Tag Archives: Miguel’s War

THE TEDDY AWARD WINNERS 2021

The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Our jury has chosen the winners of this year’s TEDDY awards! We’re incredibly happy to present you the following films. And for all those who missed the livestream, here is the ceremony as video on demand

BEST FEATURE LENGTH FILM

MIGUEL’S WAR, Director: Eliane Raheb, Lebanon / Germany/ Spain, 2021

TEDDY AWARD CEREMONY, Winner FEATURE LENGTH FILM, MIGUEL'S WAR, Director: Eliane Raheb, Foto: Brigitter Dummer
Winner TEDDY BEST FEATURE LENGTH FILM;
Eliane Raheb, Foto: Brigitte Dummer

Jury Statement:
This creative documentary is the story of a gay man, Miguel, exiled from Lebanon to Spain in the ’80. The strong emotional impact of the film is provoked by the alchemy of both the sharpness of the filmmaker and the genuinity of the protagonist. The excellence of the editing, made of multiple layers – formal and narrative – is an impressive art of the language of cinema to investigate recollection of a gay man who faced traumas, caused by war, xenophobia and homophobia. The extra-ordinary form empowers the storytelling to shine out as an honest self-confrontation with a strong universality regarding being queer, feeling guilty, family, love, migration and self-exile. The whole becomes a mutual experience to share: we are reminded of the power in longing for a queer redemption. If you want to tell a story, tell it like Miguel’s War. You can watch the interview with Eliane Raheb below:

Interview with Eliane Raheb

TEDDY JURY AWARD

INSTRUCTIONS FOR SURVIVAL, Director: Yana Ugrekhelidze, Germany 2021

Winner TEDDY JURY AWARD, Yana Ugrekhelidze, Foto: Brigitte Dummer
Winner TEDDY JURY AWARD, Yana Ugrekhelidze, Foto: m.s

Jury Statement: This immersive documentary highlights a dramatic situation, which would have stayed untold: the one of Alexander (a Trans man) and his wife Mari in Georgia. The narrative focused on the project of the young couple to escape the oppressive and repressive social and political context. For its intricate way of bringing the urgencies of the Georgian queer community though a personal journey, Instructions for Survival offers both the subjectivity of queer kinship and the cost of being oneself in world that demands your sacrifice rather than letting you be who you are. It shines out not just for its importance for the queer community in Georgia as being a simple and strong survival story, but also with its rather conventional but strikingly direct structure, a sensitive aesthetic and a consistent approach. It is an eyeful success that the camera follows the daily life of the couple very closely over the years by not being intrusive. The film is an essential act of militancy that reminds us with power, that personal is political. The jury hopes that the journey of both Alex and Marie and the film itself be with more and more achievements. You can watch the interview with the director
Yana Ugrekhelidze below:


Interview with Yana Ugrekhelidze, Director INSTRUCTIONS FOR SURVIVAL

BEST SHORT FILM

INTERNATIONAL DAWN CHORUS DAYRegie John Greyson, Canada, 2021

Winner BEST SHORT FILM John Greyson, Foto: Brigitte Dummer
Winner BEST SHORT FILM John Greyson, Foto: Brigitte Dummer

Jury Statement: For its unique and poetic approach to filmmaking during a global crisis, International Dawn Chorus Day reminds us that film, as medium, perhaps is the best way to document the past, the present and
the future. Made of trivial video shootings material and a terrific creative idea, the film succeeds in being highly militant and shaking the audience. It raises unique voices to express the common political issues of queer people via the most popular communication tool during a pandemic. Using a surprising and original dramaturgy, that leads the audience to an unexpected point, this short film is a pure masterpiece. It represents a creative, fun and beautifully crafted way of making us remember those who continue to pay the highest price for queer people’s freedom. You can watch the interview with the director below:

Interview with John Greyson

The SPECIAL TEDDY AWARD goes to JENNI OLSON

SPECIAL TEDDY AWARD 2021 goes to JENNI OLSON
SPECIAL TEDDY AWARD 2021 goes to JENNI OLSON

In addition to the awards for current films, the TEDDY Foundation also presents the Special TEDDY AWARD for outstanding achievement and long-term service to a figure from the creative industries whose work has made an exceptional contribution to a wide-scale public perception and reception of queer perspectives in art, culture and the media. Previous winners of the Special TEDDY AWARD include Tilda Swinton, Werner Schroeter, Ulrike Ottinger, Monika Treut, John Hurt, Udo Kier, Christine Vachon, Joe Dallesandro, Evita Bezuidenhout, Rosa von Praunheim and Elfi Mikesch.

