Berlin Today Award 2012

updated: 26, 2013

Photo gallery of the Berlin Today Award 2012

The winner of the 2012 Berlin Today Award is...

Rafael Balulu for his short film BATMAN AT THE CHECKPOINT.

The ninth Berlin Today Award goes to Israeli filmmaker Rafael Balulu for his film BATMAN AT THE CHECKPOINT, produced by Lichtblick Media, Ruth Ersfeld and Martin Heisler, in cooperation with Black Sheep Film Productions. The film tells the story of an Israeli and a Palestinian boy, both trapped with their families' cars at a checkpoint near Jerusalem, and their struggle over a plastic batman doll. BATMAN AT THE CHECKPOINT succeeds in showing us a well-known conflict by poetically re-setting it as a playful battle. In this film we see both sides gridlocked and people stuck in their situation, even from a very early age on - leaving us with food for thought afterwards", the three jurors Jasmila Zbanic, Guy Maddin and Judith Kaufman explained their choice. The jury also gave a Special Mention the short documentary WHITE LOBSTER, directed by David Lalé and produced by Sunday Filmproduktion, René Frotscher and Thomas Jeschner.

Congratulations to the filmmakers and their teams!

Every Step You Take

"Every Step You Take": Does the flap of butterfly wings in Thailand set off a tornado in Texas? Small decisions we take in everyday life intrinsically influence our near future. What is a harmless accessory in one part of the world might be a major statement in another that leads to a chain of reactions. Whether political or private, it is these moments of taking a step and being aware of it, that the Berlin Today Award was looking for when inviting young filmmakers to send in their film ideas for the Berlin Today Award short film competition 2012.

Procedure
Five finalists have been selected for the ninth round of the Berlinale Talent Campus' short film competition. 15 directors were invited from about 170 applications to present their short film ideas to selected producers at the Campus. After the Berlinale, five short film projects were chosen to be produced in collaboration with Berlin-based production companies and with support from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg. These films will be shot during summer/autumn of 2011. Postproduction will take place in Berlin and Brandenburg. The world premiere of the five films will be held during the Opening of the Berlinale Talent Campus 2012. The winner will be chosen by a jury consisting of Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic, Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin and German cinematographer Judith Kaufmann, and will receive the Berlin Today Award 2012 during a gala ceremony.

Finalists

A Little Suicide

Ana Lily Amirpour, USA. Animation
Produced by Ambrosia Film

In a world where people hate you without exception and kill you mercilessly, it's no wonder this cockroach is suicidal.

Synopsis

They say you don’t know a man till you’ve walked a mile in his shoes… well, you certainly don’t know a cockroach till you spent a day in his little shoes- especially if it’s the day he intends to commit a little suicide.

Director’s Notes

One of the most exciting things about film is playing with point of view and expectation. In A Little Suicide we are taken into the point of view of the most hated insect… the cockroach. The night I thought of this story I killed a cockroach in my room- I saw it on the wall, grabbed a shoe and smashed it dead in an instant. There was no thought, just reflex. I’ve done this hundreds of times. I hate cockroaches. They are horrible little monsters, and it’s strange if you think about it because this repulsion isn’t grounded in logic; Cockroaches aren’t hostile, they don’t bite or harm us, but somehow they are the most loathed insects of all. So the night I killed that roach I thought, What if they knew how much we hate them? How depressing and stressful to think that everyone wants you dead? And so I had found my hero: a suicidal cockroach. I was a painter, illustrator and sculptor before I turned to film-making, so I’m thrilled to make a film that involves animation. I want to use the medium to create a cockroach that is charming to the point of lovable. For this I'm inspired by the mundane, magical realism of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry & Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With levity and humor, a mix of live action and stop motion animation, I want to bring you a suicidal day from this misunderstood little monster’s point of view. And see where it takes us.

