‘Isle of Dogs’ to Open Berlin Film Festival. But Has it Lost Its Way?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/movies/berlin-film-festival-isle-of-dogs.html

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BERLIN — The Berlin Film Festival, or Berlinale as it is known here, is set to open on Thursday with the world premiere of Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion film, “Isle of Dogs.” The genre-defying fable — which centers on a group of canines in a dystopian Japan and features the voices of Bryan Cranston and Edward Norton — is the highest-profile feature in the 10-day festival, which will showcase nearly 400 films and is expected to include 500,000 theater visits.

The event has been clouded by a debate about its direction under Dieter Kosslick, who has headed the festival since 2001. In an interview, he welcomed suggestions for improvement and argued that complaints about his programming choices were largely a matter of differing tastes.

This year’s Berlinale is lighter on big names than some past editions, but is to include contributions from Steven Soderbergh, Gus Van Sant, Isabel Coixet and Christian Petzold, a German filmmaker who is a festival favorite. The program also features the directorial debuts of the actors Rupert Everett and Idris Elba.

The German filmmaker Tom Tykwer, known for directing the 1998 cult movie “Run Lola Run” and, most recently, cocreating the hit television series “Babylon Berlin,” is leading the international jury.

The Berlinale is a sprawling event — not only geographically, with venues stretching across the German capital, but also in terms of focus. It includes sections about “culinary cinema,” centered on films about food; television series; and works created by indigenous peoples around the world, as well as a large film market.

Some critics have argued in recent years that this expansiveness has come at the cost of curatorial selectiveness and prestige, causing the festival to fall behind the two other major European festivals, Cannes and Venice. The debate about the festival’s direction has been especially pointed this year; Mr. Kosslick has already said that he will step down in May 2019 when his contract ends.

In November, 79 members of the German film industry signed an open letter calling for a “new start” for the festival after Mr. Kosslick’s departure, and for a gender-balanced, international selection committee to be created to help find his replacement or replacements. “The change in leadership offers the opportunity to renew and purify the festival’s program,” the letter read. Its signatories included many of the biggest directors in German cinema, among them Fatih Akin, whose “In the Fade” won this year’s Golden Globe for best foreign-language film.

The letter has been widely discussed in the German media. Speaking last week in the festival’s office, Mr. Kosslick seemed tired of addressing the criticism. He said that he was open to discussing changes to the festival, but was disappointed that no concrete suggestions had been made. “If there is no discussion, then I cannot do anything with that. I cannot criticize my own festival,” he added.

Mr. Kosslick pointed out that two of the five Oscar nominees for best foreign-language film — “A Fantastic Woman” and “On Body and Soul” — competed at last year’s festival. The quality of the films, he argued, “is a matter of opinion.”

He said that pleasing the audience had been one of his primary goals since taking over the festival in 2001. “This has worked pretty well,” he added. Attendance has doubled in the past 15 years, he said, and a recent survey commissioned by the festival and carried out by an independent polling firm had found high satisfaction among attendees.

Berlin is also the most politically minded of the three main European festivals. Mr. Kosslick said that, in an era of rising populism, he sought for his programming to “show what the world really looks like.”

This year’s lineup includes several films about migrants, like Mr. Petzold’s “Transit,” an adaptation of a novel about World War II refugees in France that will be screening in competition; and “Eldorado,” a documentary addressing the economic causes and social consequences of Europe’s refugee crisis.

Mr. Kosslick said that this year’s festival had been shaped by the #MeToo movement, which he said “overlays everything.” He praised the festival’s various initiatives for combating sexual violence and gender inequality, and he has said elsewhere that the festival had excluded several films from consideration because people associated with them faced accusations of sexual misconduct.

This week, however, a South Korean actress held an anonymous news conference accusing the festival of hypocrisy for including “Human, Space, Time and Human,” the latest film by South Korean director Kim Ki-duk, in the Panorama section despite her claims that he hit her and forced her into unwanted sex scenes during the filming of his 2013 film “Moebius.” Prosecutors later dropped the sex abuse charges for lack of evidence, and Mr. Kim was ordered to pay a fine for slapping the actress, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.

In an emailed statement, Mr. Kosslick wrote that the festival would “eschew prejudgment” and go ahead with the screening, but that “the Berlinale condemns all kinds of violence on set — be it of sexual or other origin.”

Plans for the festival after Mr. Kosslick’s departure remain unclear; his successor is due to be selected this year.

In any case, Mr. Kosslick, has few regrets. “The audience has stayed loyal to the Berlinale over 68 years, and grown, especially in the last 17 years,” he said last week. “And that makes me happy.”