This year’s Special TEDDY AWARD goes to the film curator, archivist, filmmaker, writer and LGBT film historian Jenni Olson for her decades of bridge-building work with which she has made queer film history visible and tangible.

Jenni Olson’s enthusiasm for the medium of film manifests itself in innumerable ways. She always finds the right instrument with which to put her curiosity and fascination into practice. She fights for the preservation and distribution of cinematic legacies and orphaned film copies, promotes emerging talents and has created her own cinematic oeuvre. She draws on a queer film network she herself has strengthened and expanded over the decades with her collaborations and influence. Jenni Olson embodies, lives and creates queer film culture.

About Jenni Olson

TEDDY TODAY: Saturday, June 19

THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST, Director: Dasha Nekrasova, USA, 2020
PREMIERE, 22:15 ARTE Sommerkino Kulturforum

The 35th TEDDY AWARD ceremony might have officially ended yesterday but we’ve still got a few tricks left up our sleeves… Director Dasha Nekrasova joined our studio today, together with actress & writer Madeline Quinn and actress Betsey Brown, to discuss her feature debut THE SCARY OF SIXTY-FIRST. Consistently irreverent in tone, and reaching its peak during a memorable, psychedelic nocturnal trek to Epstein’s New York residence, the film exacts ruthless, mocking revenge on the perpetrator, while also taking us on a brilliant romp back through the history of film and the media.

Today’s ReScreenings:

MIGUEL’S WAR, Director: Eliane Raheb, Lebanon / Germany / Spain, 2021
21:45h, Freiluftkino Pompeji

MISHEHU YOHAV MISHEHU, Director: Hadas Ben Aroya, Israel, 2021
21:45h, Freiluftkino vom Filmrauschpalast

TEDDY TODAY: Wednesday, June 16

MIGUEL’S WAR, Director: Eliane Raheb, Lebanon / Germany / Spain, 2021
PREMIERE, 21:30h Freiluftkino Kreuzberg

In a mixture of re-enactments, animation, soul-searching interviews and archive material, the brilliant filmmaker Eliane Raheb shaped what it came to become MIGUEL’S WAR. The feature skilfully proves how strict familial traditions and religion can kill a person’s individuality, as depicted through the struggle of the main character. Follow Miguel through his journey.


Today’s ReScreenings:

GUZEN TO SOZO, Directors: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan, 2021
22:00h ARTE Sommerkino Schloss Charlottenburg

INTERNATIONAL DAWN CHORUS DAY, Directors: John Greyson, Kanada, 2021
21:45h, Freiluftkino Pompeji

THE NOMINEES 2021

Das Mädchen und die Spinne

Director: Ramon Zürcher & Silvan Zürcher, Switzerland, 2021 

© Beauvoir Films

09.06. / 22:15 Sommerkino Kulturforum
11.06. / 22:00 Freiluftkino im Filmrauschpalast

Over the course of two days and one night, as Lisa moves out of the apartment she has shared with Mara and into the one where she will live alone, many things will break and some will be repaired.
Like the titular spider’s web, the film has a perfect, fragile geometry. Set almost entirely in interiors, it is also an involuntary summary of the paradoxical age of the pandemic. The transition from one abode to another, and the energy that is released between one story ending and another beginning, puts the entire ensemble into an altered state of grace… mehr

Glück

Director: Henrika Kull, Germany, 2021

Katharina Behrens, Adam Hoya
© Flare Film

09.06. / 21:30 Freiluftkino Kreuzberg
10.06. / 21.30 Freiluftkino Friedrichshagen

