Bernhard

Berlinale Shorts Competition
Golden Bear for Best Short Film

The Golden Bear-winning short film “My Uncle Tudor” takes a walk down memory lane, into the heart of darkness, to look up answers to some very unpleasant questions.

How did it happen for the first time? Was it romantic, pleasant, unpleasant, or embarrassing? There are different degrees to evaluate these categories, and the correct answer probably contains elements of more than one from the list.

But above all, was it consensual? There should be no degrees or percentages here, but in the mind of many, including the eponymous antihero, it’s all a matter of perception.

Fleeting Moments of Her Memory

Yes, My Uncle Tudor is a film about rape. I understand that the slow reveal is a powerful narrative tool here – we are slowly invited into a dreamy childhood home of the author, where time seems to stand still, evoking a vision of a better, bygone world; convincingly led to believe that this is a bittersweet film about nostalgia – but not to come out with it in this review would equal “not talking about it”, and that is the main point of the film. To talk about it and acknowledge it for what it really is.

Uncle Tudor is an inhabitant of the described childhood dreamland, together with a chorus of ethereal elderly ladies who watch old photographs, reminisce about the times, and sing in a heavenly voice. From the start, Tudor is depicted with a sense of estrangement: through the veil, out of focus, partly hidden behind another person. Expertly, the seed of doubt is planted in the audience: why not show us the main character? Slowly, the veil of mystery is lifted when the author starts to ask Tudor about the memories, and whether his memories resemble her own or not. And Tudor really shows himself.

Degrees of Depravity

When it becomes clear that the author remembers too much for a complete denial, Tudor switches to Semantics. “You weren’t so small” (9 years), “I only put it between your legs” (not inside). One mitigating circumstance after another, crowned by the nonchalant statement: “I think I behaved nice with you.”

It is an argument of technical detail, shocking in its mundanity. Its voice is covered with tracking shots of little details in the house: Details, probably unchanged since childhood days. Potent reminders of a childhood trauma. The details don’t just speak but scream at you in a muted voice. Silent witnesses of “only”, “just” and “nice”.

Act of Resistance

The real hero of the story is of course the author Olga Lucovicova, because it is her story. There is no degree of separation here: it is an unflinching look into a gripping personal nightmare. In an interview to Berlinale¹, Lucovnicova explained how the idea of the film met great resistance from the family throughout the process, because the vision of a perfect family needed to be upheld.

Here, the author goes against herself and all of her kin to uncover something that has haunted her a long time. Throughout the film, Lucovnicova synchronizes our feelings with hers. At first, the false sense of security, then the anxiety creeping in slowly, and finally, the stupendous indifference of all the parties involved.

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In Estonia, only last week a female football player confessed to being a lover of a Brazilian coach since she was 14 years old². The man is over sixty, and his explanations were: 1) Big love, 2) She turned 18 pretty soon after, and 3) She was the one who wanted it.

The society seems to side with the coach. It’s not happening in a remote village somewhere in Moldova, and not years ago, in another time, but right here and now. Which makes Olga Lucovnicova’s “Uncle Tudor” not just a powerful poetic narrative documentary, but also a poignant weapon in fight against the illusion of consent.

1¹ https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=570830760541148

2² https://news.err.ee/1608141274/football-league-launches-investigation-into-sexual-abuse-allegations

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Original Title: Nanu Tudor
Countries: Belgium/ Portugal/ Hungary
Language: Romanian, Russian
Year: 2020
Runtime: 20′
documentary form
Produced by: Olga Lucovnicova
Co-Produced by: Universidade Lusófona, Lissabon/ University of Film and Arts, Budapest
Written/ Directed by: Olga Lucovnicova
Director of Photography: Olga Lucovnicova
Editor: Olga Lucovnicova

Berlinale Shorts Competition

One thing is certain: no one in their right mind would ever want to go back to their teen years and live through them again. Think about all the inner anxieties, uncertainties about who we are, how we are supposed to think and feel, the inability to formulate our thoughts and speak openly about our feelings in order to be understood.

