German Films Invade San Francisco

Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, now in its 15th year, opens Friday
By: Thalia Gigerenzer

In a scene in “Autumn Gold,” a man walks shakily up to a circular plate in the Lahti Stadium in Finland during the World Masters Athletics Championship for senior athletes. Letting go of his walker, he takes a few wobbly steps, clutching a discus in his right hand. As he swings his arm back, his face grows determined; he tosses the discus into the blue sky. He is 100 years old.

Jan Tenhaven’s documentary about five senior athletes between 80 and 100 years old is one of 26 feature films in this year’s Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, organized by the Goethe Institute of San Francisco. The newest incarnation of the Bay Area’s largest festival of German-language films is glitzier, younger — with Cambodian-born, 25-year-old Sophoan Sorn at the helm — and more internationally focused. The festival, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary, opens on Friday at the Castro Theatre and runs through Oct. 28 with a packed program, featuring at least nine attending directors and actors.

“This year’s program really highlights diversity,” said festival director Sophoan Sorn, who joined the staff three months ago, “We have roughly a dozen countries represented this year.” And his hiring, he said, signaled “a new era” in the festival’s programming.

Joining “Autumn Gold” in this year’s special German documentary section is “The Woman with the 5 Elephants,” directed by Vadim Jendreyko. It is an intimate portrait of the famed 85-year-old Russian-German translator of Dostoyevsky, Swetlana Geier. The festival’s opening film, “Vincent Wants to Sea,” is about a young man with Tourette syndrome who embarks on the road trip of his life. The festival's centerpiece film, Feo Aladag’s “When We Leave,” which touches on the international theme of honor killings, is Germany’s entry for the Academy Awards this year.

With its move from January to the busy month of October, along with new sponsors like BMW, an entirely new festival team and a sleek new corporate identity program, the festival is no longer the hidden gem it used to be. “There’s a misconception that German films are too serious,” said Sorn, who decided to hold the final day of this year's festival in the techie hub of San Jose, instead of the usual Mendocino.

The films, though, hardly shy away from complicated topics. “The Woman with the 5 Elephants” follows Swetlana Geier, who left war-torn Ukraine in 1944 for Germany and is on her first trip back to her childhood home. The filmmaker weaves together greater political themes with everyday scenes of Geier translating and doing housework.

It’s in the most intimate, seemingly everyday scenes that the film is most striking. In one scene, Geier irons a white, lacy piece of fabric while ruminating on the joys of walking through fresh snow and the relationship between the written text and textile. “One first breaks a fabric and then one fills it out,” Geier says of the intricate lace pattern. “Such things are very human.” 

Jan Tenhaven’s “Autumn Gold,” which will have its U.S. premiere at the festival, chronicles the preparations of five spirited athletes for the World Masters Athletics Championship in Finland.

“Most Western nations are facing this issue of an aging society, but it’s typically tackled in a negative way. I wanted to show that old age is full of opportunities,” Tenhaven said.

The Goethe Institute, part of a group of institutes funded by the German government to promote German culture and language, has long been a fixture in San Francisco. Goethe Institutes began springing up across the US after World War II, as Germany tried to change its international image.

And while the Bay Area boasts a large German community, promoting German-language films has not always been easy.

The previous director and founder of the festival, Ingrid Eggers, remembers when the festival first started — at a time when the San Francisco International Film Festival favored French films. Eggers remembers opening the festival with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s particularly melodramatic film “Martha.”

“People walked out during the screening,” Eggers remembered.

Eggers had to leave the Goethe Institute last year when she reached Germany's mandatory retirement age of 65 — although she had hoped to continue helping out with the festival. She now runs her own mini-film festival, German Gems, which debuted last year at the Castro Theatre to an audience of about 1,800.

Eggers says the splintering of German film festivals should not be seen as competition, but rather an asset to the Bay Area’s tradition of independent films.

“I think San Francisco is definitely a place that can digest two German film festivals,” Eggers said.