About the Director

Ana Lily Amirpour made her first film at age12; a horror movie starring guests of a slumber party. Born in the UK and raised in the US, Ana Lily comes from a varied background in the arts, including painting, sculpting and playing bass in a rock band. Now she writes and directs films and music videos which have screened internationally at festivals. Her most recent short film, Pashmaloo (Hairy) was in the official selection at the 2011 Berlinale. Her 2010 short film True Love, a comedy about sex and relationships, was audience award winner at the Milan Film Festival and her recent experimental short Ana Lily Amirpour Likes This, which she wrote, directed and acted in, was audience award winner at the 2010 Zero Film Festival. In 2011 she is preparing to direct two feature films, including her debut feature, The Stones, a volatile drama about youth culture in modern-day Tehran, from an award winning screenplay. The project is being produced by Hamburg-based Brave New Works. Ana Lily’s work has received multiple awards including the Dini Ostrov Award in Comedy Writing, Grand Prize of the Bluecat Screenwriting Competition and the Adrienne Shelly Fellowship. Together with producer Sina Sayyah, she is co-founder of Say Ahh… Productions in Los Angeles, creating cutting edge film, television, music video and web content. She finished her MFA at the UCLA Film School.

About the Production Company

Ambrosia Film was founded in 2007 in Berlin and developes and produces feature films and documentaries. A main focus of the company lies in children’s film production. Ambrosia Film focuses on uncommon, distinctive content and developes themes with a sophisticated cinematic approach. Producers are Halina Dyrschka, a Talent Campus alumna, and Eva Illmer. With their award-winning short film „Nineandahalf’s Goodbye“ they attended several international film festivals like the Edinburgh and Munich International Film Festival. The film has recently won the „Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Preis 2011“.

Festivals

Edinburgh International Film Festival, UK, June 20 - July 1, 2012

Internationales Filmfest Oldenburg, Germany, September 12-16, 2012

Kaohsiung Filmfestival, Taiwan, October 19 - November 4, 2012

Istanbul International Short Film Festival, Turkey, November 21 - 28, 2012

Buenos Aires International Film Festival, Argentina, April 10 - 21, 2013

ABC

by Madli Lääne, Estonia. Documentary
Produced by DETAiLFILM

„Why do you want to learn to read and write?“ – „My baby is going to school next year, I want to be able to teach her at home.“

Synopsis

Vele is a 17-year-old girl. Or not. The thing is – she doesn’t know exactly how old she is. Neither does her mother. Vele was born during the civil war in Liberia. The family was fleeing from home across the border to the safer Guinea. There was no war there, but it was still not safe for Vele. ABC is a story about the Liberian girl Vele who is starting school for the first time. Through the newly studied alphabet the film opens the personal ABC of Vele – the difficult past of the war refugee, a young woman’s fragile wishes for the future and an adolescent mother’s everyday life where there is no time to worry too much.

Director’s notes

Learning to read and write is a step which opens the whole new world to this fragile and strong Liberian girl named Vele. I got to know Vele a year ago in Liberia and I am often thinking about her sunny nature when I feel a little bit dissatisfied with my life. Thinking about her strong faith and ceaseless hope for a better future gives me the support to fight with my own „demons“. Thanks to this powerful emotion I would love to make this film for Vele.

About the Director

Madli Lääne is a freelance documentary filmmaker and journalist from Estonia. Her documentary Ready! Steady! Go! won the title of the Best Estonian Short Film in 2007. Madli also works as an editor both for documentaries and fiction. She has an MA in Film Art from Baltic Film and Media School, where she is working as an editing lecturer now. Madli has studied documentary filmmaking in Cuba (EICTV) and film editing in Germany (IFS).

About the Production Company

Original, moving stories are what it’s about at DETAiLFILM. Stories that reach people, win over audiences and convince juries. They have been told at 250+ festivals (Berlinale, Sundance, Karlovy Vary, IDFA, Hampton‘s International Film Festival...) and were awarded 50+ awards like the Crystal Globe in Karlovy Vary, The Black Pearl Award at MEIFF Abu Dhabi and the German female Oscar, the LOLA. Now DETAiLFILM tells long stories - in fiction, documentary and animation. From all over the world, for everyone to enjoy.

Festivals

RiverRun International Film Festival, USA, April 13-22, 2012

Batman at the Checkpoint

by Rafael Balulu, Israel. Written by Ayelet Gundar, Fiction.
Produced by Lichtblick Media
with the support of Blacksheep Film Productions

Two cars are stuck in front of a checkpoint. Yuval and Mahmoud, both boys six years old, find that it's much more fun to pass the time playing with one another. What began as a game becomes an outright battle for a plastic Batman doll.

