Climate Change Movie Tops Berlin + Kind-Hearted Sex Worker Marianne Faithfull

The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. The 2007 Berlin Film Festival’s Official Competition and Out of Competition line-up is filled with English-language fare, chiefly from the U.S and the U.K. One of the movies in question is Robert De Niro’s critical disappointment and box office dud The Good Shepherd, toplining Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Regarding its inclusion on the Golden Bear’s roster, quality likely played a much lesser role than name recognition, as the latter translates into wider international media attention to the elite movie festival.

Berlin Film Festival focuses on English-language movies & Hollywood stars: Matt Damon & George Clooney domestic flops up for Golden Bear

English-language productions dominate the Official Competition line-up at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival, which runs between Feb. 8–18. In all, 22 films are vying for the Golden Bear while four are being screened out of competition.

Most of the English-language fare hails from the United States and the United Kingdom, in addition to several American and British co-productions with other nations. A few key titles are listed below.

Golden Bear contender ‘The Good Shepherd’: Dedication to U.S. intelligence agencies leads to marital woes

Two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro (Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather: Part II, 1974; Best Actor for Raging Bull, 1980) made his feature film directorial debut with A Bronx Tale back in 1993. Thirteen years later, he returned behind the camera for the Cold War drama The Good Shepherd, starring Matt Damon as a dedicated agent at the United States’ World War II intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and co-founder of its successor, the CIA. Damon’s fellow Hollywood star Angelina Jolie was cast as his beautiful but neglected wife.

Coolly received by U.S. critics following its December 2006 debut – and a costly box office bomb – The Good Shepherd has been all but ignored this awards season. A couple of exceptions have been the works of ASC Award-nominated cinematographer Robert Richardson and Academy Award-nominated art director Jeannine Oppewall, along with set decorators Gretchen Rau and Leslie E. Rollins.

Also in the extensive (and international) The Good Shepherd cast:

Robert De Niro. Alec Baldwin. Tammy Blanchard. Billy Crudup. Martina Gedeck.

Michael Gambon. Gabriel Macht. Lee Pace. Eddie Redmayne. John Turturro.

Best Supporting Actor winner Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, 1980).

Best Actor Oscar winner William Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman, 1985).

Best Supporting Actor winner Joe Pesci (Goodfellas, 1990).

Veteran Keir Dullea (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Golden Bear contender ‘The Good German’: Murder mystery with a U.S.-Nazi collaboration flavor

Another coolly received box office dud with the word “good” in the title, Steven Soderbergh’s post-World War II, black-and-white murder mystery The Good German toplines Matt Damon’s Ocean’s Eleven co-star George Clooney (Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Syriana, 2005) as a Berlin-based American war correspondent who becomes enmeshed with the murder of a U.S. soldier/black-marketeer (Tobey Maguire) and the hunt for a missing Nazi officer (Christian Olivier) the American government wants in connection with its weapons program.

Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner Cate Blanchett (The Aviator, 2004) plays the officer’s Jewish wife and the American correspondent’s pre-war flame.

Like The Good Shepherd, The Good German has been all but ignored this awards season – with one exception: Thomas Newman’s score, which has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards.

Irina Palm with Marianne Faithfull. A veteran singer and actress known for the 1964 hit single “As Tears Go By”; the movies The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968), opposite Alain Delon, and Hamlet (1969), as Ophelia; her relationship with the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger; and her portrayal of a stylish, singing God in Absolutely Fabulous, 60-year-old Marianne Faithfull returns to the big screen playing the title character in Sam Garbarski’s Irina Palm – a loving granny who’ll do whatever it takes to pay for the operation of her sick grandson, even if that means, literally, lending a hand to male strangers in dire need of an orgasm.

More English-language Golden Bear contenders: Handjob expert Marianne Faithfull & inspirational inmate Nelson Mandela

Below are four more English-language titles in competition at the 2007 Berlinale.