Alternating between waiting in the break room, having sex and lining up for the next john: Maria, a self-confident Italian in her mid-twenties, is new to the Berlin brothel where Sascha has been working for a long time. With her tattoos, her piercings and her penchant for writing poetry in a notebook during breaks, she is quite different from the others. The two women are immediately attracted to each other. Maria keeps her cash in a locker in the Berlin State Library. She regularly assures her father on the phone that she is doing well and earning a lot of money. For Sascha, the regional train connects her not only with her old life in provincial Brandenburg but also with her 11-year-old son… more

Guzen to sozo

Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan, 2021

© 2021 Neopa/Fictive

15.06. / 19:00 Freiluftkino Museumsinsel
16.06. / 22:00 ARTE Sommerkino Schloss Charlottenburg
17.06. / 22:00 Frischluftkino@Studentendorf

Moon, 66 Questions

Director: Jacqueline Lentzou, Greece / France, 2021

© Berlinale

15.06. / 22:15 Sommerkino Kulturforum
16.06. / 22:00 Frischluftkino@Studentendorf

When a grave illness strikes down her father Paris, Artemis decides to return home to Greece after an absence of some years. Being the sole child of divorced parents, she is the only one who can look after Paris, who requires daily care. Father and daughter embark on a journey into knowledge and revelation, which heralds a new beginning for their relationship… more

The Scary of Sixty-First

Director: Dasha Nekrasova, USA, 2020

© Stag Pictures

19.06. / 22:15 Sommerkino Kulturforum
20.06. / 22:00 Frischluftkino@Studentendorf

In this feature debut by actor and podcast host Dasha Nekrasova, two mismatched roommates discover and relive the murky secrets of their new Upper East Side apartment. The film is as possessed as one of its protagonists: while she finds herself being taken over by the spirits of paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s young victims, the film itself is haunted by Italian “giallo” movies and 1970s psychological horror… more

DOCUMENTARY / ESSAYFILM

Esquí

Director: Manque La Banca, Argentina / Braszil, 2021

© Manque La Banca

There’s a monster in the Nahuel Huapi Lake. In the twilight, it spreads itself out across the surface of the water like a taut cowhide, grasping at its victims with sharp claws. Another monster also lurks in the surroundings of the lake, which is close to Bariloche in the Argentine Andes. It is called Capa Negra: the Black Cape. It haunts the ski slopes by night and should be avoided at all costs.
Monsters from the legends of the Mapuche find their way into Manque La Banca’s feature-length debut Esquí via various twists and turns. Once there, they interact with the film’s other characters… more

Genderation

Director: Monika Treut, Germany, 2021

© Salzgeber

10.06. / 21:30 Freiluftkino Kreuzberg
17.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Biesdorfer Parkbühne

Monika Treut’s Gendernauts was one of the first films to portray the transgender movement in San Francisco. Twenty years after the film screened in Panorama in 1999, Treut seeks out the pioneers of that time. What has changed? How have the lives of the protagonists evolved? San Francisco was once, as Annie Sprinkle puts it, the “clitoris of the USA”, but today the tech industry has a firm grip on the city. Aggressive gentrification has displaced the genderqueer community of yesteryear. Under the Trump administration, hard-won transgender rights are under massive pressure… more

Instructions for Survival

Director: Yana Ugrekhelidze, Germany, 2021

© Yana Ugrekhelidze

13.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Hasenheide
15.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Friedrichshagen

Alexander’s transgender identity means he is obliged to lead a life of secrecy in his home country. Being identified as “female” in his passport means he cannot legally find work, either. Since even a visit to the doctor is a risk for him, he has begun hormone therapy to transition on his own with support from internet forums and the local transgender community. Desperate to escape their hopeless situation and leave the country, Alexander’s wife Mari decides to become a surrogate mother for 12,000 dollars. But their ostensibly pragmatic plan backfires… more

