On Friday, February 17, the jury members – filmmakers Feo Aladag, Sigrid Hoerner, and Johannes Naber – presented the 2017 Compass Perspektive Award for Best Film. Awarded for the first time this year and endowed with EUR 5,000, the prize goes to the fiction film Die Beste aller Welten by Adrian Goiginger. The trophy is a small compass conceived to provide orientation and direction to a new generation of Perspektive filmmakers.
The jury members watched the 14 films in the Berlinale’s Perspektive Deutsches Kino section. After debating passionately, they picked their favorite.
Jury statement – The Best of All Worlds
The film is the story of seven-year-old Adrian, who lives in 1990s Salzburg with a heroin-addicted, but loving mother and her friends. His life is like an adventure playground – until both child services and the brutal reality of drug addiction threaten to destroy his world.
Director Adrian Goiginger’s film is based on his own childhood and is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of the seemingly hopeless battle between maternal love and addiction. Goiginger leaves open to interpretation whether it is the drug itself, or society’s way of dealing with it, that presents a greater threat to the child protagonist.
With his sensitive direction of a brilliant ensemble cast, the film is touching without becoming kitschy; the unpretentious cinematography gets under your skin without being voyeuristic.
Fourteen Films, including nine full-length fiction and documentary films, have been invited for the Perspektive Deutsches Kino in 2017.
Strong fiction films by millennials characterize this year’s selection. The directors, who are mostly in their early 30s and were coming of age around the turn of the millennium, were shaped and socialized by this period. With them we take a look back into childhood and adolescence. We see kids affected by their parents’ separation, and encounter endless parties and drugs. We accompany the protagonists on their search for personal freedom and stability.
The fiction film Millennials (dir: Jana Bürgelin, prod: Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) uniquely exemplifies this generation. It is a documentary-style big city tale that follows the two protagonists, Anne Zohra Berrached and Leonel Dietsche, on their “éducation sentimentale” around Berlin. Leo is a photographer and would finally like some recognition for his photos. Anne is a successful film director and wants a child, but since she has no partner, she has, in wise foresight, frozen a few of her eggs.
In the fiction film Die Tochter (Dark Blue Girl, prod: Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) director Mascha Schilinski approaches in an unusual way the problems children have after their parents split up. How must they redefine their positions and attitudes towards their separated parents when it comes to closeness and distance? Seven-year-old Luca (Helena Zengel) – in her desire to remain the only woman in her father’s life and, at the same time, the link between her parents – becomes a master manipulator.
Director Adrian Goiginger, who also studied at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, took a year off and during this time found production partners for his fiction film Die beste aller Welten (The Best Of All Worlds) in Lailaps Pictures in Munich and RitzlFilm in Austria. In a love story of a different kind, he re-examines his childhood by following seven-year-old Adrian (Jeremy Miliker) into the extremely exciting and adventurous world of his heroine-addicted mother.
In the film Zwischen den Jahren (End of the Season, prod: Radical Movies Production, Cologne) by Lars Henning, the world of Becker (Peter Kurth), the film’s protagonist, is very limited. After having served fifteen years in jail, he just wants to lead a quiet life in self-imposed solitude. But then the man whose life he destroyed eighteen years earlier returns to haunt him. It is Lars Henning’s second full-length fiction film and again he has reversed the victim-offender constellation conventional for this genre.
For the first time ever the Perspektive Deutsches Kino will show a film from the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK). The film Final Stage by Nicolaas Schmidt stands out for the filmic balancing act it conducts between documentary observation and subtle staging. Gabi, produced at the Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, will open the Perspektive 2017 together with Back for Good (see post from December 21, 2016). According to director Michael Fetter Nathansky, it is a cinematic attempt to find expression for what has so often been said but has still been unable to change anything.
Christian von Brockhausen and Timo Großpietsch’s Könige der Welt (We were kings) about the music band “PICTURES” completes the programme. First known as “Union Youth”, the band came together at the turn of the millennium. With their mix of grunge and alternative they quickly became the German “Nirvana”. The film revisits a drug-filled past and accompanies their new start.
On February 19, 2017 – Berlinale Publikumstag – the Perspektive will screen the winners of the Max Ophüls Prize 2017 for best fiction feature and the First Steps Award 2016 for best documentary (Raving Iran, dir: Susanne Regina Meures).
Film list:
Die beste aller Welten (The Best Of All Worlds)
By Adrian Goiginger
With Verena Altenberger, Jeremy Miliker, Lukas Miko, Michael Pink
Feature film
World premiere
Final Stage
By Nicolaas Schmidt
With Aaron Hilmer, Fynn Grossmann
Medium long feature film
World premiere
Gabi
By Michael Fetter Nathansky
With Gisa Flake, Florian Kroop, Britta Steffenhagen, Martin Neuhaus
Medium long feature film
World premiere
Könige der Welt (We were kings)
By Christian von Brockhausen, Timo Großpietsch
Documentary film
World premiere
Millennials
By Jana Bürgelin
With Anne Zohra Berrached, Leonel Dietsche, Jan Koslowski, Anna Herrmann
Feature film
World premiere
Die Tochter (Dark Blue Girl)
By Mascha Schilinski
With Helena Zengel, Karsten Antonio Mielke, Artemis Chalkidou
Feature film
World premiere
Zwischen den Jahren (End of the Season)
By Lars Henning
With Peter Kurth, Karl Markovics, Catrin Striebeck, Leonardo Nigro
Feature film
World premiere
Films announced so far:
Back for Good
By Mia Spengler
With Kim Riedle, Juliane Köhler, Leonie Wesselow
Feature film
World premiere
Eisenkopf (Ironhead)
By Tian Dong
Documentary film
World premiere
Kontener (Container)
By Sebastian Lang
With Joanna Drozda, Anka Graczyk
Medium-long feature film
World premiere
Mikel
By Cavo Kernich
With Jonathan Aikins
Medium-long feature film
World premiere
Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes (Self-criticism of a Bourgeois Dog)
By Julian Radlmaier
With Julian Radlmaier, Deragh Campbell, Beniamin Forti, Kyung-Taek Lie
Feature film
German premiere
Tara
By Felicitas Sonvilla
With Sasha Davydova, Leo van Kann, Lena Lauzemis
Medium-long feature film
World premiere
Ein Weg (Paths)
By Chris Miera
With Mike Hoffmann, Mathis Reinhardt
Feature film
World premiere
