The Berlin Film Festival’s main competition ended yesterday with war and its terrible consequences having emerged as a common theme running through many of the movies.
From the conflicts in the Middle East and Africa that have triggered the current refugee crisis, through to Angola’s forgotten war of independence, the end of the Cold War and even cyber-warfare, filmmakers at this year’s Berlinale have been telling stories about the upheavals created by warfare.
Among them is Polish director Tomasz Wasilewski, whose United States of Love premiered yesterday as one of 18 films competing for the Berlinale’s top awards, including the Golden Bear for Best Picture.
Telling the story of four women who have reached a turning point in their lives, Wasilewski’s film is set against the backdrop of the end of Cold War, the implosion of communism and the arrival of a new democratic era in Central Europe.
After the decades-long Cold War, people in Poland still ask themselves whether the change in the country will succeed, actress Dorata Kolak, who plays a woman seeking to forge a relationship with a younger woman, told a Berlinale press conference.
“It’s really hard to believe that the cage door is open,” said Julia Kijowska, another actress starring in the film as a woman secretly in love with a priest.
Italian director Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary, Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea), which is one of the front-runners for the festival’s coveted prizes, depicts the refugee crisis that has engulfed the small Italian island of Lampedusa as people flee wars in nations such as Syria and Eritrea.
The other documentary in the main competition is from Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney and shows the impact of a more sophisticated form of warfare.
In his film, Zero Days, Gibney traces the story of the malware worm known as Stuxnet, which was developed by the US and Israel to destroy part of an Iranian nuclear facility and which ultimately spread beyond its intended target.
War was even a key part of the story in veteran French director Andre Techine’s story of the awakening sexual desires of two teenage boys in his movie Being 17, which was another favourite among festivalgoers to win an award at today’s gala awards ceremony.
As Techine explained, the teenagers’ relationship turns from aggression to tenderness after the sudden death of one of the boys’ family members in a far-away war that France had been drawn into.
In his third feature film, Portugese director Ivo M Ferre used letters sent by the novelist Antonio Lobo Antunes to his pregnant wife in Lisbon to describe life on the frontline during the final years of the Angolan war of independence against Portugal, which unfolded between 1961 and 1974.
Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson star in the war drama Alone in Berlin as a working-class couple dedicated to the Nazi cause in war-torn Germany.
But the sudden death of their only son on the front forces them to rethink their commitment to Hitler and to conduct a series of small anonymous protests against the Nazi regime.
Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s past wars are ever-present in Oscar-winning director Danis Tanovic’s film about contemporary life in the small Balkan state.
Tanovic’s Death in Sarajevo is set against the buildup to events marking the centenary of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, largely seen as the spark that ignited the First World War.
Iranian-born director Rafi Pitts told a more modern story of war in his film, Soy Nero.
Pitts’ movie centres on a 19-year-old Mexican, who dreams of carving out a new life for himself in the US.
However, the only way he can fulfil his dream is to enlist in the US Army and agree to fight in the Middle East as a so-called green-card soldier.
This process grants soldiers residency permits and brings them closer to citizenship, but many still miss out, Pitt explained at a press conference.
“War is hard enough on young men but to then be rejected by the country you have been fighting for is probably the worst thing that can happen to any human being,” Pitts said.