Today the 73rd Berlinale comes to an end. We had many great films and interviews this year. Not to forget the award ceremony of the GOLDEN BEARS and the TEDDY AWARDS. We´re extremly hapyy to have been able to send a clear message to our community and celebrating queer talent, creativity and solidarity!
To close out this year’s Berlinale you have another chance to check out a few of this year’s films today.
We look forward to next year and hope to see you again in 2024.
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…
FEATURE FILM
ALL THE COLOURS OF THE WORLD ARE BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE
Directed by Babatunde Apalowo
SHORT FILM
MARUNGKA TJALATJUNU (Dipped in Black)
Directed by Matthew Thorne & Derik Lynch
DOCUMENTARY FILM
ORLANDO, MA BIOGRAPHIE POLITIQUE (Orlando, My Political Biography)
Directed by Paul B. Preciado
TEDDY JURY AWARD
VICKY NIGHT for her performance in SILVER HAZE
Regie: Sacha Polak
SPECIAL TEDDY AWARD
Andriy Khalpakhchi
Bohdan Zhuk
Are you as excited as we are? Tomorrow the award ceremony of the 37th TEDDY AWARDS will finally take place and afterwards you can party until the morning at the legendary TEDDY After Show Party. If you don’t have tickets yet, you should definitely get them today.
To have enough to talk about at the party you can find the premiere and today’s reruns as always down below.
PREMIERES:
Directed by: Todd Field
USA, 2022, 158′
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
El castillo (The Castle)
23.02. / 18:00 IL KINO
Crushed
23.02. / 15:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
23.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
Drifter
23.02. / 22:00 Zoo Palast 2
Femme
23.02. / 13:00 International
Green Night
23.02. / 21:30 Zoo Palast 1
Hello Dankness
23.02. / 22:00 Cubix 7
Hummingbirds
23.02. / 18:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
I Heard It through the Grapevine
23.02. / 17:00 Cubix 1
Incroci
23.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
It’s a Date
23.02. / 12:30 Cineplex Titania
23.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
Joan Baez I Am A Noise
23.02. / 09:30 Cubix 9
Knochen und Namen (Bones and Names)
23.02. / 21:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
Kokomo City
23.02. / 10:00 Cubix 7
Langer Langer Kuss (Long Long Kiss)
23.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 3
23.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 4
23.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 5
Llamadas desde Moscú (Calls from Moscow)
23.02. / 17:00 Werkstattkino@silent green
Mammalia
23.02. / 16:00 Cubix 7
Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black)
23.02. / 11:00 Cubix 3
23.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
Mutt
23.02. / 15:30 Zoo Palast 1
Nuits blanches (Sleepless Nights)
23.02. / 12:30 Cineplex Titania
23.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
Passages
23.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 3
23.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 4
23.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 5
Perpetrator
23.02. / 22:00 Akademie der Künste
A Rainha Diaba (The Devil Queen)
23.02. / 12:00 Cubix 1
Silver Haze
23.02. / 12:15 Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Sværddrage (The Shift)
23.02. / 10:00 Urania
To Write From Memory
23.02. / 20:00 Urania
23.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
Transfariana
23.02. / 15:30 Cubix 5
Viver Mal (Living Bad)
23.02. / 12:30 Akademie der Künste
Între revoluii (Between Revolutions)
23.02. / 19:00 Cubix 7
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.
PREMIERES:
Directed by: Ella Rocca
Switzerland, 2022, 8′
TEDDY nominated
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.
SCREENING TIMES:
22.02. / 16:30 Urania
Learn more about the film in our interview with Ella Rocca.
Directed by: João Canijo
Portugal, France, 2023, 125′
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
Almamula
22.02. / 10:00 Cubix 2
El castillo (The Castle)
22.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 3
22.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 4
22.02. / 21:45 Zoo Palast 5
O estranho (The Intrusion)
22.02. / 11:00 Kino Arsenal 1
Green Night
22.02. / 19:15 CinemaxX 10
Hello Dankness
22.02. / 16:00 International
Hummingbirds
22.02. / 15:30 Cineplex Titania
I Heard It through the Grapevine
22.02. / 15:00 Delphi Filmpalast
Incroci
22.02. / 09:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
Joan Baez I Am A Noise
22.02. / 19:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Kill Boksoon
22.02. / 21:30 Verti Music Hall
Knochen und Namen (Bones and Names)
22.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 3
22.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 4
22.02. / 16:30 Zoo Palast 5
Kokomo City
22.02. / 13:00 International
Langer Langer Kuss (Long Long Kiss)
22.02. / 21:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
Llamadas desde Moscú (Calls from Moscow)
22.02. / 19:00 Cubix 7
Love to Love You, Donna Summer
22.02. / 18:30 Verti Music Hall
Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black)
22.02. / 16:00 Cubix 9
Mutt
22.02. / 12:45 Cubix 8
No Stranger at All
22.02. / 20:00 Werkstattkino@silent green
Le Paradis (The Lost Boys)
22.02. / 18:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
Passages
22.02. / 21:30 Cineplex Titania
Silver Haze
22.02. / 18:00 fsk Kino
Sværddrage (The Shift)
22.02. / 18:45 Cubix 8
Taif kurabu (Typhoon Club)
22.02. / 13:00 Cubix 6
This Is the End
22.02. / 09:30 Cubix 1
Transfariana
22.02. / 21:30 Cubix 2
The 37th TEDDY Award ceremony is slowly approaching and it’s getting hectic for us! We are having great fun preparing all the nice events for you.
Today is our TEDDY Talents Talk. You can find out more here.
If you prefer to sit back and relax, you can do that at our premieres or reruns today.
PREMIERES:
Directed by: Estibaliz Urresola
Spain, 2023, 125′
TEDDY nominated
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.
SCREENING TIMES:
21.02. / 12:45 Berlinale Palast
Directed by: Francesca de Fusco
USA, Italy, 2023, 13′
TEDDY nominated
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?
SCREENING TIMES:
21.02. / 12:30 Zoo Palast 1
Learn more about the film in our interview with Francesca de Fusco.
Directed by: D. Smith
USA, 2023, 73′
TEDDY nominated
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.
SCREENING TIMES:
21.02. / 19:00 Zoo Palast 2
Learn more about the film in our interview with D. Smith.
Directed by: Lukas Röder
Germany, 2023, 40′
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.
SCREENING TIMES:
21.02. / 12:00 Cubix 2
Love to Love You, Donna Summer
Directed by: Roger Ross Williams, Brooklyn Sudano
USA, 2023, 105′
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.
SCREENING TIMES:
21.02. / 15:00 Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Directed by: Shinji Smai
Japan, 1985, 115′
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
Manodrome
21.02. / 15:45 Verti Music Hall
Mutt
21.02. / 15:30 Filmtheater am Friedrichshain
Nuits blanches (Sleepless Nights)
21.02. / 21:30 Cubix 9
Passages
21.02. / 12:30 Cubix 9
A Rainha Diaba (The Devil Queen)
21.02. / 17:00 Werkstattkino@silent green
Silver Haze
21.02. / 16:00 Cubix 5
Sisi & Ich (Sisi & I)
21.02. / 18:00 Cubix 9
Sværddrage (The Shift)
21.02. / 10:00 Cineplex Titania
This Is the End
21.02. / 16:00 Cubix 7
To Write From Memory
21.02. / 09:45 Zoo Palast 2
Transfariana
21.02. / 21:15 Akademie der Künste