Synopsis

An Israeli car and a Palestinian car are stuck in traffic in front of a barricade at the entrance of Jerusalem, coming from the Dead Sea. Yuval and Mahmoud, both boys six years old, find that it's much more fun to pass the time playing with one another. But when Mahmoud's father tries to cut into the other's lane, Yuval's father bumps into his car in an attempt to prevent him, and things start to get complicated. What began as a game becomes an outright battle for a plastic Batman doll.

Director’s Notes

If I was asked to describe the genre of Batman At The Checkpoint I’d use the term “Fantastic Naturalism” meaning that the film has a naturalistic structure, style and plot, but it is impossible to deny its fantastic symbolic feeling. Through the six year old heroes the film creates analog worlds, which perceive each other like a little fairy tale – from one car to another, from one family to another and from one nation to another. Therefore I see the film as a soft ironic comedy which grasps the Israeli - Palestinian conflict with a loving point of view on the one hand and a cynical on the other. Like a visual image of Israel and Palestine which are stuck in their own political traffic jam.

About the Director

Rafael Balulu was born in 1981 in Afula, Israel. He graduated from The Sam Spiegel Film & TV School, Jerusalem. Besides being a filmmaker he is working as a social activist. He volunteered at the ICMC – Israel Crisis Management Center for Immigrants and for the project “Hope”, which provides support and humanitarian aid for children. Furthermore, Rafael teaches film at ‘The Young Filmmakers Project’ in Tel Aviv. Rafael also worked at the Israeli National Film Archive. Currently he is developing a full length feature documentary called Ghetto Neighborhood as part of Greenhouse – a Development programme for Documentary Filmmakers, and he is writing The Money, a full length fiction feature. In addition he is directing commercials and video clips.

About the Production Company

LICHTBLICK MEDIA Corporation was founded in Berlin in 2008 by Joachim Ortmanns, Carl-Ludwig Rettinger and Martin Heisler. Their collaboration commenced with the debut feature film “Autopilots” by Bastian Günther, which had its premiere by the Berlinale Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2007. In its early years LICHTBLICK MEDIA will primarily produce graduate thesis films and debut films from young directors. A continuous process is planned with these directors, while also developing independent national and international cinema and TV productions. The objective is to build a platform where authors and directors come together, and can collaboratively build on their skills and ideas. LICHTBLICK MEDIA is intended to be the reliable and creative link between directors, editors, distributors and international partners.

Festivals

Galilee Short Film Festival, Israel USA, May2012

Five Ways to Kill a Man

By Christopher Bisset , South Africa. Written by Stephen Hitchcock, Fiction.
Website: fivewaystokillaman.com
Produced by Filmgestalten GbR

Sam lives in a small apartment with Clownface, a unique fish with whom he shares his water. Every morning, he wakes up with new and exotic people in his bedroom.

Synopsis

Five Ways to Kill a Man is a film about accountability. It explores the notion of personal responsibility for collective action, examining the consequences of the way we live, eat, drink and spend money. It considers the unseen effects of ‘every step we take.’ The film deals with the concept of responsibility in a pragmatic, empirical way, looking at the consequences of the actions we all perform. We all know the effects of these actions, we just can’t see them. As such, they’re easy to forget about. Sam lives in a world where these effects are almost too obvious to ignore. Almost.

Director’s Notes

There’s a bar in Cape Town called Roxy’s. Maybe there’s a place like it where you’re from. The beers are cheap, the furniture has seen better days and it’s always open. The walls are covered with posters for films like Ben Hur and Spartacus. It’s where the poets would drink if we had any. It’s also where Five Ways to Kill a Man sprang into the world, fully formed. My friend Stephen Hitchcock and I wrote it there one night. The first draft was finished before dawn. It’s an exciting project because it combines fast-paced narrative storytelling with a strong conceptual framework. It’s a story about the world told through the story of one man. It’s going to be a lot of fun to shoot.

About the director

Christopher Bisset was born in Cape Town, but cut his teeth as a Film-Maker in the streets of Maputo. He’s an architect by trade, but has been making films since the days of Hi8 cassettes. Christopher was invited to pitch for the Berlin Today Award 2012, and deferred his Masters to find out where the opportunity might lead. Some people thought it was a bad idea at the time. Then the project was shortlisted and some people said they secretly knew all along that it would be. He spends his days in a shared collaborative studio in Cape Town, working on progressive documentary and fiction projects and arguing with the others about whose turn it is to go and buy the milk. He’s very proud to call Cape Town home, but very excited to spend the summer in Berlin.