Miguel’s War

Director: Eliane Raheb, Lebanon / Germany / Spain, 2021

© ITAR productions

16.06. / 21:30 Freiluftkino Kreuzberg
19.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Pompeji

In this portrait that is multi-layered both in terms of form and content, a gay man confronts the ghosts of his past and explores hidden longings, unrequited love and tormenting feelings of guilt. Miguel was born in 1963 to a conservative, Catholic Lebanese father and an authoritarian mother from a wealthy Syrian family. Numerous conflicts over his national, religious and sexual identity compelled him to flee to Spain in his early twenties. In post-Franco Madrid where he lived an openly gay existence, his life resembled one long Almodóvarian orgy, full of excess and sexual taboo-breaking. This was followed first by a collapse and then a new beginning… more

North By Current

Director: Angelo Madsen Minax, USA, 2021

© Angelo Madsen Minax

17.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Kreuzberg

Three years after the unexplained death of his niece Kalla, artist and filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his Mormon family’s home in the small town in Michigan where his father’s sawmill is located. His sister Jesse, who had found temporary stability as a mother after a difficult youth and addiction problems, is suspected by the authorities of being responsible, along with her partner David, for the death of their daughter Kalla… more

SHORT FILM

Blastogenese X

Director: Conrad Veit & Charlotte Maria Kätzl, Germany, 2020

  © Veit/Kätzl

11.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Hasenheide
12.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino im Filmrauschpalast

Looking like a rediscovered film reel from the early days of cinema and with its “animal drag” costumes, this Dadaist nature documentary imagines a utopia where any and all life forms are equal. Fabulous creatures that defy the binary classification of male and female and the division between… more

International Dawn Chorus Day

Director: John Greyson, Canada, 2021

Dieses Bild hat ein leeres Alt-Attribut. Der Dateiname ist 202100327_1-1024x576.jpg
  © Kalil Haddad

15.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Hasenheide
16.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Pompeji

On International Dawn Chorus Day (May 3, 2020), birds from six continents join an online video call. They gossip about storms and cats and wires and dates. They share speculations about Egyptian filmmaker Shady Habash, known for his satirical anti-dictator music videos, who died the day before in Cairo’s notorious Tora prison. They talk about Egyptian queer activist Sarah Hegazi, famously incarcerated for flying a rainbow flag at a Cairo concert, now living as a political refugee in Toronto. They don’t realise that… more

Les Attendants

Director: Truong Minh Quý, France / Singapore, 2020

Dieses Bild hat ein leeres Alt-Attribut. Der Dateiname ist 202106201_1-1024x576.jpg
Gérard Thomas & Jean-François Geneste
© Truong Minh Quý – Le Fresnoy

14.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Hasenheide
15.06. / 21.45 Freiluftkino Pompeji

In mining, a slag heap refers to an artificially raised hill consisting of the cleared waste that accumulates during the extraction of raw materials. Birch trees now grow where workers from near and far once went underground to labour hard for very little money. Nowadays, this is a place where men meet to have anonymous sex and share moments of intimacy… more

Luz de Presença

Director: Di Diogo Costa Amarante, Portugal, 2021

Dieses Bild hat ein leeres Alt-Attribut. Der Dateiname ist 202101131_1-1024x553.jpg
Diana Neves Silva © O Verde do Jardim

09.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Hasenheide
10.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino im Filmrauschpalast

One rainy night, Gonçalo sets off to give his lost love one last letter. “Beware of the slippery road!” warns Diana from the street corner. In vain. An accident that is both an end and a beginning… more

More Happiness

Director: Livia Huang, USA, 2021

Dieses Bild hat ein leeres Alt-Attribut. Der Dateiname ist 202109877_1-1024x620.jpg
Joyce Keokham, Tina Wonglu © Livia Huang

11.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino Hasenheide
12.06. / 21:45 Freiluftkino im Filmrauschpalast

During a conversation late at night, a woman asks her mother how to be a good person. As they talk, the woman thinks about an old lover. Seasons change and memories accumulate that bring no respite… more