• Sam Garbarski’s comedy-drama Irina Palm sounds like the feel-good masturbation movie of the year: 1960s icon Marianne Faithfull plays a widow who, in order to help pay for the operation of her ailing grandson, begins a new career as a handjob expert at a sex shop in London’s Soho district. Predrag ‘Miki’ Manojlovic plays the deceptively hardboiled shop owner while Kevin Bishop is Faithfull’s oh-no-mom-you-didn’t son.
• Set in Apartheid-era South Africa, Bille August’s Goodbye Bafana / The Color of Freedom toplines British actor Joseph Fiennes as a racist security guard and American actor Dennis Haysbert as the late 20th century’s most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Though supposed to be based on “redemptive” real-life events, the veracity of the tale has been questioned in various quarters. Also in the cast: Diane Kruger, Shiloh Henderson, and Tyrone Keogh.
• Based on a novel by (not that) Elizabeth Taylor, François Ozon’s early-20th-century-set Angel traces the rise and fall of an outsider who becomes the British elite’s literary flavor of the moment. In the cast: Romola Garai as the titular character, Sam Neill, and the filmmaker’s muse, veteran Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter, The Verdict). Angel is the 2007 Berlin Film Festival’s Closing Night presentation.
• Inspired by real-life events, Gregory Nava’s Bordertown features Antonio Banderas and Jennifer Lopez in a tale of murder and intrigue at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Out of Competition: Iwo Jima & Thermopylae battles

Here are three more English-language Berlin Film Festival entries to be screened out of competition.

• Based on Lynn Varley and Frank Miller’s comics and directed by Zack Snyder, 300 depicts the Battle of Thermopylae in the year 480 B.C.E. At that decisive clash, King Leonidas of Sparta and his 300 followers confronted invader King Xerxes’ brush-stomping Persian army. Expect 300 to feature extended combat sequences glorifying bravery, honor, sacrifice, sadism, ruptured male skin, all those qualities that make wars so cool. The all-Greek/Persian cast includes Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham, Dominic West, Rodrigo Santoro, and Michael Fassbender.
• Clint Eastwood’s World War II drama Letters from Iwo Jima has been this awards season’s sleeper hit among U.S. critics. It’s also one of the few non-English-language movies ever nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. In the cast: Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai, 1993), Kazunari Ninomiya, and Tsuyoshi Ihara.
• Richard Eyre’s British drama Notes on a Scandal stars Best Actress Oscar nominee Judi Dench as a lonely lesbian preying on adulterous teacher and Best Supporting Actress nominee Cate Blanchett, who has been having an affair with a 15-year-old high-schooler who, as it happens, had also been preying on her. And yet Blanchett’s teacher is the one who comes across as the predator in this superbly acted potboiler. Andrew Simpson is the film’s horny Lolito.

Where are the French?: Balzac adaptation & AIDS crisis + Edith Piaf sings again

Since François Ozon has gone the English way, it’s up to veterans Jacques Rivette, 79 next March 1, and André Téchiné, 64 next March 13, to keep la langue française up there on the Berlinale’s international competition screens.

Rivette is represented by The Duchess of Langeais / Ne touchez pas la hache (lit., “Don’t Touch the Axe”), an adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s love story La Duchesse de Langeais, with Guillaume Depardieu, Jeanne Balibar, and veterans Michel Piccoli (Contempt) and Bulle Ogier (That Obscure Object of Desire). Jacques de Baroncelli directed Edwige Feuillère and Pierre-Richard Willm in the 1942 film version of the tale.

Téchiné is offering The Witnesses / Les témoins, a drama about the AIDS explosion of the 1980s. In the cast: Johan Libéreau, Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu, and filmmaker Xavier Beauvois.

There’s also Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose / La Môme, the festival’s Opening Night film, starring Marion Cotillard as singing legend Edith Piaf. Also in the cast: Gérard Depardieu, Sylvie Testud, Jean-Pierre Martins, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Pascal Greggory.

