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The 74th Berlin Film Festival kicked off as scheduled at the end of the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon in China. This may be the "warmest" edition in the history of the Berlin Film Festival, with the average daily maximum temperature reaching over 18 degrees. This is an unexpected surprise for filmmakers from all over the world who are used to attending appointments in cold weather in previous years.
Compared with the warming of the temperature, this Berlin Film Festival may be the "poorest" one in history. As early as half a year before the opening of this film festival, Berlin officials issued a statement on the official website. Due to rising costs in all aspects, the 2024 Berlin Film Festival will undergo structural reforms, significantly reduce its scale, and the total number of films screened will drop to about two hundred. , a drop of more than 30% compared with 2023. Filmmakers, media reporters and film producers from various countries who come to the film festival to report have the most direct experience - in the past, after registering for the film festival, in addition to the guest card, there will also be an information package, including the film festival film list, film market information, and peripherals. Souvenirs and so on, but in 2024, there is only a bare guest card.
Hollywood star and producer Matt Damon and actor Cillian Murphy walked on the red carpet of the Berlin Film Palace. They brought the opening blockbuster of this film festival "small things like this". Murphy, who starred in Nolan's new film " Oppenheimer ", is well-known to movie fans. In the film, Murphy played a famous and controversial physicist; in "These Little Things", he played An unknown little man, a coal worker named Bill Furlong. The story takes place during the Christmas period of 1985, when Furlong discovers a shocking secret hidden in the town's monastery. The film reveals the truth behind Ireland's Magdalen Laundries - where Roman Catholic institutions from the 1820s to 1996 concealed horrific practices in the name of rehabilitating "fallen young women".
This is a very quiet and restrained movie. Furlong, played by Murphy, is also a man of few words. Although the background of the film takes place in the 1980s, the helplessness and inner despair of the little man are faced with the "authority" of the monastery. His inability to resist can easily resonate with the audience.
Audience members leaving after the screening of the opening film "These Little Things" at the 74th Berlin Film Festival. Photo by Yilan
"These little things" have, in a sense, become the invisible theme of this Berlin Film Festival - paying attention to oneself and the inner world of people under uncertainty. For example, South Korean director Hong Sang-soo's "A Traveler's Needs", starring the famous French actor Isabelle Huppert, won the Jury Prize at this year's Berlin Film Festival. The film has no grand theme, only small things experienced by a French woman traveling to South Korea, such as the embarrassment of small talk with hospitable locals and the friendship established with a young landlord. At the same time, because of the "intrusion" of such an outsider, trust and understanding between local young people and their parents have been rebuilt, and the audience can get a glimpse of the alienation and closeness between people, as well as the elusive humanity. The dialogue often falls into the introspective chatter between intimate strangers typical of Hong Chang-su's work, and the audience is repeatedly savored in the film's small moments of daily life. Like the mysterious appearance of the French woman at the beginning, the film ends like a puzzle with both tender humor and too few clues, inviting the viewer to join in the game and fill in the assumptions and judgments we usually make about strangers or superficially familiar people. blank.
Hong Sang-soo before the screening of "A Traveler's Needs" at the Berlin Film Festival. Yilan photo
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Chinese-language movies also pay attention to "these little things".
"The Woman in the Empty Room" is representative. The film won the Special Jury Award in the "Adventures" section. Director Qiu Yang had previously won the Palme d'Or at the 70th Cannes International Film Festival for his feature short film "February in a Small Town", which made the film's trip to Berlin highly acclaimed. expect.
Like "February in Small Town", "Woman in the Empty Room" was filmed in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, Qiu Yang's hometown. The actors used Changzhou dialect throughout the film. The film focuses on a frustrated middle-aged woman in a small town who faces her rebellious daughter and mediocrity. Her husband and her chronically ill parents...the chaos of life is intertwined with the desolation of the middle-aged woman's spiritual world.Qiu Yang's shooting technique is unique. The film is shrouded in mist and humidity. He deliberately made the noise from the outside so loud that the audience cannot hear the woman's voice or see the face of the woman's husband clearly. The film does not have an obvious narrative context like "February in Small Town". Instead, it conveys the voice of an invisible middle-aged woman through the creation of images. She is in a gloomy world, and the audience can only keep peeking at her from corners, as if looking directly into her abyss means looking straight into the abyss in which they themselves are. Through a series of "little things", Qiu Yang tells the story of the shaky and dangerous dilemma behind the seemingly comfortable middle-class family life. Just like the ending of the film, when a woman went to the dental clinic to remove a rotten tooth, the dentist said: "It hurts." Very deep. It will hurt."
