The Berlinale Forum of the Berlin International Film Festival is celebrating its anniversary: 50 years of dedication to independent, adventurous, daring cinema . It is what the festival describes as “A perfect opportunity to look back at the past, celebrate what’s been achieved and think about what the future will bring.”

Many of the 35 films in this year’s The Berlinale Forum under theme ‘Galloping Between Different Eras’ – 28 of which are world premieres – are characterized by how they look for ways to mediate between past and present. This applies in spades to EL TANGO DEL VIUDO y su espejo deformante (THE TANGO OF THE WIDOWER and Its Distorting Mirror) by Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento, which opens this year’s Forum. Ruiz shot the material in Chile in 1967, but was unable to complete it before going into exile in 1973. Editor, director and Ruiz’s widow Valeria Sarmiento has now transformed it into a finished film via various elaborate techniques. The film experiments with its own temporality in wonderfully idiosyncratic fashion, as it encompasses the half-century since it was originally shot and allows its plot to run forwards and backwards; in the latter case, quite literally.

Other films – such as Clarissa Thieme’s Was bleibt I Šta ostaje I What remains / Re-visited, Radu Jude’s Tipografic majuscul (Uppercase Print) or Jonathan Perel’s Responsabilidad empresarial (Corporate Accountability) – raise the question of how the political fault lines of recent history can be translated into film images and try out essayistic forms in the process. Ouvertures, made by a collective surrounding directors Louis Henderson and Olivier Marboeuf, looks back at the Haitian revolution and the aporias of the Enlightenment. Paula Gaitán’s more than four-hour Luz nos trópicos (Light in the Tropics) gallops between different eras like a wild horse, culminating in brilliant tribute to the forests and rivers of North and South America and the Indigenous peoples that live there. This forges links to further films in the programme which explore the increasingly precarious relationship between humans and their environment, such as Viera Čákanyová’s.

The group exhibition of Forum Expanded program themed “Part of the Problem” opens at the Betonhalle of silent green Kulturquartier on February 19 and features The Otolith Group for the second time already. Their installation INFINITY minus Infinity uses dance, music, recital and animation to examine the relationship between capitalism and racism and intertwines these with the repercussions of climate policy. Based on the history of weaving in western Africa, Filipa César tells a story of subversion in her collectively-produced work Quantum Creole. The Palestinian collective Riwaq pursue a similar undertaking with their multimedia project Secrets of a Digital Garden: 50 Villages – 50 Flowers, which considers the subversive potential of seeds as repositories of memory.

In Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea: 28 October 2015, Forensic Architecture meticulously reconstruct an accident involving a boat full of migrants close to the European coast. The work is based on video material recorded by artist and survivor Amel Alzakout as the boat was sinking. How such images are to be dealt with and the relationship between them and their history is the theme of her own film Purple Sea, a collaboration with filmmaker Khaled Abdulwahed made beforehand.

The additional twelve film programs of shorts and feature-length works contain considerable linguistic diversity, including the sign language used by a group of people in the northeast of Brazil (Jogos Dirigidos by Jonathas de Andrade) as well as the body language employed in the Congolese short Matata by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo or the experimental sounds and tones which appear in Akram Zaatari’s Al-Houbut.

Letter from a Guarani Woman in Search of the Land Without Evil, an exhibition at SAVVY Contemporary, sifts through the archive of the audio-visual journey of Patricia Ferreira Pará Yxapy, likely the most active representative of Brazilian indigenous cinema.

The NDN Survival Trilogy by Thirza Cuthand can be seen at the Marshall McLuhan Salon. It explores the consequences of raw material extraction for Canada’s Indigenous population. The three videos create a space to expand the theme to include queer perspectives.

The program of the “EFM Producers Hub” (February 20 – 26) will cover all topics of current relevance for producers while offering its usual diverse range of content for industry attendees. “DocSalon” (February 21-26) will once again provide guests from the documentary film branch with opportunities for networking and exchange. Already familiar formats will be expanded with the Toolbox program and a partnership with DAE.