The Counterfeiters with August Diehl. Based on former Sachsenhausen concentration camp inmate Adolf Burger’s book of memoirs, The Devil’s Workshop, Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Berlin Film Festival entry The Counterfeiters / Die Fälscher shows the Nazis’ attempts to sabotage the economies of the United Kingdom and the United States’ by flooding the market with millions of counterfeit British pounds and U.S. dollars. Karl Markovics plays the film’s key (fictitious) counterfeiter while August Diehl (The Ninth Day, Mouth to Mouth) is Burger, depicted as the righteous inmate who sabotages the counterfeiters’ pro-German work.

German-language entries ‘The Counterfeiters’ & ‘Yella’

Below are a few international entries in the Berlinale’s Official Competition line-up, including the only two German-language films vying for the Golden Bear, The Counterfeiters and Yella.

• Stefan Ruzowitzky’s World War II-set Austrian-German The Counterfeiters / Die Fälscher depicts what the Berlinale’s press release describes as “the biggest counterfeiting operation ever pulled off”: how the Nazis forged millions of British pounds – and tried to do the same with the U.S. dollar – at a counterfeiting plant that relied on the labor of Sachsenhausen concentration camp prisoners. Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, and Marie Bäumer star.
• Christian Petzold’s Yella revolves around a woman who, in an attempt to escape from a wretched marriage, leaves the eastern province of Brandenburg to begin a new life in western Germany. The problem is that the past is unwilling to let her go. Nina Hoss, Hinnerk Schönemann, and The Counterfeiters’ Devid Striesow star.
• Set in the early 1970s, Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation / O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias tells the story of a boy (Michel Joelsas) left with a relative in São Paulo’s Jewish quarter after his parents “go away on vacation” during Brazil’s bloody military dictatorship. The Brazilian-Argentinean co-production also features Paulo Autran, Germano Haiut, Daniela Piepczyk, and Caio Blat. Last year, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation won the Audience Award at the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival.
• In Saverio Costanzo’s In Memory of Myself / In memoria di me, a young priest-in-the-making (Christo Jivkov) is overcome by some mighty serious doubts before his ordination. Also in the cast: Filippo Timi and André Hennicke.
• Park Chan-wook’s I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK / Saibogujiman kwenchana has as its center a young psychiatric patient who thinks she’s an enamored cyborg. In the cast: Korean pop superstar Rain and Lim Soo-jung.
• Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort follows the men of the last Israeli battalion to leave southern Lebanon. In the cast: Alon Abutbul, Eli Eltonyo, and Yossi & Jagger actor Ohad Knoller.

Below is the full list of the 2007 Berlin Film Festival’s Official Competition & Out of Competition line-up.

Berlin Film Festival 2007: Official Competition

Angel, dir.: François Ozon, France | Belgium | U.K. (Closing Film).

Beaufort, dir.: Joseph Cedar, Israel.

Bordertown, dir.: Gregory Nava, U.S.

Desert Dream / Hyazgar, dir.: Zhang Lu, South Korea / France.

The Counterfeiters / Die Fälscher, dir.: Stefan Ruzowitzky, Germany / Austria.

The Other / El Otro, dir.: Ariel Rotter, Argentina / France / Germany.

Goodbye Bafana, dir.: Bille August, Germany / France / Belgium / U.K. / Italy.

Hallam Foe, dir.: David Mackenzie, U.K.

In Memory of Myself / In memoria di me, dir.: Saverio Costanzo, Italy.

Irina Palm, dir.: Sam Garbarski, Belgium / Germany / Luxembourg / U.K. / France.

La Vie en Rose / La Môme, dir.: Olivier Dahan, France / U.K. / Czech Republic (Opening Film).

The Witnesses / Les témoins, dir.: André Téchiné, France.

Don’t Touch the Axe / Ne touchez pas la hache, dir.: Jacques Rivette, France / Italy.

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation / O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias, dir.: Cao Hamburger, Brazil / Argentina.

I Served the King of England / Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále, dir.: Jiri Menzel, Czech Republic / Slovakia.

Lost in Beijing / Ping guo, dir.: Li Yu, China.

