Now in its third year as the youngest film festival on the Berlin scene, Achtung Berlin (18-22 April 2007) has grown like a weed to become an indispensable event for both politicos and professionals. Founded by Hajo Schäfer to fill a gap in the ever-growing Berlin film scene, the festival leans on three catchword titles to underscore its presence: “Attention Berlin” to herald the city’s status as a film capital, “New Berlin Film Award” to tout its purse prizes, and “The Film Festival for Berlin-Brandenburg” to focus on the range of its competition entries. Altogether, 75 Berlin-Brandenburg films were screened to mostly packed houses at the Babylon venue on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz – from an estimated 150 available productions, if extra slots could be found for cartoons, video art, underground films, and student shorts produced at the Berlin and Babelsberg film schools. As Medienboard Berlin-Brandenberg’s Petra Müller accentuated at the opening night gala, “the German New Wave is closely associated with the capital and its surroundings.”

Since Berlin can also boast of five other prominent film festivals – Berlinale, Interfilm (shorts), First Steps (new generation), Sehsüchte (student films), and Doku.Arts (documentaries) – Achtung Berlin tries its best to integrate the festival colony and spread the word that Berlin is where a vast number of German filmmakers prefer to hang their hats. To quote Hajo Schäfer: “The combination of being a film festival as well as an event for the film industry, linking the capitol region’s classical media industries with new entertainment media, has made Achtung Berlin a brand name to reckon with.” In other words, should Hajo Schäfer be given extra needed support from the City of Berlin and the State of Brandenburg, plus TV and media coverage, then the New Berlin Film Awards might well draw comparison with the prestigious Bavarian Film Prizes in München.

A 60-page festival catalogue listed 40 sponsors and purse awards amounting to Euros 10,000. Three juries were summoned to decide on “Made in Berlin-Brandenburg” winners in the categories Best Feature Film (7 entries), Best Documentary (8 entries), and Best Short Film (23 entries), plus voting on awards for Best Cinematography and Best Newcomer Film. In addition, Zitty Magazine awarded a readers’ prize in a new section titled “Scene Berlin-Brandenberg” (10 entries), in which “films by new talents and freelancers from the capital region deserve recognition for innovation and a specific handwriting independent of their production budget.” Just as popular was a retrospective of 13 productions to mark “The Dawning of the Berlin School” with short films by Christian Petzold, Thomas Arslan, Angela Schanelec, Ulrich Köhler, Birgit Grosskopf, Henner Winkler, and Benjamin Heisenberg. Another program of films and film-talks paid homage to the Berlin-based DAAD Artists Exchange Program, which since 1963 has hosted circa 1000 foreign artists, including such renown filmmakers as Andrei Tarkovsky, Istvan Szabo, Otar Yoseiliani, Jim Jarmusch, and Bela Tarr.

Since the Babylon venue is located around the corner from Berlin-Alexanderplatz, Walter Ruttmann’s classic documentary Berlin – Sinfonie der Grossstadt (Berlin – Symphony of a Great City) (1927) was programmed to organ accompaniment at the Babylon screening. Yet another archival treat was the screening of Britta Wauer’s Berlin – Ecke Volksbühne (Berlin – Corner Volksbühne) (2005), a documentation with photos and film footage of Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and the neighboring Scheunenviertel, where in the interregnum period emigrants from Eastern Europe had found a place to settle. To top it all off, one of the festival events saw the presentation of a new book on “Filmstadt Berlin” by Regina Aggio. The book chronicles Berlin as a film capital from 1895 to 2006, including DEFA productions made in East Berlin during GDR times.

The New Berlin Film Award for Best Feature Film went to Irma-Kinga Stelmach and Bartosz Werner’s Preussisch Gangstar (Prussian Gangstar), a fiction-documentary about three Brandenberg youths from middle-class families in the small town of Buchow who express themselves best at their “BC40 Club” in rap cadence and hiphop garb. Before a running camera over three days, the youths play out their pipe-dreams in everyday routines: generation conflicts with parents, poor grades at school, boredom and unemployment, gangs and girlfriends, parties and concerts, and just plain hanging around. Although the trio call themselves “Preussisch Gangstar,” the title refers as well to the rock band contributing the musical score. A Special Mention went to Elke Hauck’s Karger, the story of a steelworker who, after a failed marriage, is crippled further by the loss of his job und the pangs of unemployment.

