There are films that change your life or that influence the course of history or world affairs. The Day of the Sparrow is one such film, the only difference being that it takes the opposite approach in order to achieve this. In his new film, Philip Scheffner, a passionate birdwatcher in his spare time, creates an audacious homage to a particular sparrow which managed to attain international fame in this decisive role. Scheffner sets out on a fantastic search for clues with the meticulousness of a detective, which takes him from the murder of the sparrow by a Dutch media concern to a nearly forgotten holiday resort on the Baltic Sea. His search finally takes him to the fences of various forbidden zones in the provinces and suburbs of both East and West Germany.
Our Beloved Month of August
It’s high summer in the mountain region around Arganil in the heart of Portugal, where August is spent hunting wild boar, playing hockey, fighting forest fires, jumping from bridges, following processions, making fireworks, putting on festivals and singing and dancing. Starting from documentary sequences, which mainly focus on various bands from the popular local music scene, the film gradually drifts towards fiction until it is impossible to distinguish between what is real and what is staged: a melodramatic love story centered upon a father, his daughter and her cousin then emerges. The film simultaneously tells the story of its own production: a filmmaker looking for actors who puts himself in front of the camera again and again, turning his unhappy producer into the protagonist of the film and acting baffled when faced with the sounds that only his sound engineer seems to hear. A film that is free in every sense of the word.
The Forum on tour at Paris
A selection of Forum films will be shown at the Paris Goethe Institute from April 7 - 14th. The programme will be opened by Angela Schanelec's Orly, a German-French co-prdocution.
Nippon Modern: Shimazu Yasujiro at Arsenal cinema
In addition to the films from the Forum's main programme three special screenings with films by Japanese master Shimazu Yasujiro are also being repeated at the Arsenal cinema from February 23rd - 25th.
Forum Repeat Screenings at Arsenal cinema
A selection of films from this year's programme will be repeated at the Arsenal cinema next week: Kyoto Story, Nénette, The Oath, Putty Hill and Sona, the Other Myself.
"Winter's Bone": new screening time
The screening of Winter's Bone as the winner of the "Tagesspiegel" Readers' Jury prize will now be taking place at CinemaxX 6 at 20.30 due to technical reasons.
Femina Film Prize for Reinhild Blaschke
This year's Femina Film Prize for an "outstanding artistic contribution made by a female technician" was awarded to Reinhild Blaschke for her set design on Thomas Arslan's Im Schatten (In the Shadows).
Prizes: Independent Juries
The independent juries at this year's Berlinale have awarded prizes to 3 films from the Forum programme: Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza), Au revoir Taipei and Winter's Bone. The latter also received the prize of the "Tagesspiegel" Readers' Jury.
Caligari-Preis und TEDDY für "La bocca del lupo"
Pietro Marcello's La bocca del lupo has won both this year's Caligari and the TEDDY Award, the Berlinale's queer film prize.
FIPRESCI Prize for "El vuelco del cangrejo"
The prize of the international film critics association FIPRESCI for a film of this year's Forum programme was given to El vuelco del cangrejo by Oscar Ruíz Navia.