Berlinale Forum

Anne at 13,000 ft
Canada / USA
by Kazik Radwanski
European premiere

Anunciaron tormenta (A Storm Was Coming)
Spain
by Javier Fernández Vázquez
World premiere

Chico ventana también quisiera tener un submarino (Window Boy Would Also Like to Have A Submarine)
Uruguay / Argentina / Brazil / Netherlands / Philippines
by Alex Piperno
World premiere

Entre perro y lobo
Cuba / Spain
by Irene Gutiérrez
World premiere

Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)
Nigeria / USA
by Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri
World premiere

FREM
Czech Republic / Slovakia
by Viera Čákanyová
International premiere

Generations
USA
by Lynne Siefert
World premiere

Gli appunti di Anna Azzori / Uno specchio che viaggia nel tempo (The Notes of Anna Azzori / A Mirror that Travels through Time)
Austria / Germany / France
by Constanze Ruhm
World premiere

Gorod usnul (In Deep Sleep)
Russian Federation
by Maria Ignatenko
World premiere

Grève ou crève (Strike or Die)
France
by Jonathan Rescigno
World premiere

Ieşirea trenurilor din gară (The Exit of the Trains)
Romania
by Radu Jude, Adrian Cioflâncă
World premiere

Kama fissamaa’ kathalika ala al-ard (As Above So Below)
Lebanon
by Sarah Francis
World premiere

Kunst kommt aus dem Schnabel wie er gewachsen ist (Art Comes from the Beak the Way It Has Grown)
Germany
by Sabine Herpich
World premiere

La casa dell’amore (The House of Love)
Italy
by Luca Ferri
World premiere

Lúa vermella (Red Moon Tide)
Spain
by Lois Patiño
World premiere

Luz nos trópicos (Light in the Tropics)
Brazil
by Paula Gaitán
World premiere

Maggie’s Farm
USA
by James Benning
World premiere

Medium
Argentina
by Edgardo Cozarinsky
World premiere

Namo (The Alien)
Iran
by Nader Saeivar
World premiere

Oeconomia
Germany
by Carmen Losmann
World premiere

Ouvertures
United Kingdom / France
by Louis Henderson, Olivier Marboeuf together with The Living and the Dead Ensemble
World premiere

Petit Samedi
Belgium
by Paola Sermon-Daï
World premiere

Ping jing (The Calming)
China
by SONG Fang
World premiere

Responsabilidad empresarial (Corporate Accountability)
Argentina’
by Jonathan Perel
World premiere

Seishin 0 (Zero)
Japan / USA
by Kazuhiro Soda
European premiere

EL TANGO DEL VIUDO y su espejo deformante (THE TANGO OF THE WIDOWER And Its Distorting Mirror)
Chile
by Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento
World premiere

Tipografic majuscul (Uppercase Print)
Romania
by Radu Jude
International premiere

Traverser (After the Crossing)
France / Burkina Faso / Belgium
by Joël Richmond Mathieu Akafou
World premiere

The Twentieth Century
Canada
by Matthew Rankin
European premiere

The Two Sights
Canada / United Kingdom
by Joshua Bonnetta
World premiere

Victoria
Belgium
by Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Isabelle Tollenaere
World premiere

The Viewing Booth
Israel / USA
by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
International premiere

Vil, má (Divinely Evil)
Brazil
by Gustavo Vinagre
World premiere

Was bleibt I Šta ostaje I What remains I Re-visited
Germany / Austria / Bosnia and Herzegovina
by Clarissa Thieme
World premiere

Zeus Machine. L’invincibile (Zeus Machine. The Invincible)
Italy
by Nadia Ranocchi, David Zamagni
International premiere