About the Production Company

FILMGESTALTEN was founded by Linda Stuck, Florian Gerstenberg and Manuel Kinzer in 2007. By collaborating with young directors and scriptwriters, they combine a professional workflow with forward-looking concepts. They create authentic stories deliberately balancing between fictional and documental film content. Their films have been shown at film festivals worldwide. One of their latest short film productions hunger, which was funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film, was invited to 27 international film festivals and won multiple awards. Apart from preparing to shoot of Five Ways to Kill a Man, they are now in post production of the shortfilm Reconstructing Destruction (by Esther Löwe) and are developing the medium-length film Kabakon (written by Marc Thümmler) which will be shot in Papua New Guinea in 2012.

Festivals

International Filmfest Emden-Norderney, Germany, June 6-13, 2012

Palm Springs International Film Festival, June 19-25, 2012

Durban International Film Festival, July 19-29, 2012

Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, San Francisco, September 27 - October 4, 2012

SHNIT Film Festival, South Africa, October 03-07, 2012

Ghent Film Festival, Belgium, October 09-20, 2012

Emmentaler Filmtage, Switzerland, October 12-14, 2012

Kerry Film Festival, Ireland, October 29 - November 05, 2012

Kalpanirjhar International Short Film Festival, India, November 01-05, 2012

Istanbul International Short Film Festival, Turkey, November 21-28, 2012

International Film Festival Uruguay, March 23 - April 6, 2013

Awards

German Human Rights Film Award 2012 in the section "education"

White Lobster

By David Lale, UK. Documentary.
Produced by Sunday Filmproduktion

Through a strange quirk of globalization, the ocean waves have started to bring a rich new harvest onto the remote beaches of the Caribbean Coast. But is the “White Lobster” a gift from God - or the work of the Devil?

Synopsis

On the remote Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, everyone’s out on the beach searching for the “White Lobster”. White Lobster is a gift from God. It’s a blessing and it’s a curse. It makes fortunes, it ruins lives. White Lobster is poison. And if you find it, all you’ll want is more.

This documentary explores the bizarre phenomenon of the White Lobster through the stories of Captain Ed, an American fisherman washed up in the outlaw town of El Bluff; Randy, who helps troubled youths and is struggling with demons of his own; and Tiger, an out-of-work seaman who once found and lost 128 kilos - and who now dreams of coming across the White Lobster again one day.

Director’s Notes

Ever since I first heard about this strange story I was captivated by the image of a foreign object washing in on the waves along the Caribbean Coast. The phenomenon of the White Lobster seemed to say a lot about today’s interconnected world, and for me it seemed a blackly funny metaphor for the feeling that the course of our lives is not ultimately under our control. Whether at the mercy of the tides, or distant governments, in the hands of God, or the Devil – it’s this sense of fickle human fortune that the White Lobster promised to expose, and that I set out to capture in this film.

But this is documentary, and reality always proves to be more slippery, complex and interesting. What I found in El Bluff was that White Lobster is more than just a lottery ticket to easy money - for many it is the last hope in a landscape of lost opportunities.

About the Director

David Lalé trained as a documentary director at the UK’s National Film & Television School and his films have screened on television and at festivals all over the world. His documentary about an illegal immigrant teenager, ON THE RUN WITH ABDUL, won many prizes including the International Press Prize at Clermont-Ferrand 2010. For recent projects he has produced a series of shorts with young people from the Nairobi slums, and finished his first feature-length comic documentary, VOTE FOR ME, I’M LOONY about ‘Outsider’ politicians trying to cause havoc in the UK general election. He shot his latest film in Liberia for the Al Jazeera International network. David is also a writer – his first novel was published in 2008 and he’s now working on his third book, a ‘true story’ about a feckless conman who turned into a woman.

About the Production Company

Sunday Filmproduktion combines the producing activities of René Frotscher, Volker Zobelt and Thomas Jeschner. They want to develop and produce fiction and documentary films for cinema release. Their goal is to join the film projects in an early stage of developing, therefore working closer together with the filmmakers on drawing their projects and being able to plan and finance the production in a substantial way. Currently, they are developing three fiction films and two documentaries. They want to produce their first full-length film as a debut feature.

Photos of the Berlin Today Award 2012

 

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