Just as impressive were the two films that shared the Studio Babelsberg Production Prize. In Pepe Planitzer’s tragicomedy Alle Alle (All Gone), set in a former Brandenburg army barracks, a hapless trio try to mend their broken lives by leaning on each other for survival. And in Oliver Rihs’s Schwarze Schafe (Black Sheep), a self-styled “anarcho-comedy,” scenes are improvised in six separate episodes around the antics of three Berlin youths always on the lookout for kicks and easy money. The New Berlin Film Award for Best Newcomer Film went to Astrid Schult’s Zirkus is nich (No Circus), a heart-rending short documentary about a conscientious 8-year-old lad in Berlin-Hellersdorf, whose longing to visit the circus is spiked by his single mother’s insistence that he look after his younger brother and sister instead. No Circus was also a hit in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino section at this year’s Berlinale.

The New Berlin Film Award for Best Documentary Film went to Lars Barthel’s Mein Tod ist nicht dein Tod (My Death Is Not Your Death) “for its candid, poetic account of the director’s painful journey into the past to tell the story of a lost yet endearing love that had begun at the film school in Babelsberg and ended on the shores of India.” As the story goes, when Lars Barthel met Chetna Vora, the daughter of an Indian Communist parliamentarian, they were studying direction at the Babelsberg Film School. While collaborating on each other’s documentary projects, they married and had a child, then separated after Lars obtained an exit visa to India but Chetna preferred West Berlin. Her subsequent tragic death has apparently haunted him until this forthright account about their joint odyssey could be made. My Death Is Not Your Death was also awarded Best German Documentary at last year’s Leipzig Dokfestival.

The New Berlin Film Award for Best Cinematography went to cameramen Markus Winterbauer and Börres Weiffenbach for their lensing of Sung-Hyung Cho’s Full Metal Village. This warming portrait of village life in Schleswig-Holstein is all the more amusing because Korean director Sung-Hyung Cho admits in the film to knowing little about rural life. Thus the villagers open their hearts to her to tell some fascinating stories about their past and present. The kick comes when 40,000 heavy metal fans descend upon the village of Wacken for their annual blowout festival and are welcomed by the community with their own brass band! This fun documentary was previously awarded the Max Ophüls Prize in Saarbrücken and could be seen in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino program at this year’s Berlinale.

Achtung Berlin opened with a light comedy that set the mood for the six-day festival. In Clemens Schörnborn’s Der letzte macht das Licht aus! (The Last One Turns Out the Light!) three unemployed construction workers in East Berlin are offered jobs in the far north of Norway. And since each has run out of possibilities of staying afloat with government welfare handouts, they sign up with others for language courses in Norwegian. Meanwhile, their families and girlfriends are not all that excited about leaving Berlin. The quips, jests, and pranks in this fast-paced farce are played with deadpan finesse by Jürgen Tarrach, Mario Irrek, and Wolfram Koch.

Another festival highlight was Uli M. Schueppel’s easy-flowing documentary Berlin Song. As Berliners know only too well, the opportunities for musicians to perform here are endless due to the open-door policies of several clubs and discos. So all Berlin-based Uli Schueppel had to do was to contact six of his musician friends in the lively Berlin Underground Songwriters Scene to tell their stories of what had brought them to Berlin from abroad (USA, Australia, England Norway, Holland, Indonesia). The upshot? They sketched their favorite Kreuzberg hangouts in interviews and “New Urban Folk” lyrics, then collaborated on a joint concert at the popular “West Germany” club as the documentary was being shot. One songwriter is fun-loving Indonesian Tommy Simatupang, whose “Transformation” performance was a star attraction at the all-night Achtung Berlin Festival Party. Berlin Song is more than just a documentary. It’s a hymn to Berlin.

Awards

New Berlin Film Award, Best Feature Film
Preussisch Gangstar (Prussian Gangstar), dir Irma-Kinga Stelmach, Bartosz Werner
Special Mention
Karger, dir Elke Hauck

New Berlin Film Award, Best Documentary Film
Mein Tod ist nicht dein Tod (My Death Is Not Your Death), dir Lars Barthel

New Berlin Film Award, Best Cinematography
Markus Winterbauer, Börres Weiffenbach, Full Metal Village, dir Sung-Hyung Cho

Studio Babelsberg Production Prize – ex aequo
Oliver Rihs, Olivier Kolb (Oliwood Productions und koboiFILM), Schwarze Schafe (Black Sheep), dir Oliver Rihs
Annekatrin Hendel, Jürgen Grimmer (it works! Medien GmbH), Alle Alle (All Gone), dir Pepe Planitzer

New Berlin Film Award, Best Newcomer Film – Short Film
Zirkus is nich (No Circus), dir Astrid Schult

New Berlin Film Award, Best Short Film
Hundefutter (Dog Food), dir Till Kleinert
Was weiss der Tropfen? (What Do Drops Know?), dir Jan Zabeil

Zitty Readers Audience Award in Section “Scene Berlin-Brandenburg”
Der Weisse mit dem Schwarzbrot (White Man with Black Bread), dir Jonas Grosch­­
Special Mention
Lunik, dir Gilbert Beronneau