Young Hearts (or Si t’as un coeur in original, which is not the same thing and it would translate as If You Have a Heart), the screenwriting and directorial debut of the acclaimed Paris-based stage director Émilie Vandenabeele, is a film just about that: a group of teenagers trying to connect to one another while feeling time pressure. It premiered in this year’s Berlinale Shorts Competition.

Yuna (Mathilde Le Borgne), Lucie (Lucie Vincentelli), Arthur (Arthur Velten) and Jurijn (Artis Antonini) have their separate dynamics as a group and between one another. Somebody likes someone. Somebody likes to tease someone. Somebody knows someone’s secrets and somebody thinks they know all about somebody else based on few memories from the past. The summer is coming to an end and initiative of sorts needs to be taken in order for things to change or at least clear.

It might seem as a knotty network of relationships, laced by the inflation of teenage drama and sprinkled with the volatility of their communication. It is, but it is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in the hands of a talented stage writer, actress and director such as Vandenbeele who has the complete control. The dialogue here, or at least the perfect calibration of its harshness and mellowness at just the right moments, is a thing to admire, while the directing done in a classical European art house style (hand-held camerawork, the rhythmic changes between the wide shots and close-ups and the contrasts between the sun-kissed, richly green nature in the day and the cool blues of the night) fits the bill.

Young Hearts is here to remind us why ageing is not a bad thing after all, but also to motivate us to understand teenagers in our surroundings. For them, their drama is real.

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Original Title: Si t’as un coeur
Country: France
Language: French
Year: 2021
Runtime: 22′
Producers: Maud Deschambres, Bastien Ehouzan
Written/ Directed by: Émilie Vandenameele
Cinematographer: Juliette Barrat
Sound Design: Cécile Février, Tom Allibert-Bardoux
Sound Mixing: Clément Chauvelle
Music: Lambert Plauzolles, Valentin Portron, Megi Xexo
Editor: Matthieu Parmentier 
Cast: Artus Antonini, Mathilde Le Borgne, Arthur Velten, Lucie Vincentelli

Berlinale Shorts Competition

The understanding of beauty, with all its socially rooted codes and trends that trod along, is the cruelest judge of who, what and how gets accepted, cherrieshed and loved, and this is not something that formed its shape yesterday, nor in the 20th century or even back in Middle Ages. Humankind’s relationship to “attractive” is tricky, and not so detached from the mechanisms of power. Along these lines, Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit kicks off with a quotation by an unnamed woman that each one’s responsible for their beauty, and that being ugly is an insult to other people. This clearly is a right introduction to the local (filmic) wisdom “To each their own motorcycle”.

A sturdy young man is proudly demonstrating his bike. Not that he is talking or pointing at anything in particular. A bit pretend-busy by checking a command or two, he is clearly satisfied with his iron horse. His gaze straight into the camera lens screams “look at my bike!” moments before his leather jacket gets brought in with pompeous grandeur by four young people. The man, obviously a leader, is all set to get the engine rolling to conquer the area.

When the rider starts the engine, we are still boxed in his royal red “warrior” tent, with only a slight idea what’s outside. Although in command of a motorized cavalry waiting for him in the greenery, he wants to be the first one to explore. “Him and no one else” was getting into the jungle, is something that Hernan Callejas allegedly said to his exploration brigade back in the 16th century conquest of Mexican territories. He wasn’t actually first, considering it was the rest of them cutting through plants and scaring off indigenous people. Back at that time, it was the conquistadors’ helmets that shone in their cold elegance.

In his Berlinale Shorts contender Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit, Gabriel Herrera paints a nonconformist picture of the Spanish conquest of Indigenous lands, set in modern context. The relationship between new and ancient, modernity and nature is put into a play of reversed roles. “The new world was full of unexpected objects, unreasonable plants, drunk animals, unknown prayers. He dressed them all in his own suit…”

The beauty of the conqueror. His shiny armor and display of superiority over those he came to erase on his expedition, for a higher purpose. He dominates the nature and the foreign habitat, dressed in his best clothes.

