The moment has come! After celebrating the incredible queer movies of the International Berlin Film Festival for the past month, we now know the names of the 2023 TEDDY AWARD winners.
The 37th edition of the TEDDY AWARD proved once again that there are infinite ways to tell queer stories. Our nominated films of 2023 illustrated this diversity in the best way possible, and we are overjoyed to see the work of all the directors, actors and behind-the-scenes workers being praised and appreciated. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, only one can win!
Without further ado, here are the 2023 winners. And the TEDDY goes to…
Talented conductor Lydia Tár has established herself in the male-dominated world of classical music. When she arrives in Berlin as the first woman appointed to conduct a major German orchestra, she is at the peak of her career. Between commitments and concerts on both sides of the Atlantic, she is preparing for a much anticipated recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. But a shadow suddenly falls over this charismatic figure; her performance on the podium suffers and her status begins to falter. Past decisions and the impact they had on a young musician resurface and Tár risks falling victim to the same obsessions again, complicating her relationship with her concertmaster and partner (played by Nina Hoss) and jeopardising her career and the reputation of the entire orchestra.T ÁR, which according to director Todd Field is a film “by” Cate Blanchett, without whom it would never have seen the light of day, is the portrait of a memorable female figure, ambitious and complex, that takes a critical look at the classical music business. A film capable of expressing an extraordinary musical passion, and also a tribute to Berlin and what makes it the city it is.
SCREENING TIMES:
23.02. / 22:00 Berlinale Palast
RERUNS:
20.000 especies de abejas (20,000 Species of Bees) 23.02. / 12:30 Zoo Palast 1 23.02. / 18:30 Verti Music Hall
After 23.02. / 21:30 Cineplex Titania
Arturo a los 30 (About Thirty) 23.02. / 10:30 Zoo Palast 5
Today is a full day with many events we have prepared for you. Feel free to swing by our events “EFM Queer Focus Day”, “Manifestations”, “TEDDY Talk: From Surviving to Thriving!”, “Queer Your Program” and “QUEER Industry Reception”. If you want to know more about it, you can do so here.
Also, as always, you can find our premieres and reruns listed in this blog post.
Doesn’t crush also mean “to smash”? Dealing with their own obsessive crushes, Ella Rocca researches what to do about it. During the quest for a representation of their feelings, texts, images and sounds are layered on top of each other on the computer screen and become the expression of intense contemplation. Internet discoveries and a moment of intimate directness merge to provide a sense of the inner workings of infatuation.
Five women are running an old hotel and trying to save it from inexorable decay. Guests arrive over the course of a weekend: a couple bears the wounds of a long-term misunderstanding; a domineering mother interferes in her daughter’s relationship; two girls try to save their own love story in the face of opposition from a possessive mother. Viver Mal is the reverse shot of Mal Viver, which is screening in the Competition: here, João Canijo reveals everything that was floating in the depth of field in this film’s mirror image. Reality becomes the intertwining and multiplication of different points of view; the intersection between what can be seen and what the eye misses. Like aplay of light reflections, Viver Mal is Mal Viver in another dimension. The image is distorted, but at the same time seeks a new definition by relaunching itself into infinity.
SCREENING TIMES:
22.02. / 11:45 CinemaxX 7
RERUNS:
20.000 especies de abejas (20,000 Species of Bees) 22.02. / 15:30 Berlinale Palast
An eight-year-old is suffering because people keep addressing the child in ways that cause discomfort. They insist on calling the child by the birth name Aitor. And the nickname, Cocó, even if less obviously wrong, does not feel right either. During a summer in the Basque country, the child confides these worries to relatives and friends. But how can a mother handle her child’s quest for identity when she is herself still dealing with her own ambivalent parental legacy? Basque director Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s debut feature is a sunny drama. This wonderfully sensitive work is carried by heart-wrenching performances from newcomer Sofía Otero as the little girl in search of a name and Patricia López Arnaiz as her conflicted yet loving mother. But, just as a multitude of bees ensure nature’s diversity, supporting roles are no less essential for the film’s heroine, anda largely female environment shows her some of the diverse ways in which it is possible to be a woman. By adopting more than one point of view, Urresola is respecting the incredible complexity that is gender identity, and touching on one perhaps less obvious aspect of transitioning: your mentality.
Bergamo, northern Italy. Fede’s days are spent between school and a home run by nuns. In a corridor of the Pensionato, Fede sees Valentina, a new tenant, for the first time. In the middle of a choreography of open, semi-open and closed doors, unknown feelings arise. As sudden as the luminosity of a flashlight entering a room at night. As odd as mixing new flavours. Another world is born inside the one Fede knew, with different questions and possibilities. What does it mean to desire?
