Two documentaries have been selected for Berlinale Competition in 2024, and will compete, together with 18 fictional works, for this year’s Golden and Silver Bears. The films are Victor Kossakovsky’s Architecton (Germany/France) and Mati Dopi’s Dahomey (France/Senegal/Benin), both of which will world premiere.
“We are particularly proud of this year’s selection which achieves the best possible balance between auteurs we cherish and admire and powerful new voices in the independent cinema landscape. What drives the selection is of course the variety of the stories and their storytellers, but also and even more so the plurality of styles with the goal of showing the extensive possibilities of cinema language,” says Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director, of the overall selection.
Documentaries in Berlinale Competition
- Kossakovsky’s Architecton is described as “an extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete and its ancestor, stone. Victor Kossakovsky raises a fundamental question: how do we inhabit the world of tomorrow?”
- Mati Diop’s Dahomey is about the return of the royal treasures of the Kingdom of Dahomey to Benin, objects that were stolen during the colonial period and displayed in French museums.
Encounters
The competitive section Encounters comprises 15 films, all of which are world premieres and three of which are documentaries.
“Each film selected in Encounters challenges the predetermined categories with which we evaluate cinema. Surreal detections, ironic tales, sentimental comedies, observational documentaries, parables and therapeutic exercises are just some of the genres at play here. At the same time, all fifteen titles together offer an incredibly rich picture of the world of the 21st century, with all its beauty and tragedies”, says Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director.
- Direct Action by Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell (Germany/France) documents the everyday of one of the most important activist communities in France in order to see how the success of a radical protest movement can offer a path through the climate crisis facing us all.
- The debut feature doc Une Famille by Christine Angot (France) Debut film is an autobiographical work set within a family beset by incest.
- The Austrian Favoriten is directed by Ruth Beckermann (with Ilkay Idiskut). More than 60% of all children in Viennese elementary schools do not have German as their first language. At the same time, there is an acute shortage of teachers and tutors. These adverse conditions are the starting point for Ruth Beckermann’s documentary, in which the filmmaker accompanies a Viennese elementary school class over the course of three school years.
