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Mannheim-Heidelberg Celebrates International Young Cinema
By Martin Blaney | December 9, 2010
Ahmet Boyacıoglu receives the International Jury’s Special Award for his feature debut Siyah Beyiz (Black and White), courtesy Norbert Bach/IFFMH
A year ahead of its 60th anniversary the Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival (November 11-21, 2010) remained true to its reputation as a platform for the new generation of filmmakers and followed the adage that “small is beautiful”.
“Compared to other film festivals, the trademark of Mannheim-Heidelberg is that we only show a limited number of films and can therefore take individual care of each film and its maker,” says festival director Michael Kötz who will celebrate his 20th anniversary at the head of the festival next year. In 2010, the festival presented 45 films in six programme sections which Kötz admits was perhaps fewer than his ideal, but this decision was dictated by the fact that he had one less screening venue in Mannheim and was not sure how the Heidelbergers would take to the two new temporary cinemas located above the old town in the Castle Gardens.
Chilean filmmaker Matias Bize’s intimate and minimalist story The Life Of Fish about a writer of travel guides coming back to his home country after living in Berlin for 10 years, opened the 59th edition. Bize, who won Mannheim’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder Prize in 2003 for his debut Sabado, had premiered this latest film in the Venice Days sidebar last September.
The International Competition’s jury of filmmakers Cynthia Beatt and Clemens Klopfenstein and Warsaw Film Festival director Stefan Laudyn decided its winners from 15 films, including international premieres of Daniel Grou’s 10 1/2 (Canada) , Tomas Donela’s Farewell (Lithuania), Ahmet Boyacioglu’s Black And White (Turkey), and Maiju Ingman’s When The Day Is Done (Estonia) as well as European premieres of Sabrina Farji’s Eva Y Lola (Argentina) and Francois Delisle’s Twice A Woman (Canada).
Kötz admits that German cinema was passed over in the festival’s competition this year, but points out he gives local productions their own dedicated platform in the summer at the “Festival des Deutschen Films” in Ludwigshafen. Nevertheless, the German film scene did not go completely emptyhanded in Mannheim this year: the festival’s Film Culture Award was presented to the East Berlin-based drama school Hochschule für Schauspielkunst ‘Ernst Busch’ whose graduates include August Diehl, Devid Striesow, and Julia Jentsch. Canadian cinema was the top winner when the awards were handed out by the International Jury on November 22. 10 ½ by Daniel Grou (aka Podz) received the Main Prize for the story about a seemingly untameable young boy reminiscent of Truffaut’s L’enfant sauvage which the jury described as being “profoundly convincing on every level.” Meanwhile, Chinese filmmaker Zhao Dayong’s Xun Huan Zuo Le (The High Life), which had its international premiere in Mannheim, received both the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Prize and the International Film Critics FIPRESCI Prize.
The jury of five international film critics Zhao’s fiction feature debut as being a “vivid, sardonic portrait of the daily hustle in post-communist China, ingeniously linking a pyramid scheme, a policeman poet and a scrappy, petty street criminal.” Meanwhile, the International Jury’s Special Award went to Ahmet Boyacıoglu’s feature debut Siyah Beyiz (Black and White) set in the real life Ankara bar of the same name.
Boyacioglu’s ode to friendship and growing old – he described it at a packed screening in the Kino Atlantis as “99 % documentary” – is also being screened as part of the Turkish Cinema 2010 showcase at this year’s edition of the Festival on Wheels in the provinces of Ankara, Artvin and Ordu from December 3-19. Boyacioglu, who is one of the co-founders of the Ankara Cinema Association and produced the omnibus film Tales From Kars last year, is also one of the organizers of the Festival on Wheels.
Two films worth noting were catching were Argentinean filmmaker Sabrina Farji’s Eva y Lola (Eva And Lola) and Danish director Kaspar Munk‘s Hold Om Mig (Hold Me Tight). Eva and Lola are the glamorous stars of a cabaret show, but away from the limelight, they both share a dark secret which still haunts Argentina to this day. They number among the children who were abducted during the military dictatorship and were raised by their parents’ murderers. Meanwhile, Hold My Tight is an intense study of violence at schools which spirals out of control with tragic consequences. The two films shared this year’s Audience Award, while Hold Me Tight also received the Ecumenical Jury’s Prize.
In its motivation, the Ecumenical Jury noted that “the film tells of the daily school routines of four teenagers, which are full of peer pressure and power games. Their silent cry for love and attention is not being heard by their parents, who are too busy with themselves and their own problems. By means of a very responsible and sensitive guidance of the adolescent actors, as well as aesthetic and thoroughly arranged imagery, the director lays the foundation for a wider social debate with artistic aplomb.”
Films which were unexpected successes with the audience included the omnibus film Some Other Stories, Predrag Velimovic’s Motel Nana and the Main Award winner 10 1/2.
“People were queuing up in long lines for [Zhao Dayong’s] film and that’s something very encouraging that people are not only coming to the cinema for entertainment, but also take it seriously like they would a visit to the theatre,” Kötz said.
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