declared “crazy” or misfits of the system they can attend a house of multiple activities on a daily basis where they are respected and listened to is proof that functionality and efficiency are not the only evaluation criteria of a company.
Our winners of the 2023 Golden Bear for Best Film, director Nicolas Philibert with the statue for “On the Adamant” (Sur l’Adamant), produced by Céline Loiseau, Gilles Sacuto, and Miléna Poylo.
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— Berlinale (@berlinale) February 25, 2023
In the French filmmaker’s film, one can still see a vestige of what was once anti-psychiatry, that notable, almost extinct approach to mental health work in which sufferers were not sullied by declarations of insanity or decreed for them. a fate of everlasting confinement.
That the recreation and care space is located next to the Seine River in Paris, as if the building’s platform were almost a ship, is a curious gloss on a state of affairs: aren’t those who go there survivors without make-up on a collective shipwreck?
Philibert pays attention to joint tasks and qualifies by adding the account of some personal stories. There is a discreet sociological revelation in the second: those who speak are the ill-fated of the generation of the French May 1968; others are those that arrived in Europe from distant regions a few decades later.
The “ship” is nothing more than a condensation of the history of a society, in which what is buried and what is neglected emerges as a symptom of a malaise that is shunned like crazy people.
The Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize goes to “Afire” (Roter Himmel) by Christian Petzold.
Congratulations!Discover all info on the winners, awards, and juries here: https://t.co/Zq7Yfm5QM8
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— Berlinale (@berlinale) February 25, 2023
The other Berlinale awards
The other recognitions were accurate. Christian Petzold won the second important prize (Grand Jury Prize) for Afireperhaps his first comedy, in which his talent playfully illuminates the relationship between literature and life regarding a young writer who travels to a beautiful spot by the sea to correct his second novel.
This award, along with those of Garrel and Schanelec already mentioned, and also the one received by João Canijo for barely livethe extraordinary film in which all the best of the Lusitanian filmmaker is concentrated in following the story of five women linked to the management of a hotel.
Canijo’s film must be one of the most exhaustive forays into psychic imbalance ever filmed.
The Silver Bear Jury Prize goes to “Bad Living” (Mal Viver) by Joᾶo Canijo.
Congratulations!Discover all info on the winners, awards, and juries here: https://t.co/Zq7Yfm5QM8
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— Berlinale (@berlinale) February 25, 2023
What is remarkable regarding his character study is that it does not rest solely on the word. The chosen colours, the light, the path of space through geometric traveling shots and a sound concept by which the exterior is reduced to a mere murmur reflect a suffocating psychology. The Jury’s Silver Bear is unobjectionable.
The Argentine prize of the Berlinale
It was one of the last seen by the transversal jury that was in charge of choosing the festival’s debut film from among various sections. Inside me I’m dancing it got maximum recognition and was described before it said its name as a film that conveys the experience of the trip.
It is true: when Leandro Koch and Paloma Schachmann meet (or stage this meeting) at a Jewish wedding in which he films and she plays the clarinet, no one can imagine that this story will end in remote areas of Romania and Moldavia.
Under the guise of portraying the origin of klezmer music, the filmmakers happily discover that the camera remains an ideal object for matching knowledge and beauty in the world. The final shot is the test.
Carlo Chatrian and his team must be very satisfied. The 73rd edition of the Berlinale was a success: movie stars were not lacking, the rooms were full, the aesthetic diversity was ostensible and the jury understood very well how to make the coherent search for artistic direction led by Chatrian legible at the awards.
It will not be the most powerful of the great festivals, but it is the only one that takes care of cinema, because it still believes in its artistic freedom and its privileged relationship as a way of knowing the world.
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