23. Filmfestival Max-Ophüls-Preis in Saarbrücken

       Two films from the Max-Ophüls-Preis Wettbewerb, a competition open to German language debut filmmakers and new generation directors, were selected by Alfred Holighaus for the new »Perspektive Deutsches Kino« section at the Berlinale. Almut Getto’s Fickende Fische (Screwing Fish) (Germany), winner of the runner-up Prize of the Saarland Minister President, was indeed the best debut feature on view at Saarbrücken. A timely story, with tragicomic moments, it’s about a sensitive teenager who’s been accidentally infected with AIDS via a faulty blood transfusion. Left pretty much on his own, but intrigued by water and fish, the lad meets his match in a pert young girl who also refuses to bend to a trauma ­ her parents’ separation and coming divorce.

       Another standout in the MOP competition that’s headed for the Berlinale Perspektive was Thomas Imbach’s Happiness Is a Warm Gun (Switzerland), previously programmed at the Locarno festival. Although essentially an experimental film shot with a digital camera, Happiness does pose some interesting psychological questions about the mental state of two prominent members of the German Greens Party: Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian, the former apparently shot by the latter before he put the gun to his own head. But because Imbach had the good fortune to find an actress, Linda Olsansky, who bears an uncanny likeness to the charismatic Petra Kelly, the director’s montage manner of pairing the past with the present cannot be easily discounted. And when archival television footage is inserted into the film’s meandering structure of happenings at an airport terminal ­ the real Petra Kelly before the German Parliament or in a clinch with a right-wing American columnist ­ one senses just how painful her tragic loss was, and is, on the European political scene.

       A trio of choice Austrian entries by women directors points to the growing importance of Vienna as a city of creative filmmaking talent. Jessica Hausner’s Lovely Rita, invited to the Certain Regard section at Cannes, clearly shows a Michael Haneke influence in this hard-edge psycho-drama of a 15-year-old outsider who draws laughter from her classmates and disciplinary action from her teachers, and is not above striking back and wreaking revenge on her tormentors. Her last act of revenge is on her parents. In Sabine Derflinger’s Vollgas (Full Speed Ahead), awarded the Film Grant Promotion Prize, the hotels on the ski slopes of the Alps are depicted as havens for wild and woolly escapades by young people with only beer, sex, and carousing on their minds. Since Evi (Henriette Heinze), a young mother with a six year-old daughter, likes to burn the candle at both ends, a mental and physical breakdown appears preordained. Barbara Gräftner’s Mein Russland (My Russia), a comedy of manners awarded this year’s prestigious Max Ophüls Prize, pits a middle-aged mother against a pack of Russian relatives of her son’s bride-to-be, including an aged granny in a wheelchair. Since everyone in the film has a tick ­ the mother is a hyperactive bank employee, the father can’t imagine anything more important in life than mountain-climbing, the son wants to turn the family restaurant into a go-go club managed by his Russian girlfriend, an ex-stripper who wants out ­ the film rumbles on from one feux-pas encounter to another as the mother uses all her wiles to stop the wedding from happening. Perhaps the herky-jerky style of DV digital filmmaking supports the hurly-burly drive of the story line, but it also prevents an otherwise friendly audience from sitting back and enjoying My Russia as a movie.

       Given that a third of the competition entries were directed by women, their themes too echo the concerns of young career women and single mothers. In Elke Weber-Moore’s Storno (Check Out Girls) (Germany), set in the backwoods town of Hassenhausen, two cashiers at a supermarket share their dreams and troubles. One is the bored wife of a lamebrain head of a volunteer firemen’s brigade and dreams of a trip to San Francisco. The other, a single mother of a young son, doesn’t quite know how to handle the situation when the father, not knowing he has an offspring, suddenly appears in town again. A competent filmmaker with broad documentary experience in television, Elke Weber’s Check Out Girls is reminiscent of Czech village comedies of the 1960s.