I’m a Cyborg But That’s OK / Saibogujiman kwenchana, dir.: Park Chan-wook, South Korea.

The Good German, dir.: Steven Soderbergh, U.S.

The Good Shepherd, dir.: Robert De Niro, U.S.

Tuya’s Marriage / Tu ya de hun shi, dir.: Wang Quan’an, China.

When a Man Falls in the Forest, dir.: Ryan Eslinger, Canada / U.S.

Yella, dir.: Christian Petzold, Germany.

 

Out of Competition

300, dir.: Zack Snyder, U.S.

Letters from Iwo Jima, dir.: Clint Eastwood, U.S.

Notes on a Scandal, dir.: Richard Eyre, U.K.

The Walker, dir.: Paul Schrader, U.S. / U.K.

Climate change movie tops Berlin: Yu Nan in Tuya’s Marriage

“When I started making films, my teacher said film should show people’s dreams. This film made my dreams come true,” remarked Chinese director Wang Quan’an upon accepting the Berlin Film Festival’s Golden Bear for his rural drama Tuya’s Marriage, a portrait of the social and environmental costs of China’s unbridled economic growth.

In Tuya’s Marriage, a woman (Yu Nan) living in desertifying Inner Mongolia (a territory in northern China) tries to find a new husband to take care of herself and of her family, including handicapped husband no. 1. “I think that it is important, particularly in this time when the economy is booming,” Wang remarked, “to ponder and reflect on what we’re losing.”

Tuya’s Marriage is the third Chinese film to win the Golden Bear in the last 20 years, following Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum (1988) and Xie Fei’s Women from the Lake of Scented Souls (1993). Last year, Jia Zhang-Ke’s Still Life, which shows the environmental and social damage caused by the building of the Three Gorges Dam, won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

The runner-up for best film was Grand Prix winner The Other, Argentinean director Ariel Rotter’s tale of a man who undergoes a mid-life crisis – including an attempt to find himself a new identity – upon learning that his partner is pregnant. For his performance as the middle-aged man, Julio Chávez (above) won the Silver Bear for best actor. Critics generally gave Rotter’s leisurely paced drama a cool reception.

The anti-war drama Beaufort, which depicts the withdrawal of an Israeli army unit from southern Lebanon, brought director Joseph Cedar a Silver Bear. At the Saturday gala ceremony, Cedar expressed his hope that “our leaders will be fearful of war and have the courage to end them.”

The Silver Bear for best actress went to Nina Hoss (above) for her role as a woman who must deal with the ghosts from her past in Christian Petzold’s German drama Yella. Hoss beat favorites Yu Nan and Marianne Faithfull, who plays a grandmother-turned-sex worker in the well-received Irina Palm – which was also one of the two or three favorites to win the Golden Bear.

“I didn’t expect this at all because of the huge competition,” Hoss told reporters. “I feel even more honored … to get this gift against Cate Blanchett [for The Good German] and Marianne Faithfull … and all those great actresses I really admire.”

Hoss’ win was the third in a row for German actresses at the Berlin festival. Last year, Sandra Hüller received the Silver Bear for her performance as a woman who believes herself possessed by the devil in Requiem, and the year before Julia Jentsch won the award for her star-making turn as German underground leader Sophie Scholl in Sophie Scholl: The Final Days.

A special Silver Bear was given to the cast of Robert De Niro’s Cold War drama The Good Shepherd, which was coolly received in the United States. The film stars Matt Damon as a CIA spy; also in the cast are Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin, Timothy Hutton, Martina Gedeck, Tammy Blanchard, and De Niro himself. Upon accepting the award, Martina Gedeck (one of the stars of the popular The Lives of Others) dedicated the trophy to director De Niro.

The Alfred Bauer award, named after the festival’s founder and given to “innovative” films, went to Park Chan-Wook’s Korean romantic comedy I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok.

