My Berlinale Minutes 2012, Monday
I started out with the Turkish - Kurdish film "Tepenin ardi".
It's an oriental western in which the patriarch of the family, who live in a isolated, even claustrophobic valley, blame any problem they have to "enemies" coming from the other side of the mountains. Their search for those (imagined?) enemies is cleverly mixed with imaginations of one of his sons who came back mentally disturbed from war deployment.
It had a very serious atmosphere, so I was grateful that the final scene had a comical aspect and I didn't have to leave the screening completely depressed.
"Francine" I wanted to watch because Oscar award winner Melissa Leo is leading actress. She plays a woman who after a long prison sentence struggles to deal with the outside world. Obviously she gets along best with animals. So a whole lot of cats and dogs gather in her trailer home which becomes more and more dirty and neglected. In the end she gets herself in trouble with the police as she smashes a car window because of a panting dog locked in the car.
"Leave It on the Floor" is an astounding movie about the queer ballroom scene in contemporary Los Angeles. It's heavily inspired by the documentary "Paris Is Burning" and lead me into the truly exotic universe of Drag Queens and their ballroom competitions.
It's an oriental western in which the patriarch of the family, who live in a isolated, even claustrophobic valley, blame any problem they have to "enemies" coming from the other side of the mountains. Their search for those (imagined?) enemies is cleverly mixed with imaginations of one of his sons who came back mentally disturbed from war deployment.
It had a very serious atmosphere, so I was grateful that the final scene had a comical aspect and I didn't have to leave the screening completely depressed.
"Francine" I wanted to watch because Oscar award winner Melissa Leo is leading actress. She plays a woman who after a long prison sentence struggles to deal with the outside world. Obviously she gets along best with animals. So a whole lot of cats and dogs gather in her trailer home which becomes more and more dirty and neglected. In the end she gets herself in trouble with the police as she smashes a car window because of a panting dog locked in the car.
"Leave It on the Floor" is an astounding movie about the queer ballroom scene in contemporary Los Angeles. It's heavily inspired by the documentary "Paris Is Burning" and lead me into the truly exotic universe of Drag Queens and their ballroom competitions.