Statistics: Wide Range of Animated Works, More Independent Productions, 22 Premieres, Short Films from Chile, Haiti, Columbia and much more

Traditionally, a wide range of animated films is screened in the competition sections: Of the 30 entries in the International Competition – in addition to twelve fictional and six hybrid works – twelve of them consist of animated films, including SUCH MIRACLES DO HAPPEN by Barbara Rupik from Poland, who already attended the 2021 Filmfest Dresden with THE LITTLE SOUL. Of the 23 films in the National Competition, the animated entries (twelve) outnumber the eight fictional and three hybrid works running in it. Among others, the Polish-German co-production OUTSIDE from Izabela Plucinska can be seen here. She was awarded the Silver Bear Jury Prize at the 2005 Berlinale for her work JAM SESSIONS.

The 22 premieres in total contain eleven premieres in Germany in the International Competition, including the Haitian father-daughter story DES RÊVES EN BATEAUX PAPIERS (DREAMS LIKE PAPER BOATS) from Samuel Suffren or the Belgian- Vietnamese-Singaporean co-production PORCUPINE (NHÍM) from Nicolas Graux and Quý Trương Minh. Of the films in the National Competition, in addition to four German premieres, seven world premieres can be seen, including the animated film OUTSIDE from Izabela Plucinska already mentioned, or the hybrid work CARROTICA by Daniel Sterlin-Altmann.

Overall, the films running in the competition sections come from 28 (co-)production countries, with those in the International Competition consisting of works from Chile, Haiti, Columbia, Indonesia, Iran, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. Of the 23 entries in the National Competition, six films were produced as co-productions, among others with Hong Kong, Iran and Denmark. At 18, the number of female (co-)directors screening works in the National Competition is clearly above that of their male colleagues (10) – with a slightly larger number of female directors represented across all three competition sections this year.

The number of independent productions in the National Competition at ten is slightly below those from the film schools (13). The schools with screenings at the festival this year include the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB), the Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg, or the KHM Academy of Media Arts Cologne. In the Central German Competition, all seven films consist of independent productions.

ZOOPTICON by Jon Frickey, Thies Mynther and Sandra Trostel (National Competition)

KINDERFILM by Total Refusal (International Competition)

ES GIBT KEINE ANGST by Anna Zett (Central German Competition)

Themes: Utopias, AI, Searching for Identity & Diversity

The thematic focus of this year special programmes – utopias and dystopias – is also reflected in several of the competition entries: In the animation ZOOPTICON from Jon Frickey, Thies Mynther and Sandra Trostel (National Competition), a spaceship of the same name is floating through outer space filled with artifacts of life and culture on Earth, as well as five singing animals that have no idea about each other. In the experimental film THE ELECTRIC KISS, Rainer Kohlberger moulds a dystopian fiction from the remnants of the cinematic past by using excerpts from obscure science-fiction movies.

Several works running in the competition sections focus on aspects of artificial intelligence. Markétas Müllerová’s 3D animation TECHNICALLY_BREATHING (world premiere) screening in the National Competition poses the question of whether avatars and artificial intelligence really do breathe, or merely create an illusion. In KINDERFILM from Total Refusal (International Competition), the protagonist Edgar is moving through a Grand Theft Auto V-world in which everything is “normal” as such, except for the fact that the future has been cancelled. The “Total Refusal” media collective are also curating one of the special programmes this year focusing thematically on utopia.

Searching for identity and gender issues represent further themes being broached in the competition sections. In ES GIBT KEINE ANGST (Central German Competition), Anna Zett has taken her own childhood experiences together with a work and research phase extending over several months at the East German GDR opposition archive in Berlin to create a short thriller that is as intense as it is poetic. Catarina Vasconcelos emphatically observes the exploration of femininity and gender relationships both in the past and the present in the Portuguese film NOCTURNO PARA UMA FLORESTA (International Competition). Vasconcelos already gained much international attention for her prizewinning feature film A METAMORFOSE DOS PÁSSAROS that was awarded the Fipresci Prize at the 2020 Berlinale among others. In his experimental animation film SPROUT (National Competition, world premiere), Florian Maubach charts a sensually differentiated awakening of sexuality and permits an important look behind the curtain of male sexuality and relationships.

 International Competition 

 National Competition 

 Central German Competition