If it were a normal year, one would have to talk about a desired streamlining of the festival.

This time, the Berlinale wants to show 260 long and short films, spread over nine sections, a decrease of one-fifth compared to 2020. This makes the selection more compact and clearer; manage ten days.

Andrew Kilb

Feature correspondent in Berlin.

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But this is not a normal year.

For the second time, the date of the film festival is in the middle of a pandemic wave.

The Berlinale, which only got a new management duo three years ago, is fighting for its existence.

Basically, the festival did not take place last year, because the "industry event" at the beginning of March, at which the bears were also awarded, was nothing more than an internal film viewing for critics and industry people, followed in June by a kind of follow-up ("summer special ") in the open air followed.

There was no Berlinale atmosphere at either event.

If the film festival were canceled again, for example because the spread of the Omicron variant in Germany got out of control, the festival would be on the brink.

Only half of the seats are allocated

But that is not the case for the time being. Instead, the Berlinale is preparing for a reduced appearance in presence mode. A new hygiene concept is intended to prevent the public from being infected, access to the cinemas is only available to those who have been boosted and who have been vaccinated twice with a daily corona test. Only half of the seats can be occupied, and the entire festival program is squeezed into one week, followed by four public days with repeats. Parties and receptions are cancelled, and the stars make brief appearances on the red carpet.

So there can be no talk of normality. The Berlinale, one could say, is fleeing the cancellation in a state of emergency. Under the circumstances, it is reassuring that, at first glance, the competition's program does not appear any more lackluster than it has been for the last two years. With François Ozon (whose Fassbinder remake “Peter von Kant” opens the festival on February 16), Paolo Taviani, Claire Denis, the Austrian Ulrich Seidl and the Swiss Ursula Meier, a handful of big names are represented. There are two contributions from Germany, Andreas Dresen's court drama "Rabiye Kurnaz against George W. Bush" and Nicolette Krebitz' "AEIOU - The Fast Alphabet of Love", one each from Canada, China and South Korea, and the film country Indonesia is with Kamila Andini's " Nana" represented for the first time in the Berlinale competition.

The great American films are screened at the Lido

The other two sections in the main program also sound promising on paper.

In the "Berlinale Special Gala", Isabelle Huppert and Lars Eidinger appear together (in Laurent Larivière's film "À propos de Joan"), the Italian doyen Dario Argento shows "Occhiali neri", and Maggie Peren's "The Passport Forger" tells the story of a survivor in the Nazi empire.

The "Encounters" series presents documentaries by Ruth Beckermann ("Mutzenbacher") and Arnaud des Pallières alongside feature films by Bertrand Bonello ("Coma") and Peter Strickland ("Flux Gourmet").

The question is whether that is enough to keep the Berlinale on par with the other two world cinema festivals.

It's not about competing with Cannes, which can still draw on the aura of its name even in a weak year like 2021. But in the duel with Venice for second place in the rankings, the Berlinale lost its feathers. The big American prestige productions have almost always been shown at the Lido in recent years, most recently - under similar hygiene requirements as in Berlin - Denis Villeneuve's "Dune" and Jane Campion's "The Power of the Dog". There is nothing comparable in the program of the film festival.

So far, the Berlinale has compensated for this lack of glamor with a broad impact.

It not only shows world cinema, it also attracts a world audience, thousands of whom flock to the German capital in February.

It won't happen this year.

But the Berlin viewers also have to be content with half the space available.

The festival thus loses its mainstay without its free leg becoming stronger.

Because only as a mass event can it keep up with the competition.

The reduced Berlinale is therefore only the second worst of all possible options.

Let's hope it doesn't get any worse.