“I would like to share this award with my wife,” Park declared. “She is very unhappy with my career as a director. I am not home for weeks, busy all the time and even when I am home my head is full of other thoughts. I hope she will now forgive me. When I get home, I hope she will tell our friends, ‘My husband is a director but that’s OK.'”

Approximately 400 films were screened and more than 200,000 tickets were sold during the ten-day Berlin festival. Twenty-two of those films were competing for the Golden Bear.

International Competition Jury: American director-screenwriter Paul Schrader (president), Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass, German actor Mario Adorf, American actor Willem Dafoe, Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, Hong Kong producer Nansun Shi, and Danish film editor Molly Malene.

Best First Feature Jury: Judy Counihan, Niki Karimi, and Gerhard Meixner

International Short Film Jury: Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima (Nigeria), Riina Sildos (Estonia), Ning Ying (China)

Generation Children’s Jury: Can Deniz Binici, Sandra Botzet, Liliann Fischer, Maïmouna Guirassy, Maxim Michaelis, Anita Oberlin, Mara Ohlhoff, Sammy Steward, Paul Trabhardt, Ngoc Diep Lila Tran, and Moritz Wagner

Generation Youth Jury: Lena-Lotte Agger, Silvia Dudek, Elif Erönder, Till Gerber, Adam Heise, Jean-Marc Philippe Montag and Ruby Reimann

International Jury of the Generation Kplus Competition: Andreas Steinhöfel, Sitora Alieva, Justin Johnson, Leontine Petit, and Reza Bagher

Ecumenical Jury: Charles Martig (jury president). Angelika Obert, Théo Peporte, Anita Uzulniece, Marjorie Suchocki, Katharina Zeckau

FIPRESCI Juries: Phillip Bergson, Heike Hurst, Jerzy Plazewski (Competition); José Carlos Avellar, Jürgen Kiontke, Dinko Tucakovic (Panorama); Salome Kikaleishvili, Dana Linssen, Rüdiger Suchsland (Forum)

Guild of German Art House Cinemas Jury: Adrian Kutter, Werner Renneke, Burkhard Hofmann

C.I.C.A.E. Jury: Stephanie Flauger, Nikos Grigoriadis, Marianne Piquet in the Panorama; Katri Laiho, Ursula Philipp Schürmann, Davide Zanza in the Forum

Label Europa Cinemas Jury: Georgette Ranucci, Michal Drobny, Christian Schmalz, Staš Ravter

Manfred Salzgeber Prize Jury: Udi Aloni, Kanako Hayashi, and Jost Hering

Teddy Jury: Charlie Boudreau (jury president), Ailton Franco Jr., Frédéric Arends, Kam Wai Kui, Michaela Pnacekova, Raymond Phathanavirangoon, Jason Plourde, Fanney Tsimong

Dialogue en perspective Jury: Mathilde Bonnefoy (president), Anja Göbel, Michael Hack, Anton Ludwig, Stéphane Demoustier, Aurore Giraudon, Thomas Hochmann, Elisabeth Scherrer

Caligari Film Jury: Rolf-Rüdiger Hamacher, Peter Link, Beate Preisler

NETPAC Jury: Budi Irawanto (president), Intishal al Timimi and Yang Yong-hi

Peace Film Prize Jury: Harriet Eder, Christoph Heubner, Wilma Pradetto, Monica Chana Puginier, Simone Schmollack, Michael Schorr, Marianne Wündrich-Brosien

Amnesty International Film Prize Jury: Christiane Paul, Ayfer Ergün, and Dietmar Kammerer

Femina Jury: Sophie Maintigneux, Katharina Sykora, and Monika Treut

Volkswagen Score Competition Jury: Martin Steyer, Martin Todsharow and Jan Kaczmarek

Berlin Film Festival website.

Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie The Good Shepherd image: Universal Pictures.

August Diehl The Counterfeiters image: Universum Film.

Marianne Faithfull Irina Palm image: Strand Releasing.

“Berlin Film Festival: Nazi & Cold War Flops + Sex Worker Marianne Faithfull & Jacques Rivette Returns” last updated in September 2018.