One Night in Berlin, 2011.
Written and Directed by Kivmars Bowling.
Starring Beate Malkus and Helmuth Meier-Lautenschläger.
SYNOPSIS:
A woman on the run has one night to find her estranged, homeless father on the streets of Berlin – under cover of darkness the secrets of their East German past come to light.
Family strife. It’s something that film-makers have always been able to use as a central arc in their stories and it’s something everyone can relate to, making it a particularly good creative well to extract from. Writer and director Kivmars Bowling does just this with German indie film, One Night in Berlin.
Bowling’s film, which was first shot in 2008 before briefly seeing some festival time in 2011, finally gets a release this year. This tells the story of Anna, a drug addict on the run from the police who has to track her estranged, and now homeless father down on the streets of Berlin. She’s after a key in his possession that will open a locker filled with her inheritance from her grandfather. Upon finding her father, he tells her the key is on the other side of Berlin, hidden. She reluctantly travels on foot with her father across Berlin in the dead of night. Anna’s resentment is soon brought to the fore as the pair reminisce through good and bad, and some of her fathers dark East German secrets are revealed.
The film is very intimate, almost entirely focusing on both Anna and her father as they make their way across the City as both their secrets are spilled. It’s a broken relationship that seems to get worse before it can even hope to get better. Beate Malkus as Anna, and Helmuth Meier-Lautenschlager as Volker are both excellent. They manage to hold together the film which puts all its eggs in the characterisation basket, and to a large extent, succeeds. Bowling never opts for needless camera flourishes or editing tricks, or becomes invasive, he simply lets the actors control the film.
The film looks good. It’s shot largely on hand-held in HD allowing the natural light of Berlin at night to create the colour pallet of the film. Berlin itself almost becomes a character. A place that looks cold and desolate through many of the streets and back allies they travel. It looks haunting, intimidating and beautiful all in one.
Even at a brisk 76 minutes, the film still feels like it needs trimming here and there, such is the task of resting on two actors for so long, and occasionally getting to the point of a particular arc of their respective and collective characters might have helped.
In all, One Night in Berlin is good film which allows a couple of strong actors to bring a simple, relatable idea to life.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Tom Jolliffe
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Originally published November 9, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