Morning routines and conversations in bed, gossip and real talk. In encounters and interviews, D. Smith portrays four Black trans sexworkers in New York and Georgia. The protagonists discuss their lives with relish but without any sugar-coating. The conversations that emerge are deep and passionate reflections on socio-political and social realities as well as perceptive analyses of belonging and identity within the Black community and beyond. Dramatisations and reconstructions, performative interventions and associative collages of biographical set pieces are brought together organically in haunting black-and-white images accompanied by a carefully deployed soundtrack. Dreams and memories, battles fought and crises overcome are openly addressed without skirting topics such as precarityand violence. The protagonists also tell us about their lovers, friends and families, and how these relationships are marked by taboos and fetishisation, but also by their own desires. This vibrant portrait gives them space for their uninhibited and defiant narratives and undermines white, cis-heteronormative assumptions and stigmatisations.
Aaron is determined not to forget his ex-boyfriend Paul. He believes that the only way to preserve the memory of their caresses and kisses is to stop brushing his teeth. To him, all their emotions, all their touching and intimacies are stored in his teeth. His younger sisterand flatmate Lina gently tries to persuade her brother to practice oral hygiene, but she is no longer able to get through to him. When Aaron and Lina’s authoritarian father comes to visit, the situation escalates and Aaron’s behaviour becomes dangerously self-destructive. Lukas Röder, a student of the HFF in Munich, addresses the topic of mental health in his touching chamber piece. Via the actors’ intensely emotional performances and a second layer in which everyone involved reflects on their roles, behavioural patterns and ways of finding help are explored.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer tells the extraordinary story of disco queen Donna Summer through a rich archive of unpublished film excerpts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recordings that span the life of one of the most iconic performers ever to shake a room to its timbers. From her early career with Giorgio Moroder in Germany, to later years more focused on spirituality and family life as a shelter from troubles associated with both notoriety and intimate wounds, her story is all the more special for being told in the first person – both singular and plural. Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams and Summer’s daughter Brooklyn Sudano’s film has benefitted from Sudano’s privileged perspective, and her access to family members has helped gather a treasure of memories and material. But the intelligence and effect of the duo’s filmmaking approach itself is truly striking. Thanks to the skilful assimilation of audio testimonies into this wealth of images, we are able to discover – or rediscover – how complete an artist Donna Summer was. A key creator of her innovative hit songs, an articulate and funny entertainer and even a talented painter, this emancipated woman invented a lot – herself included.
This school-age tragedy is set in a secondary school in Tokyo over five days during which a typhoon grows, rages, and abates. After class clown Akira is caught watching his fellow students partying at the school’s indoor pool, he is deemed a peeping tom and held underwater so long he almost drowns. Meanwhile, the teacher who has been summoned has his own problems: the mother and uncle of a fellow teacher with whom he is having an affair are trying to force him to marry her, so he doesn’t have much attention to spare for the woes of his pupils. The children talk about life, death, and reincarnation; about a lesbian couple among them, and about the typhoon. As the storm draws closer, a sense of aggression swells among the schoolchildren … The storm of emotions in Typhoon Club is unleashed with the insistence of a force of nature. In an escalating rondel of episodes, including a brawl and an attempted rape, the film depicts a“spring awakening” with feelings erupting like hot lava flows. It captures the self-sufficient world of youth poised between exuberance and depression, while the camera keeps a respectful distance.
SCREENING TIMES:
21.02. /21.02. / 19:00 Cubix 3
RERUNS:
After 21.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
Almamula 21.02. / 15:30 Cineplex Titania
El castillo (The Castle) 21.02. / 10:00 Cubix 9
Femme 21.02. / 21:30 Cineplex Titania
Hummingbirds 21.02. / 20:00 Urania
It’s a Date 21.02. / 21:30 Cubix 9
Knochen und Namen (Bones and Names) 21.02. / 10:00 Cubix 6
Langer Langer Kuss (Long Long Kiss) 21.02. / 19:00 International
Mangosteen 21.02. / 14:00 Werkstattkino@silent green
It’s already half time at the Berlinale and the time flew by. Nevertheless, we still have some films that celebrate their premiere today.
If you can’t find anything for you at the premieres, our reruns are listed below again.
We also have a few events planned for today. We have two of our Directors Exchange’s with the topics “Time after time, club culture and the concept of time in Queer Cinema” and “Journeys of rebellion and truth, Trans* narratives as tools of unapologetic self-representation.” If that’s not enough for you, our TEDDY Talk: QueerWeb Part 1 will also take place today. More about the events can be found here.
