I was at home, but... in the Berlinale-competition : life can't be explained

The beginning is Silence. A dog chases a hare, a donkey looks on, as the dog eats the dead animal. A Boy, Philipp (Jacob Lassalle), returns home, he disappeared for a week, his foot is injured. The mother, Astrid (Maren Eggert), buys a used bike. The man who buys it, can articulate only with the amplifier device on the neck. In school the children rehearse scenes from "Hamlet".

The life of watch. As it stands still and goes on, as it is from death to embrace, as it is sometimes lit in the middle of the everyday life, as it is funny and banal. And yet it is beyond the access, the images, the arts. The cinema holds on like it wants to beat us in a spell, with values, with all his resources, bigger than life.

Angela Schanelec does not agree. She takes time, for the people, the homes, the streets, it gives the viewer time. Many do not like their movies because of that. Berlin school, the long shots, a lot of space around the figures around, this damn silence, of the indistinct plot, the ellipses – what is that in our fast, impatient times. Schanelecs films are not for the searcher for Meaning, you distrust the world-explainers.

Because life cannot be explained. You can only show some of it. The boy, his little sister, the mother, the Bicycle, the teachers in the school (Franz Rogowski, Devid Striesow in a guest role). Or the dog, the rabbit, the donkey. Schanelecs films take place in the Singular. Anyone who wants to, can not think of Robert Bresson's donkey in", For example, Balthasar," this dumb creature.

Peaceful pictures have a hard time at the Festival

Angela Schanelec takes like creatures in the views, as you lose yourself in the urban space, as you recite theatrical texts, with the cardboard crown on the head. Once Astrid lays down on the grave of her two years ago, the man who died, he was a theater Director. A small partridge, approaching her face to the earth. The night scene can be used as a Schanelecs signature decipher. Her live-in partner, the theatre Director Jürgen Gosch, died in 2009, the two translated Shakespeare into German, she has two children with him.

Some of the works of the Berlin-based filmmaker, who worked as an actress before she studied at the DFFB Director, celebrated in Cannes Premiere. In the series "Un certain regard" were in 1998, "places in cities" and in 2006 "Marseille". Their semi-documentary study of the Paris airport "Orly" was shown in 2010 at the Berlinale-Forum, like your summer-of-Berlin-Film - "My slow life" and Chekhov adaptation, "afternoon": stories about the Stranded, about people in waiting, about couples who get lost. Still images have a hard time in the festival hustle and bustle.

Schanelecs camera man Ivan Markovic shows in the Forum as a movie, "From Tomorrow on, I Will," about a stowaway in the modern Beijing's urban jungle, Co-directed with Wu Linfeng. You have to defend them, this film deserters of the plot, the uniqueness, the decisiveness. Not that Are wrong, just because they are loud. But they drown out so much.

Berlinale 2019 - competitive film view more images of 1 of 25Foto: By Amesen / Berlinale29.01.2019 09:18The Chinese Director Wang Quan'an returns with "Öndög" in the Mongolian Steppe, where his bear-winner...Back More

Angela Schanelecs film title is a quote from the Japanese cinema masters Yasujiro Ozu and his silent film "I was born but". Schanelec sees itself in the Tradition, she says, she looks like Ozu the "antithesis to the reality of Film as an invention, as pure Form". With your images, you create an Aura, which put the figures to the right, your inadequacy, your weakness.

Astrid's anger, for example, as the wheel refused his services, it is nonsensical, annoyed, is itself annoying. Or Overwork, when Philip gets a blood-poisoning, the children yells, puts you on the road. Take it left and clap the new Lover of the mother, as he leaves the house, a tennis player. Also, the Film struggles to Serenity, and then other sounds.

is So intense I rarely was home, but spoken in a Schanelec Film

"..." self-questioning, to Think in their own case, to the document of doubt. What are the art, the beautiful lie is able, in the face of death, this final collapse of meaning and Form? The wonderful Maren Eggert, the play often at Schanelec, talking in Rage and takes apart on the street for a Director, faced the sick in his Film, a dancer with a Die. Not, here the perfect mastery of the body, where the perfect mercy of his own body, because nothing says Astrid turns. On the contrary, the False and the True power is broken. She pushes the broken wheel, comes out of breath, lose yourself, the mastery that is becoming more and more of the body.

An Eruption. So fierce is rarely spoken in a Schanelec Film. And no mounting section, the a redeemed. Astrid does not know, also Schanelec makes no secret of her own indecision. Astrid is once again angry, in the teacher's room, once again she rears up. And with her in the Film, he breaks out, destroys one's silence to implode again.

Interactive map: All of the Berlinale cinemas and the program

"I was at home, but ..." tells of the sadness and how they are administered subcutaneously acts, from Berlin, from Kreuzberg, the post-war homes, the old apartment buildings. And of what constitutes a family, such as Astrid and the children stay together. "We want to be recognised. From time to time. Of someone. The Soul. If it is detected, it is changing. I think she is beautiful," it said in Schanelecs "afternoon". The Berlinale under Dieter Kosslick has given to the Directors of the Berlin school is always a stage, the films of Christian Petzold, Maren Ade, and Ulrich Köhler or Valeska Grisebach.

In countries such as France or the USA, it was estimated the German Nouvelle Vague more than in this country. The Venture, Schanelec with "I was at home, but..." to present for the first time in the competition, kosslick's last year. Also, if the Director remains a little repeated, a little to loyal.

The finding is a sensitive Plant. They will nest in the spaces.

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Angela Schanelec in the Berlinale competition, "I try to make breaks visible"

Andreas Busche

13.2., 9: 30 am and 18 PM (Friedrichstadt-Palast) and 12.30 PM (HdBF), 14.2., 15.30 (Odeon)