Berlinale Forum Expanded

Film and exhibition program

Abstracted / Family
Japan
by Koki Tanaka
International premiere

Akiya
Finland / Japan / USA
by Jonna Kina
World premiere

Al-Houbut (The Landing)
Lebanon / United Arab Emirates
by Akram Zaatari
International premiere

Al-Maw’oud (The Promised)
Egypt
by Ahmed Elghoneimy
World premiere

Apiyemiyekî?
Brazil / France / Netherlands / Portugal
by Ana Vaz
International premiere

Born of the * * *
On Zarathustra’’s Going Under from Cairo to Oran
Palestine / USA
by Ayreen Anastas, Rene Gabri
World premiere

Citizens of the Cosmos
USA / Japan / Ukraine
by Anton Vidokle
European premiere

Doublewide
USA
by Jenny Perlin
World premiere

Equinox
USA
by Margaret Honda
World premiere

Expedition Content
USA
by Ernst Karel, Veronika Kusumaryati
World premiere

Her Name Was Europa
Germany
by Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy
World premiere

Jiíbie
Colombia / France
by Laura Huertas Millán
European premiere

Jogos Dirigidos (Directed Games)
Brazil
by Jonathas de Andrade
International premiere

Letter to a Friend
Palestine / USA
by Emily Jacir
International premiere

Matata
Democratic Republic of the Congo / USA / Netherlands
by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo
International premiere

Moazzam ma yalla haqeqy (Most of What Follows Is True)
Egypt
by Maged Nader
World premiere

On vous parle de Paris: Maspero, les mots ont un sens
France 1970
by Chris Marker

(Outros) Fundamentos ((Other) Foundations)
Brazil
by Aline Motta
European premiere

The Phantom Menace
United Kingdom
by Graeme Arnfield
World premiere

Recovery
USA
by Kevin Jerome Everson
World premiere

Purple Sea
Germany
by Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed
World premiere

Tatsuniya II
Nigeria
by Rahima Gambo
International premiere

Untitled Sequence of Gaps
Germany
by Vika Kirchenbauer
World premiere

Vaga Carne (Dazed Flesh)
Brazil
by Grace Passô, Ricardo Alves Jr.
European premiere

Télé Réalité
Belgium / Germany / Democratic Republic of the Congo
by Lucile Desamory, Gustave Fundi, Glodie Mubikay
World premiere

The Whole Shebang
USA
by Ken Jacobs
European premiere

Group exhibition

Betonhalle, silent green
Opening on Feb 02, 2020 at 7pm

A I O U
USA
by Anton Vidokle, Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer
World premiere

Half Blue
USA / Lebanon
by Joe Namy
European premiere

Imaginary Explosions, episode 2, Chaitén
USA / Chile / Germany
by Caitlin Berrigan
International premiere

INFINITY minus Infinity
United Kingdom / United Arab Emirates / Belgium
by The Otolith Group
International premiere

Memory Also Die
Nigeria
by Didi Cheeka Anni
World premiere

Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters’ Plot
Republic of Korea
by Ayoung Kim
International premiere

Quantum Creole
Germany / France / Portugal / Spain
by Filipa César
International premiere

Secrets of a Digital Garden: 50 Villages – 50 Flowers
Palestine
by Riwaq
European premiere

Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea: 28 October 2015
United Kingdom
by Forensic Architecture
World premiere

The Sun
Canada
by Kika Thorne
European premiere

Vu de l’extérieur
Belgium / Democratic Republic of the Congo / Luxembourg
by Lucile Desamory in collaboration with Glodie Mubikay and Gustave Fundi
International premiere

SAVVY Contemporary

Opening on Feb02, 2020 at 7pm

Letter from a Guarani Woman in Search of the Land Without Evil
Brazil
by Patricia Ferreira Pará Yxapy
European premiere

Marshall Mc Luahn Salon, Canadian Embassy

Opening on Feb 02, 2020 at 5.30pm

NDN Survival Trilogy
Canada
by Thirza Cuthand
World premiere