What is the Argentine short film that won the Golden Bear in Berlin with the fantasy of a woman and a “little tree” that sells dollars?

Argentine cinema A strange movementby Francisco Lezama, brought home this Saturday the Golden Bear from the short film jury at the 74th edition of the Berlinale.

It is a 22-minute sitcom about the economic crisis in Argentina, set in Buenos Aires in 2019.

The protagonist works as a security guard at a museum and uses a pendulum to predict a sharp increase in the value of the dollar.

He is fired from his job and receives compensation with which he can buy dollars and begins to fantasize about a “little tree” who buys and sells foreign currency on the street.

The director speaks

The Argentine director Francisco Lezama rejects the widespread prejudice of the short film as an “educational genre”.

He explained that in his short film he wanted to address what he believed was an economic crisis in Argentina, “ridden by dollar savings.”

According to him, what is happening in the country with politics and the economy is – like his film – “a sort of sad business comedy”. .

With this change he buys dollars and begins to live a different life than he would have if he hadn’t bought them.

The story features two characters who seemingly have a connection, but that’s not the case, because in the end it’s just a girl with dollars and a boy without dollars.

Other awards at the Berlinale

A documentary with fantasy touches that denounces the consequences of colonialism, Dahomeyof the French-Senegalese Mati Diop, took the Golden bear at the 74th edition of the Berlinale which also awarded as best director to the Dominican Nelson Carlo de los Santos for Pepper.

Both films use fantasy and also have in common the fact that they propose a reflection on the decolonization of Africa and America, a theme that raised the awareness of the jury chaired by the Mexican-Kenyan actress and producer Lupita Nyong’o.

Dahomey documents the return to Benin by France of 26 works of art remaining in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. He uses his imagination to give voice to one of those sculptures, but he also focuses on the debate that is generated among the young people of that African country on the meaning of this restitution.

As for Pepperis an even more radical and experimental fiction, which uses the ghost of a hippopotamus that belonged to the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar to talk about the traces of colonialism.

He Grand Jury Prizethe second most important in the ranking was for A traveler’s needby the Korean Hong Sang-soo, a playful and exciting film with a minimalist plot starring the French actress Isabelle Huppert.

The American Sebastian Stan won Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance for his work in a different manby Aaron Schimberg, who gives life to a man with a disfigured face who undergoes a medical experiment to start a new life.

Is that of distribution It was for the British Emily Watson, one of the terrible nuns of the convent of Little things like this by Tim Mielants, the opening film which put the spotlight on abuse within the Church in Ireland.

One of the most applauded awards at the Berlinale Palace was that of best documentary For No other landcreated by an Israeli-Palestinian collective made up of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and screened in the Panorama section.

The jury stressed that they had spent years “responsibly” and “accurately” documenting the demolition of homes, schools and playgrounds in a West Bank town, in what they described as “a true catastrophe for Palestinian families.” .

Calls for a ceasefire in Gaza featured in the speeches of several winners and jury members, some of whom wore Palestinian protest badges and scarves.

Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko, a member of the jury, also called for an end to the war that has just completed two years in her country.