One day their paths cross again, by chance. Alice, now an internationally acclaimed cellist, has a series of performances at the concert hall where Jo works. A decade has passed since their year spent as scholarship students at an exclusive girls’ boarding school deep in the Australian outback, where the focus was on developing one’s personality, independence, strength and resilience, as well as forming a bond with nature and a sense of community among the pupils. The dormitories were in remote wooden huts and the girls were largely left to their own devices in their spare time. Although Jo quickly bonded with the shy Alice, not wanting to remain an outsider, she gravitated towards the girls higher up in the pecking order under the sway of the dominant Portia – at least that is how Jo remembers it. But Alice confronts her with a completely different version of events. Based on Rebecca Starford’s eponymous memoir, writers Pip Karmel and Magda Wozniak and director Corrie Chen tell a gripping and unsparing story of how the desire to belong can set in motion a dynamic that is as cruel as it is crucial.
“I want to remember this time, last time, and next time. I want to remember it all with no parts missing, because I appreciate even the bad times.”
In Laredo, a city in southern Texas on the Mexican border, best friends Silvia and Beba know that the long summer nights of theirteen age years cannot last forever. Their hang-out spots are so familiar but, stuck in an immigration process over which deportation hangs as a constant possibility, home still seems a fragile concept. Between bars, drive-thrus, friends’ couches and the border wastelands, they confront the stresses of survival, the future, and community building. For them, this means protest action for legal abortion and against border control abuses, in a politically divided America. But the dusty half-light is also a time for poetry and dreams. Their laughter and creative expression cement a sense of solidarity and belonging in togetherness.
The apartment is so high up that the noise of the city below barely penetrates, the sound of the traffic and the passing trains merges with the wind and the ventilation system, a constant background hum. It only recedes when the four young Cubans speak, although they’re never seen together, they just talk to their phones and their phones respond, conversations with loved ones, sales consultations, adviceservices for immigrants, chats with the director, news reports, lip-synced pop renditions, calls not always picked up. They can be as fabulous as they want in the apartment, but the lift that brings them down to the Moscow streets is already a different space, where you stare out in front of you and avoid attracting attention; Russia and Cuba are so very far apart. It’s hard not to feel melancholy when faced with an emptied-out city and endless snow, and this winter is unlike all the others, not just darkness, but war and disease, signs of the times. But hope is still there, waiting at the other end of the line, with calm, with patience, home is many things at once, what else can it be right now? It’s small comfort, but there’s no comfort too small: everything little by little.
Mangosteen tells the story of Earth, a young man who returns to his hometown, Rayong, where his sister, Ink, runs a fruit processing factory. During a casual meeting, Earth finds out that his definition of the term “future” is drastically different from his sister’s. The more he tries to involve himself in the fruit juice business, the less he feels needed there. Earth eventually decides to distance himself from the family operation and resumes his old hobby, writing a violent, psychic, irrational, abstract, gory, and unrealistic novel. Switching narrative directions as well as languages, Mangosteen weaves a meandering path through factory floors and orchards. The film was shot on outdated Digital8 video cameras and follows no clear narrative logic. It is a film as much about storytelling as it is about its protagonist’s erratic and surprising idiosyncrasies.
“For two years starting in 2020, this work has been forming along the edges of disquiet and premonition, in fragments and intensities, through wandering and not-staying. It has tried to find language for and ways across the bizarre upheavals of social and political values with the rise of fascism in India and a global pandemic. It has insisted on being amongst the things that keep from falling apart. Filmed in Delhi, these incomplete fictions are of the people, places, and protests that keep the language of hatred at bay and absorb the city’s griefand euphoria. In them are the continuous echoes of a violent and tenuous present. The false closures and tenuous associations in this video/essay compose a timeline of the city at an angle through the time of this work. There is a shadowy sense of a protagonist who un-dreams it all; a stranger, who it turns out, is no stranger at all.” Priya Sen
In a home for struggling girls, young Milo is secretly transitioning gender. Only care worker Nicki is aware of it and supports them. Whenever Milo feels angry, or like running away or just wants a change of scenery, it’s Nicki who brings a feeling of security and home. One day, through the thin walls of the institution, Milo hears something they wish they hadn’t. As hugs cannot solve every conflict, they push the emergency button.
Meticulously, they inspect their own body as the camera looks on, documenting every step of their transition. Yet what starts off as a young filmmaker’s audiovisual diary soon expands into a confrontation with their own past. It is not easy to break out of a cocoon spun from motherly demands and grievances – especially when your body gets treated as a family matter, and when your need for autonomy is met with incomprehension.
