List of films by BIPOC women directors in Berlinale2022

Jet Lag by Zheng Lu Xinyuan (Mandarin, Burmese, English, Subtitles: English)

“The true meaning of family is so very elusive, for the director, for her grandmother, for her girlfriend and their social group too; as they converse in Mandarin and English, there is love and solidarity, but also pain.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202204920

#jetlag

My small land by Emma Kawawada (Japanese, Turkish, Kurdish, Subtitles: English, German)

““It apparently looks like the place where I was born. I don’t remember at all. But I do remember getting a rock for my birthday. The prettiest rock in the village. Sarya has lived in Japan since she was five. She pretends to be German to her friends, which is easier than telling the truth. In reality, Sarya’s parents are Kurds who travelled from Turkey to Japan as refugees.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202214036

#refugee

The Apartment with Two Women by (Korean, Subtitles: English)

“In her debut film, director Kim Se-in draws an incisive psychological portrait of two women who become entangled in an all-consuming struggle for recognition and a better life. “

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202205192

#betterlife

Bimileui eondeok by Lee Ji-eun (Korean, Subtitles: English)

“As class president, Myung-eun sets up a letterbox for wishes and secrets. (..) While carefully keeping her family a secret, Myung-eun discovers an ability to connect with the world through writing competitions, pouring hours upon hours of research into each of her essays.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202203673

#family

No Simple Way Home by Akuol de Mabior (English, Dinka, Arabic, Subtitles: English)

“Akuol de Mabior was 16 when her father was killed in a helicopter crash – just three weeks after his inauguration as Sudan’s vice president. John Garang de Mabior, who had led the liberation movement for over twenty years, is now revered as the founding father of South Sudan.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202204998

#history

Sab changa si by Teresa A Braggs (Hindi, English, Kannada, Urdu, Subtitles: English)

“Set in the backdrop of the nationwide 2019–2020 student protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in India—filmed in the city of Bangalore—Sab changa si is an intimate documentary on friendships, language, love, youth, resistance, and identity of class, caste, religion, and gender. In this film, the political is personal.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202212290

#politicalispersonal

Mis dos voces by Lina Rodriguez (Spanish, English, Subtitles: English)

“Two women from Colombia and one woman from Mexico today live in Canada. They tell filmmaker Lina Rodriguez, herself from Colombia and based in Toronto, why they emigrated and what they experienced, how they learned English, what they found easy and what they still find difficult today. “

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202201991

#voiceover

Normalität 1–10 by Hito Steyerl (German, English)

“From 1999 to 2001, Hito Steyerl made a series of short videos, each with the same title: Normalität 1–X. As she comments at the end of the third part, it was never planned as a series, but what other reaction was possible at a time and place where normality had come to stand for violence? Steyerl passes the thematic baton from each part to the next with characteristic acuity, cutting a zig-zagging path through Germany and Austria on grainy VHS that ends at the 10-year anniversary of reunification, although there is little to celebrate. “

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202213945

#normality

Scala by Ananta Thitanat (Thai, Subtitles: English)

“As the director narrates in impassive voiceover, the Scala has recently ceased operations, the last of the three great cinemas built in Bangkok in the 1960s to close its doors to the public. (..) As the space empties out ever further, it is perversely filled by something else: an almost unbearable sense of melancholy that infects director, staff and audience alike, at a life, at a culture, at a community that will soon disperse, even if its importance remains undimmed, here and elsewhere too.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202203367

#de-construction

Skřivánci na niti by Jiří Menzel (Czech, Subtitles: English)

“During the early years of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, an industrial junkyard near Kladno serves as a re-education camp for “bourgeois elements”. In addition to recalcitrant intellectuals, a group of female prisoners spend their time dismantling and melting down undesirable relics like crucifixes and typewriters to make “peaceful steel” for the good of socialism.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202202219

#socialism

Sonne by Kurdwin Ayub (Kurdish, German, Subtitles: English)

“In a moment of ordinary madness, three girlfriends decide to shoot a burqa music video. Yesmin is Kurdish and wears a headscarf, Bella describes herself as “half-Yugo(slavian)” and Nati “comes from Austria”. What is a “homeland”? This is the question that Kurdwin Ayub – who fled from Iraq to Austria in 1991 – posed unabashedly in direct cinema style in her celebrated feature-length documentary debut Paradies! Paradies!. “

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202202785

#homeland

If from Every Tongue It Drips by Sharlene Bamboat (Urdu, English, Tamil, Subtitles: English)

“If from Every Tongue It Drips is a hybrid documentary film that uses the framework of quantum physics to explore the ways that personal relationships and political movements at once transcend and challenge time, space, identity, and location. (..) Simultaneously, through the poet and the camera operator’s daily lives, interconnections between British colonialism, Indian nationalism, and the impact of both on contemporary poetry, dance, and music in South Asia are revealed.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202201216

#queerpoetry

Wir könnten genauso gut tot sein by Natalia Sinelnikova (German, Polish, Subtitles: English)

“In Natalia Sinelnikova’s feature film debut, the microcosm of the high-rise provides the setting for a timeless dystopian experiment. At the film’s centre is the power of fear – a self-replicating system that can shatter social cohesion, and has long dictated current social and political discourses.”

https://www.berlinale.de/en/programme/programme/detail.html?film_id=202202508

#society