In advance of the 75th Berlinale, there was much debate about the éclat at last year's award ceremony. What exactly had happened? The American director Ben Russell had come on stage with a kuffiyah (commonly known as a Palastinian shawl) and had criticised the Israeli ‘genocide’ in Gaza. The Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra and his Israeli colleague Yuval Abraham, directors of ‘No Other Land’, which won the prize for the Best Documentary Film and the Panorama Audience Award and has since been nominated for an Oscar, criticised the state of ‘apartheid’ in Israeli society. Two words that are taboo in Germany. Consequently, there was a great deal of uproar in the media, with the Israeli embassy particularly prominent. Public institutions were shocked by this "scandal" and expressed outrage at the "disgusting hatred of Israel" and “vicious anti-Semitism”. The Berlin Senate promptly halved the subsidies for the festival.
The new festival director Tricia Tuttle, who has run the London BFI Festival for a long time, was not intimidated by any of this and declared that freedom of expression is a fundamental right for the Berlinale. With a sober view from the outside, she criticised the anti-Semitism resolution passed by the Bundestag last November as an inappropriate attempt to delegitimize criticism of Israel's actions in the Gaza war.
In her acceptance speech, which became a kind of unofficial opening address, Tilda Swinton, who was awarded an Honorary Golden Bear, denounced the "mass murder perpetrated and internationally facilitated by the state" in the strongest terms.
All of this is hopeful and suggests a successful new beginning for the Berlinale. Tricia Tuttle has also succeeded in revitalising the festival economically and attracting new sponsors. She has abolished the diffuse Encounters section, the favourite child of her predecessor Carlo Chatrian, and replaced it with the debut section ‘Perspectives’. Overall, the number of films has been reduced and exuberant sections such as ‘Panorama’ have been downsized.
Let there be light: Syrian cleaning lady heals dysfunctional German family
The decision to select Tom Tykwer's ‘The Light’ for the film to open this 75th Berlinale seems obvious. Since ‘Run Lola Run’, Tykwer is one of the most internationally renowned German directors and most recently enjoyed success as the creator of the hit series ‘Babylon Berlin’. He had previously opened the Berlinale in 2002 with his film ‘Heaven’.
If there had been any speeches by politicians this year, they might have enjoyed "The Light". So it was left to Tom Tykwer to make a cinematic contribution to the current migration debate. However, he does not argue in favour of closing the borders and processing potential asylum seekers abroad. On the contrary, he shows how migrants can enrich everyday life in Germany.
Father Tim (Lars Eidinger) makes progressive video ads to sensitise viewers to climate protection and the world's problems, Milena (Nicolette Krebitz) supervises a cultural development project in Kenya. Their son Jon (Julius Gause), a shy nerd, spends days and nights playing a VR video game, while his sister Frieda (Elke Biesendorfer) pops acid, roams the capital's clubs with her friends and, in Last Generation style, paralyses traffic on the city motorway. They hardly talk to each other, everyone does his own thing and nobody notices that the Polish cleaning lady is suddenly lying dead in the kitchen.
But help is on the way. The Syrian refugee Farrah (Tala Al-Deen), a trained medical doctor and therapist who is not licensed in Germany, takes on a job as a cleaner in this dysfunctional family. It doesn't take long before she brings her qualifications as a group therapist to bear and takes care of the family members who are unable to communicate. She has the son's VR game explained to her , comforts the daughter after an abortion and deals with the mutual frustrations of mother and father. With the aid of a flickering LED lamp, she helps them to activate their neural reserves. Tala Al-Deen is the most convincing actress in this constellation, even though as the wise woman from the Orient she must all too often pronounce therapeutic clichés.
Christian Almesberger's camera finds exquisite images, but always ends up in stereotypical situations as soon as the dialogue begins. The sympathetic migrants sleep two in a room and have breakfast together in their large flat share while the German family lives side by side in their chaotic flat in an old building without connections to each other. Lars Eidinger plays Lars Eidinger, comme d'habitude, riding his bike through the pouring rain as a climate-conscious environmentalist (it rains non-stop in Berlin in the film) and afterwards walking naked through the flat. Nicolette Krebitz is constantly on the phone battling with the ministerial bureaucracy, which wants to overturn her ambitious theatre project in a Nairobi slum. The two have not had sex for a long time, nor have their 17-year-old twins. The script is full of speech bubbles and phrase-like dialogue, as you would expect from urban ecologists and their adolescent children.
What is also annoying about ‘The Light’ is the diffuse mixture of family drama and a certain magical realism. All of a sudden, figures float through the air as if they were in a Marvel film, they suddenly dance in the street or turn into comic figures à la ‘Run Lola Run’.
In the dramatic finale, the secret of the Syrian migrant and her family is finally revealed. Under Farrah's guidance, the German family is able to contribute to the spiritual healing of both others and themselves and embark on a bright future together. After nearly three hours, there was sparse applause and boos from the audience at the press screening.