       The plight of foreigners in the land of opportunity is another common theme among young filmmakers. In Matthias Keilich’s Nicht Fisch, Nicht Fleisch (Neither Fish, Nor Fowl) (Germany) a Korean lad previously adopted by a German family leaves home on the spur of the moment to seek his cultural identity among Koreans in Berlin, without however speaking a word of the language. In Seyhan Derin’s Zwischen den Sternen (Between the Stars) (Germany) a Turkish lad who had spent his youth in Germany until deported at the age of 16, returns illegally with a false pass-port to see his Turkish girlfriend residing legally in the country, the upshot being that it’s the girl who has to decide whether or not to return to Turkey to continue the romance. In Nino Jacusso’s Escape to Paradise (Switzerland) we follow a Kurdish family through the labyrinth of an asylum village, inhabited by races and families of different cultures who have to get along with other, much less understand the causes and reasons why they are there in the first place. And Züli Aladag’s Elefantenherz (Elephant Heart) (Germany), about the desire of a young boxer to rid himself in the ring of the shackles of a broken home, is one of four films (two features, two shorts) by Turkish-German filmmakers on view at the festival.

       Acting awards went to audience favorites. Michael Finger was singled out for his performance as Rafael in Stefan Haupt’s Utopia Blues (Switzerland), the story of an 18-year-old, would-be rock musician whose hold on his sanity slips away when his »Utopia Blues Band« fails to break through as expected. Stefan Haupt was also awarded Best Screenplay, and Utopia Blues received in addition the Interfilm Prize. Marie Luise Schramm was awarded Best Young Actress for her role as the whacky 14-year-old sister of a spastic youth in Sven Taddicken’s Mein Bruder der Vampir (Getting My Brother Laid) (Germany), an anarchic black comedy with some surprising twists and turns that also was voted the Audience Prize. Running out-of-competition, Christian Pezold’s Toter Mann (Dead Man) (Germany), one of the finest productions of the past season, comes across as an emotionally compact psychogram of a woman determined to find, and wreak revenge upon, the sadistic killer of her sister. Sven Düfer’s Kurt Weill (Germany) scores as a well researched documentary portrait of a composer who felt equally at home in Germany as in the United States, where he died as an American citizen of a sudden heart attack at the age of 50. Paul Poet’s documentary Ausländer raus! Schlingensiefs Container (Foreigners Out! Schlingensief’s Container) (Austria) chronicles Christoph Schlingensief’s highly controversial street performance parody of the »Big Brother« container, using asylum-seekers to confront right-wing sentiments among the population. And Christoph Schaub’s Stille Liebe (Still Love) (Switzerland) treats a relationship between a cloistered nun and a pickpocket thief, attracted to each other as deaf-and-dumb outsiders.

       For many, the Saarbrücken short film competition is reason enough to make the journey. This year, the festival had its fair share of standouts. In Ulrike von Ribbeck’s Am See (At the Lake) (Germany) a boy nearly drowns while other members of his alienated family ­ father, mother, sister ­ hardly take notice at all of his swimming peril in the middle of the lake. In Johannes Kiefer’s Gregors grösste Erfindung (Gregor's Biggest Invention) (Germany) a madcap inventor tries to get his beloved granny out of her wheelchair and »running« with a balloon invention that, of course, backfires. In Idil Üner’s Die Liebenden vom Hotel von Osman (The Lovers at Osman Hotel) (Germany), set in Istambul, a young couple find a novel way to pull the wool over the eyes of the hotel manager and nosy policemen. In Sabine Michel’s Hinten scheisst die Ente (Duck Shit) (Germany) a brash real-estate entrepreneur gets his comeuppance from a wily farmer in the arid Lausitz area when the pair quarrel over the ownership of a shot duck. The top prize went to Sven Haruth’s Du und ich, wir könnten einander gehören (You and I, We Could Belong to Each Other) (Germany), an absurd potpourri of ambivalent feelings between the sexes and lovers.

Ronald Holloway