This is a film that will certainly travel a long festival road. Shot on 16mm and shown in the boxy 1:1 aspect ratio, Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit is a window into a parallel universe of history brought forward in the now.

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Original title: Al motociclista no le cabe la felicidad en el traje
Country: Mexico
Language: Spanish
Year: 2021
Runtime: 10′
Directed by: Gabriel Herrera
Written by: Gabriel Herrera, Stefanie Reinhard
Produced by: Susana Bernal
Production: Black Maria Producciones
Co-produced by: Artemio Narro
Supported by: Goethe Institut, Disruptiva
Cinematographer: Stefanie Reinhard
Sound Design: Gabriel Herrera
Sound Editor: Naybi Suya, Rodrigo Navarro, Pablo Herrera
Sound Mixing: Ricardo Artaega
Sound Recording: Alajandra Hernández
Editor: Gabriel Herrera
Production Designer: Luis Castaneda
Cast: David Illiescas, Ángel Morales, Lisandro Robles, Estefania Guerrero, Ulises Robles, Joel Ramirez

Berlinale Shorts Competition

When right after the opening credits a little girl’s voice starts whispering about her new camera by which she films whatever she finds interesting, we don’t expect to see a young homeless family of three under a bridge: a mother (Gina-Lisa Maiwald) holding her baby, and a girl (Mietze Maiwald) preparing food in an improvised open “kitchen”. Surrounded by suitcases, sleeping bags, pram and shopping bags, the clean, washed, manicured, kempt and content family gets ready for their meal. With the traffic above their heads, and the construction work going on right in front of their eyes, their only irritation (although expressed in soft, composed voices) seems to be coming from the garbage carried by the river. Otherwise, all’s just perfectly normal. It’s another day in homeless paradise. Or – are they homeless at all? If not, why are they carrying around all that gear?

In Ulu Braun’s alleged documentary, the viewer is challenged to discover a larger picture through the fantasy world shared by mother and daughter. But, where to start? Maybe with a flier showing a certain Dennis D. Copper – “the saint of the streets”? The identities of many faces that briefly appear on the screen are also unknown. At one point the family will spy upon a group of people in some backyard. “My friends from before are talking about rent prices, racism, female quotas and corruption in the FIFA”, the woman explains. By the look of it, it must some kind of shared community that both of them obviously belonged to once upon a time. Or- did they?

I could end every single paragraph written about this film with a question. Or – two?

We are supposed to “paint-by-numbers” according to Ulu Braun, but how that’s another thing. The path mother and daughter are walking (or flying) is convoluted. There is no way telling what connects those dots, the places and faces. Sometimes, the abstract gets attenuated. A story or two are told, but then it’s back again to the unstable camera movement, the blur and the narrative whose structure is violently shaken and stirred.

People talk, eat peanuts, juggle, they walk dogs or deliver food. Barbie is also present now and then. In a beauty parlor to calm down a crying kid, or on a sticker. She is there in fantasy talks. But there is no glitter, not in the slightest. Not even in the blood.

One of the mysteries of the film gets solved towards the end, and the face of Dennis D. Cooper (“Big Worm”) appears again in Detroit, on his tombstone on thegraveyard next to the former Packard Automotive Plant. But – why did he become the saint of a German town’s streets?

Glittering Barbieblood should a comment on modern urban living, on a big social gap between the privileged and the invisible, but its inaccesible audio-visual language makes it an unlikely international festivals’ choice.

Written/ Directed/ Produced by: Ulu Braun
Camera: Kai Herrmann
Sound: Jochen Jezussek
Visual Assistance: Ella Hebendanz, Milan Braun, Niina Lehtonen Braun
Music by: Fritz Rating
Cast: Gina-Lisa Maiwald, Mietze Maiwald, Dietlind Sommer
Supported by FFA (German Federal Film Board)