What's New - Festival Highs

Berlinale's foray into India with a diverse short film program

Team OGS

08-November-2018

For many years now, the Berlinale has extended its presence beyond the festival season with specially curated programmes, known as Berlinale Spotlight. This year-round, two Indian shorts will find their way back to the country. In November and December 2018, Berlinale short films will be travelling to India for the sixth year running, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata.

The program will present a total of four short film programmes made up of outstanding films that screened in the Berlinale Shorts and Generation sections, selected by Maike Mia Höhne, curator of Berlinale Shorts. These four packages will be presented at the DIALOGUES: Calcutta International LGBT Film & Video Festival (Nov 22 – 25), the Kalpanirjhar International Short Fiction Film Festival (Dec 4 – 8), and the TENT Little Cinema International Festival (Dec 10-15). The festivals, apart from being supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata, are in cooperation with the local partners Sappho for Equality, Pratyay Gender Trust, Kalpanirjhar Foundation and TENT (Theatre for Experiments in New Technologies, Kolkata).

Since premiering at the Berlinale, many of the films have been successfully presented at festivals worldwide but will be screened in India for the first time. These include award-winners of the 2018 Golden Bear for Best Short Film, Ines Moldavsky’s ‘The Men Behind the Wall’; the Silver Bear Jury Prize (Short Film), Samuel Ishimwe’s ‘Imfura’; and the Audi Short Film Award, Réka Bucsi’s ‘Solar Walk’.

A still from Ines Moldavsky’s ‘The Men Behind the Wall’

These films are part of a wide theme of packages titled Queer Mix, People Only Sing When They Are in Love, Staging Reality and Experimental Essay Reality. Apart from international titles from the world over, the Shorts program will showcase Payal Kapadia’s ‘And What is the Summer Saying’ (India, 23 min) and Jayisha Patel’s ‘Circle’.

Jayisha Patel’s Circle
2018, UK, Canada, India, 15 min, Hindi, 

This film tells the poignant and personal story of 13-year-old Khushboo, weaving together the horror of her gang-rape, and emotional abuse at the hands of her grandmother who orchestrated her rape, and her child marriage to an unknown man. As Khushboo changes hands from one abuser to another, we delve deeper into her grandmother’s story – to where this circle traces back. The project has an online, interactive component - a web platform to reach out to include the myriad narratives of victims of sexual violence, creating a space for these voices to interact and form bonds of solidarity, a constantly evolving platform, with these shared stories, coming together to re-write the universal narrative of sexual violence.


A still from 'Circle'

Payal Kapadia’s And What is the Summer Saying
2018, 23 min, Marathi, B&W

Namdeo has learnt to live off the forest from his father. He stares at the treetops, searching for honey. The wind blows and afternoon descends on the small village by the jungle. Women of the village whisper little secrets of their lost loves. Never seen, and only heard. A strange smoke emits from the ground, like a dream of a time gone by.