The race for the Bears is still wide open, even though Rose, starring Sandra Hüller, has already established itself as the favourite for some. But that could still change over the next few days...
A new trend is that everyone, absolutely everyone involved in the film is now called onto the stage. Previously, this was reserved for German entries, where half the audience ended up on stage, but now the entire crew is called up for virtually every film. It's certainly a nice gesture, but it means that the Q&As are shorter because it takes a long time for everyone to rush up the steps and hug the director.
In the case of The Blood Countess , however, I don't know how many people were on stage after the film, as I fled the cinema before Lars Eidinger made his first appearance...
Árru
The Panorama Audience Award will also be exciting, when the world's largest film jury, the audience, chooses its favourite film. Several strong films are already in the running, including the Norwegian film Árru, which premiered on Monday.
The film by choreographer and director Elle Sofe Sara is set in the Sami community, which lives from reindeer herding. But their livelihood is threatened by a mining project. When reindeer herder Maia asks her uncle Lemme, a lawyer, for help and he returns to the family, old secrets come to light and threaten to tear the community apart. Maia has to make a difficult decision...
What makes this film so special is not only the insight it provides into the lives of the Sami people, but also the use of joik, traditional music. And that makes this film a very special experience – a hot contender for the Panorama Audience Award.
Four minus three
Many films at the festival revolve around loss and grief, such as Everybody Digs Bill Evans and Se eu fosse vivo... vivia, and find very different ways of telling their stories (even if the spaceship at the end of Se eu fosse vivo... vivia was beyond my comprehension).
One of the most moving contributions to this theme is certainly Four Minus Three. Barbara loses her husband Heli and her two children in a car accident. In her grief, she, who works as a clown in a children's hospital, remembers her life with her family and how she met the clown Heli. Valerie Pachner delivers an intense acting tour de force as Barbara, which makes this film so powerful.
The film is based on the true story of Austrian Barbara Pachl-Eberhart, who wrote about it in her book Vier minus drei. Wie ich nach dem Verlust meiner Familie zu einem neuen Leben fand (Four Minus Three : How I Found a New Life After Losing My Family). She was also visibly moved after the film, appearing on stage with the cast.