Director Qiu Yang (left) after the screening of "The Woman in the Empty Room" at the Berlin Film Festival. Yilan Photography
director Zhang Wenqian's "Hot Day Afternoon" won the Jury Prize in the Short Film Competition at this Berlin Film Festival. This work is similar to the work "Hot Day Afternoon" that previously won the Jury Prize in the Burning Light section at the 53rd Nyon Real Film Festival in Switzerland and was directed by Zhang Wenqian. The documentary feature "Family of Five" is in the same vein. The story also starts from family life. The protagonist Xiao Qi is a six-year-old girl. Because her father works in Shenzhen and rarely goes home, she lives with her maternal grandparents and uncle's family all year round. In the steamy afternoon, in daily, subtle and trivial family life, people use various euphemistic ways to test each other's boundaries and express their emotions. Everyone is under an invisible pressure that is exacerbated by the heat. The sweltering temperatures become a meteorological metaphor for interpersonal tensions, which, unlike barometric pressure, are not released in the impending thunderstorm. Through the eyes of a child, "Hot Afternoon" outlines to the audience the hidden cracks beneath a family's functional façade.
's work "Little Half" directed by Liu Yaonan, which was shortlisted for the New Generation Competition, focuses on teenagers in southwest China.
"Xiao Ban Jie" means "Jie Liu Zi" in dialect. 14-year-old Li Xing lives in an area full of ruins and reconstruction. He has difficulty integrating into school and his family cannot help. One day, he discovered an underground shelter where he saw many hidden things. The film combines animation and feature films to explore the inner world of a group of teenagers who have been ignored by many narratives and grew up in small towns and at the junction of urban and rural areas.
Young director Lin Jianjie's debut feature film "A Brief History of the Family" was shortlisted for the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival. The film premiered at the 2024 Sundance World Film Festival. The film looks back in time to tell the story of a wealthy family's repressed emotions, unfulfilled expectations and unspeakable secrets.
As a debut novel, "A Brief History of the Family" still has many imperfections. "Screen" commented: ""A Brief History of the Family" is too cold. Lin Jianjie abused his lethargic photography and a series of mechanical The arrangement breaks up the naturalness of the emotional unfolding." But it also affirms the film's positive significance, "Yet the elegant and precise style is ultimately effective, and Lin seduces you with his technical elements, inviting you to pay attention to every shot. , every dialogue, every mysterious push, interpret these traumatic emotions and broken families bit by bit."
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The 69th Berlin Film Festival in 2019 was the last film festival before the outbreak of the global new crown epidemic. Festival, that year, Chinese-language films shined in Berlin. "Forever" directed by Wang Xiaoshuai was shortlisted for the main competition. The starring roles Wang Jingchun and Yong Mei won the Silver Bear Award for Best Actor and the Silver Bear Award for Best Actress. Five years later, it was difficult to find Chinese-language films in the main competition section of the 74th Berlin Film Festival, but they met global audiences in other sections.
Tsai Ming-liang (right) brought his new film to the 74th Berlin Film Festival. Photo by Yilan
The documentary "Nowhere to Live" by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.This is the tenth installment in Tsai Ming-Liang's Walker series. The concept of the entire series is that the monk played by Lee Kang-sheng walks around the world without any lines. Monks in red robes walked through Washington, walking slowly and barefoot through noisy stations, silent museums, and crowded streets... The director did not do any special processing for the environmental sounds. There were birdsong, trumpets, and conversations, but Li Kangsheng was walking. The posture is separated from the whole noisy world, and there is a very detached and firm beauty. In the post-screening interview of
, Tsai Ming-liang mentioned the origin of the filming. He said that many years ago, he got tired of making feature films and wondered what else he could make—no purpose, just walking, could it be a movie? Finally, he brought the slow-moving Walker series into theaters. He said that one of the sources of inspiration for this series was Xuanzang. In an era when transportation was inconvenient, Xuanzang walked step by step from Chang'an to Tianzhu. Maybe he wanted to learn scriptures at first, but the moment he set foot in the desert, his purpose disappeared, and life and death suddenly became irrelevant to him. "Does a movie have to be touching? Does it have to be thrilling? Can't it just be beautiful?" Tsai Ming-liang asked the audience.
Although the number of films selected for this year's film festival has shrunk significantly, the theaters were packed at every screening. After the screening, the audience stood up to pay tribute to the creators and excitedly discussed all aspects of the film, which made people see the charm of the film. During the Berlin Film Festival, Jia Zhangke led a team to hold a filmmaker party for the Pingyao International Film Festival in Berlin. Originally only more than 30 filmmakers were invited, but in the end more than 200 filmmakers attended. At the party, the new planning team of the Pingyao International Film Festival was officially announced. Artistic director Lin Xudong shouted excitedly at the steamy scene: "Long live cinema!"
The 74th Berlin Film Festival "takes over" the opening of China's 2024 Spring Festival. This year's Spring Festival The box office exceeded 8 billion yuan, surpassing the 2021 Spring Festival box office and breaking the Spring Festival box office record in Chinese film history. Different from the lively themes of comedy and action in Spring Festival films, these Chinese-language author films screened at the Berlin Film Festival complete another piece of the puzzle about Chinese-language films. They mostly focus on the hidden corners of urban life and the conflict between tradition and modernity. , there are more subtle artistic explorations and cultural reflections on those overlooked details in daily life. They may not bring a blockbuster box office effect, but they can inspire lasting thinking in the hearts of the audience: even in the downturn of the global economy, movies still have their unique value and meaning, and they can be a quiet and powerful force. .
Southern Weekend staff writer Yilan Southern Weekend intern Chen Quanxin
editor-in-chief Liu Youxiang
