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12.00 | Weltspiegel | Feature Film Competition
FIRST ON THE MOON | PJERVYJE NA LUNJE [7/10]*
Alexey Fedorchenko | Russia 2005 | 72 min (timed)
Faux-docu chronicle of (fictional) USSR 1930s space-program: Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver meets Peter Hyams' Capricorn One. Assembly of "archive" footage - most of it skilfully faked-up - and interviews with surviving "witnesses".
Federchenko maintains tone of engaging oddball weirdness throughout - many laugh-out-loud moments. Hands-down-highlight is 'film-within-film': fictional late-30s Soviet space movie, including a brief but remarkable sequence involving stop-motion animation of Cosmonauts bouncing across the lunar surface.
But undercurrent of propaganda-satire is serious: grim fates for the Cosmonauts, with proto-Gagarin hero Kharlamov a genuinely tragic figure by picture's end.  As Kharlamov, Boris Vlasov - who seemingly hasn't made a movie before - turns in a phenomenal performance, especially given the unusual circumstances which in theory should constrict his ability to develop a fully-rounded character. As with the movie itself, the more you think about Vlasov's achievement here, the greater it seems.
Final moments are striking, and would have been even more so if the title (aka First Men on the Moon) hadn't let the cat out of the bag. Animal-lovers beware: 1930s" experiments feature dog, monkey and pig getting some rough handling, though their discomfort is seemingly minor and short-lived. One or two dead spots make for a long-seeming 72 mins: hidden camera" footage allowing close scrutiny of characters is a contrivance that strains plausibility. Technically impressive, mind-blowingly ambitious (for a debut) and consistently original - though perhaps just one edit away from really hitting the mark.
[* originally rated 6/10, but upgraded the next day on reflection.]
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14.00 | Stadthalle | Feature Film Competition
WRONG SIDE UP | PŘIBĔHY OBYČENJNÉNO ILENTSTVÍ [5/10]
Petr Zelenka | Czech Republic 2005 | 113 min (timed)
Lukewarm, inconsequential romantic-comedy/drama about sad-sack 33-year-old airport worker Petr (Ivan Trojan), his tricky relationships both with women and with his ageing parents. Fabled "Czech humour" (i.e. mildly tragic situations played for ironic laughs) is thick on the ground, but foreign audiences may find it less than side-splitting. Chugs along amiably enough, but lead isn't especially engaging or sympathetic: as played by Miroslav Krobot, his father (who provided voiceovers for Communist-era propaganda newsreels) would perhaps have made a more original and effective focus.
But with main character sharing director's first name, quirkily unflattering semi-autobiography seems the order of the day: "Sometimes I think strange things happen around me," says protagonist, who reckons he's a "freak magnet." As these comments suggest, inconsequential pic is a bit too pleased with its own cuteness, trying just a little too hard - as in predictable, darkly comic twist-finale. Performances and TV-flat cinematography just OK. On the plus side, Karel Holas's score (though at times portentous) is occasionally used to striking effect, especially a sequence set to Sparks' Your Call is Important, Please Hold - telephone shenanigans featuring heavily in the coincidence/contrivance-happy plot.
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19.00 | Stadthalle | Closing Ceremony
Main competition jury got it spot on here, to my pleasant surprise: top prize indeed went to the best film shown in competition, Jan Cvitkovic's Gravehopping, runner up prize to the second best, Romanian Ryna, and a special mention to the third best, First on the Moon.
The evening wasn't all good news, however: both the press jury and audience award went to the one competition film I didn't rate at all, the Czech drabfest Something Like Happiness, which seems set for a looong career around the world's festivals.
I became even surer of the film's demerits when Slama, on stage with the other prize-winners for a photocall, did that pathetic "rabbit ears" V-sign thing behind festival director Roland Rust's head. Oh, how we laughed.
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20.30 | Stadthalle | Closing Film (nb : screenings continued on the Sunday)
SUMMER IN BERLIN | SOMMER VORM BALKON [7/10]
Andreas Dresen | Germany 2005 | 107 min
Despite a somewhat bland English-language title, and a seemingly-unpromising choice of subject-matter Summer in Berlin is a delight - going some way to justifying the lofty expectations held in many quarters for its director Dresen. Having only seen his 2002 sophomore effort Grill Point (Halbe Treppe), I was somewhat taken aback in Cottbus when a respected critic straight-facedly described him to me as "the great hope of German cinema." Halbe Treppe - literally 'halfway up the stairs' - struck me as indeed just that. Summer in Berlin is a step or two higher: and who knows how high the engaging, self-effacing Dresen may yet ascend?
The set-up is a little bit Curtis Hanson's In Her Shoes, a little bit Erick Zonca's Dream Life of Angels, focussing on two best friends who live on adjoining floors in the same Prenzlauer Berg apartment-block. Katrin is a brunette 39-year-old single mother Katrin (Inka Friedrich) who's finding it hard to find a job and simultaneously look after her pre-pubescent son Max. Nike (Nadja Uhl) is younger, blonder and more conventionally attractive. She works as a 'home help' for the elderly, her clients including frail, accordion-playing Helene (Christel Peters).
Katrin and Nike have been close for many years, and most evenings can be found enjoying a bottle of wine - or two - watching the world go by from Nike's balcony. But over the course of one hot summer, they find their bonds of friendship wearing thin - most of the frictions caused by the arrival on the scene of truck-driver Ronald (Andreas Schmidt), a rough-and-ready charmer whose torrid romantic history doesn't dissuade the smitten Nike one little bit. Katrin, meanwhile, is having a tougher time - and starts to go off the rails after hitting the bottle a little too hard...
Summer in Berlin - the German title is something like Summer from the Balcony - was written by 74-year-old Wolfgang Kohlhaase, whose long career stretches back more than five decades. But it's so fresh, complex and, above all, true, that you'd put money on it emanating from the pen of a woman roughly similar to Katrin in terms of age. Kohlhaase and Dresen manage the tricky task of giving both woman equal attention - Katrin the showier role, Nike the tougher one - and Friedrich and Uhl are utterly convincing in their three-dimensional, evolving roles.
Schmidt, meanwhile, does his best to steal the show as the charismatically sleazy Ronald - a character to whom we, just like Nike, keep giving the benefit of the doubt. And Peters is wonderful in her brief scenes as the hapless Helene - especially her moving final appearance, accordion grasped between her bony fingers.
This story will, of course, have most appeal for those who share our heroine's chronology and/or geography: it isn't accidental, of course, that Nike should be originally from the former East and Katrin from the West. But this is a small, absorbing tale which, as it gradually unfolds (and, indeed, improves), yields rich rewards for all kinds of audiences. Andreas Hofer's cinematography isn't going to win many awards, and Pascal Comelade's score is occasionally intrusive - but Dresen intersperses the latter with a selection of typically well-chosen 'found' tracks that provide nicely ironic counterpoint to the emotional ups and downs depicted on screen.
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Neil Young
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