Non-game mood – Newspaper Kommersant No. 33 (7478) dated 27.02.

The jury of the 73rd Berlin Festival summed up the results and named the winners. In the main competition, the Golden Bear prize was awarded to the French documentary film “At the Adamant” by Nicolas Philibert. comments Andrey Plakhov.

Snow flakes were sprinkled on the starry path, but this did not prevent the demonstration of extravagant outfits. The head of the jury, Kristen Stewart, walked in a Chanel dress with a transparent bottom, and this exit was reminiscent of a whole role played: a fragile, thin, charismatic heroine – a reminiscence of the image of Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter. In her speech, Stewart said that during the days of the festival she experienced many emotions and thought a lot about cinema along with other members of the jury. Among them are such intellectuals as the German Valeska Grisebach and the Romanian Radu Jude, but, judging by the decisions made, they have not been able to carve a conceptual route through the eclectic diversity of the program.

Predictably, German films were generously awarded prizes: three of the five submitted in the competition were awarded. The Grand Jury Prize “Silver Bear” went to “Red Sky” by Christian Petzold, and the screenplay prize went to Angela Chanelek (“Music”). Both authors, between whom today there is nothing in common, once belonged to the “Berlin school”, which hardly asserted itself in the generational struggle with the “new German cinema”. Now both Petzold and Chanelek are the same status figures as Margarethe von Trotta, who is twenty years older; her film “Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey to the Desert” also participated in the competition, but was perceived as archaic and left without awards. And yet, Red Sky, a bisexual melodrama with elements of comedy and tragedy, lacked a bit of madness to become the obvious favorite of the competition. In “Music” Chanelek, on the contrary, there is too much madness to digest; the jury decided to get off with a prize for the script, which, of course, is witty; it would be even more witty to award a picture for music.

Another member of the “Berlin School”, although originally from Munich, and much younger than the rest, participated in the Berlinale competition – Christoph Hochheusler with the film “Until the end of the night”, a genre mix of a police thriller and a transgender melodrama in the style of “post-Fassbinder”. Transgender actress Thea Era was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Supporting Actress. Male or female – not specified; in the Berlin prize regulations, gender differences have been eliminated, and in this case this is justified by the nature of the role. The award for the title role looks even more conceptual: it was awarded to eight-year-old Spaniard Sofia Otero from Estibaliz Urrezola Solaguren’s film 20,000 Species of Bees. Sofia plays a child who doesn’t like being called by his birth name Aitor (a symbol of masculinity in Basque culture), preferring “Coco” and even “Lucia”. Kristen Stewart personally stepped out to present two acting awards to highlight their significance. The concept was read, but, presumably, more than one actor and actress, who showed the heights of professional skill, experienced bitterness at the sight of an eight-year-old girl celebrating a triumph on stage.

French veteran Philippe Garrel (“The Big Cart”) was awarded the “Silver Bear” for directing. He said that he dedicates this prize to Jean-Luc Godard, but he could have also his father, actor Maurice Garrel, who would have turned 100 the day before, and the film is a hymn to creative dynasties. Another Silver Bear jury prize went to The Bad Life by the Portuguese João Canijo, also a film about dynastic cargo. All of these (with the exception of “Disco Boy”, which made it to the prize list thanks to the cinematography) are worthy films. But among them there was no clear leader – a breakthrough film, a discovery film. Critics found it by turning their eyes to the East: many liked the Chinese “Tower Without a Shadow”, even more fans won “Past Lives” – about the relationship between American and Korean cultures. But the jury chose to remain in the circle of European issues: Germany, Portugal, Spain and, first of all, France became the winners.

Not finding a “film worthy in all respects” among the feature works of the competition, they decided to give the “Golden Bear” the only documentary. The film is called “At the Adamant” and was shot by the Frenchman Nicolas Philibert, who has many well-known documentaries behind him. This time he is pointing his camera at the inhabitants of the ship “Adamant”, moored on the Seine and turned into an experimental asylum for the mentally ill. Usually institutions of this kind are shocked by traumatic cruelties; there is nothing of the kind here, and one can only guess how such an idyll was achieved. The authors of the film do not particularly reveal the methods of management and mechanisms of treatment, but they make it clear that the key condition for success is an atmosphere of goodwill and tolerance. And Philibert himself creates an atmosphere on the set in which the characters reveal themselves on their own, without any apparent effort of the interviewer. They talk about God and the world, and one patient, who looks like Roman Polanski, says that he was allegedly the prototype for the hero of the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas. In general, everyone here is “crazy”, real or imaginary, – avid moviegoers. They watch Truffaut and Fellini films in the weekly cinema club. Who does not like cinema, spends time in an excellent library or for collective cooking of jam, or makes music. In a word, using the image of the same Fellini, “and the ship is sailing.”