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From February 8 to 16 the German Film Critics Association will present the third edition of the ‘Berlin Critics’ Week’. The annual film and debate series will be launched with a conference on the political dimensions of contemporary cinema and the question, whether its political messages seem to prevail over artistic forms. Amongst others, we will welcome Greek director and producer Athina Rachel Tsangari (“Attenberg”, “Chevalier”), film critic Joachim Lepastier (Cahiers du Cinéma), philosopher Alexander Garcìa Düttmann and Carlos Gerstenhauer, chief producer for cinema and first features at Bayerischer Rundfunk.

After the considerable attention our first conference on the state of German cinema drew in February 2016 an opening conference will become a recurring part of the Berlin Critics’ Week.

Lost in Politics

Do films have to be political?

Or: On contemporary cinema, how it risks being taken over by content and why it is afraid of art

Films defending the weak and presenting moral heroes are ubiquitous. Maybe today there is a real demand for this kind of filmmaking, as it is being celebrated and awarded with countless prizes. Take for example Jacques Audiard’s dramatic refugee thriller “Dheepan”, that won Cannes in 2015, the essay film on Lampedusa, Gianfranco Rosi’s “Fuocoammare”, that triumphed in Berlin 2016 or this year‘s Golden Palm winner in Cannes, Ken Loach’s “I, Daniel Blake”, about a carpenter marginalized by the welfare bureaucracy.

Among the films with a political message we find boring and exciting, outstanding and exasperating ones. Yet all of them have one thing in common: they are being marketed as relevant and important. That also poses a challenge to film critics who far too often take up the political argument handed to them by the film and its defenders instead of actually talking about cinema: the political headline takes the place of aesthetic discourse.

On the eve of the film event that is routinely referred to as the most political of the big festivals, we will inquire the value of the political in cinema and ask how it is possible to make films politically instead of turning cinema into politics.

How seriously do films and their creators take their political engagement? Is a film only important if its topic is political? Or is that only a condition for it to be financed in the first place in a system of subsidies awarded by committees? And especially: what effect does it have on the art of filmmaking if cinema defines itself by thematic content? What does that mean for its most elementary means of expression: the artistic form?

Berlin Critics’ Week

The opening conference will be followed by the third Berlin Critics’ Week, a selection of seven screenings and debates. Contemporary films presented at Hackesche Höfe cinema will spark interdisciplinary discussions on cultural politics and aesthetics. Amongst the guests of the past editions were Richard Brody, film critic for the “New Yorker”, artist Heba Amin, festival directors Charles Tesson (Semaine de la Critique) and Hans Hurch (Viennale), producer Paulo Branco, filmmakers Philippe Grandrieux and Denis Côté, as well as actress Ariane Labed.

The Berlin Critics’ Week is organized by the German Film Critics Association.