REQUIEM, GRBAVICA, THE YACOUBIAN BUILDING: Berlin Film Festival 2006
by Andre Soares
More on the Berlin International Film Festival: Four German films will be screened in the Official Competition. They are: Oscar Roehler’s literary adaptation Elementarteilchen / The Elementary Particles, which I’ve already mentioned in a previous article; Hans-Christian Schmid’s exorcism drama Requiem; Matthias Glasner’s Der Freie Wille / The Free Will, the story of a convicted rapist who is freed after 12 years behind bars; and Valeska Grisebach’s Sehnsucht / Desire, a love story set in eastern Germany, and starring Andreas Müller and Ilka Welz.
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At European Films, Boyd van Hoeij gives his take on the films screened at the Berlin Film Festival, including Jasmila žbanic’s Grbavica, the Icelandic gay soccer comedy Strákarnir Okkar, Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’s The Road to Guantanamo, and Michele Placido’s Romanzo criminale / Crime Novel.
A brief excerpt: "The much anticipated adaptation of the Michel Houellebecq novel Elementarteilchen (The elementary particles) was quite warmly received today at its press screening in Berlin, where it is currently the frontrunner for the Golden Bear for best film. Even though I have not read the original book, it is clear that Oskar Roehler’s adaptation of the controversial French novel that investigates the meaning of sex in an age of artificial procreation is a watered down version of the original, sanitizing much of the hardcore sex aspects for a more mainstream appeal and offering a cop-out ending that feels completely out of synch with the rest of the film."
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"A moving drama about Bosnia’s post-war trauma and the lingering impact of the systematic rape of Bosnian women by Serb soldiers won cheers at its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival on Sunday," writes Erik Kirschbaum for Reuters. The "moving drama" in question is Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica, starring Mirjana Karanovic. Officially, 20,000 Muslim-Bosnian women were raped during the latest (and hopefully last) Balkan war, though Zbanic says the number may be as high as 50,000.
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Omaret yakobean / The Yacoubian Building, Marwan Hamed’s film version (from a screenplay by his father, Wahid Hamed) of Alaa’ Al-Aswany’s polemical 2002 best-selling novel, is going to be screened at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. A harsh critique of Egyptian society, The Yacoubian Building depicts the lives of several residents of a once grand, now decrepit Cairo apartment building, portraying some as pious hypocrites (among them a rabid imam), others as dissolute egotists, while not shying away from sexuality — whether hetero or homo — including pedophilia.
At a cost of approximately US$3 million, The Yacoubian Building is by far Egypt’s most expensive film production to date.
More on The Yacoubian Building on The Daily Star.
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