Teddy Award Berlin - Der queere Filmpreis

L’ÂGE ATOMIQUE follows what begins as a pleasure-seeking journey into Parisian night life and ends in abandonment and disillusionment in a remote forest at dawn. What are Victor and Rainer looking for when they take a train into the seemingly claustrophobic centre of Paris at night? The artificial paradise of a night club, amusement, sex, drugs, but also oblivion. Full of profound sadness and gloom, this is not the Paris of rationality and light, but a latently dangerous place where [...] more

Frédérick runs a tree nursery. For sixty years this elderly man has not only cultivated seeds and seedlings but also harbours a secret. His wife and his eldest son are the only ones who know the truth. But then, Frédérick’s son dies; the relationship between father and son was not always free of conflict and because of this Frédérick decides to open up to others close to him and admit something he couldn’t bring himself to mention before. [...] more

Enzo returns to Genoa after 14 years of imprisonment. He goes about the city, which has changed after many years. In a little house in the old town ghetto, his companion Mary waits for him. They exchanged letters and messages while he was away. This poetic portrait of a criminal and his transsexual partner is at the same time a portrait of Genoa, especially the areas shaped by immigrants. If we never tire of seeing love stories in the cinema, it must be to do with the unfathomable secret of [...] more

A couple spends their last morning together in the bathroom. One of them is about to leave the country. The other has decided to stay. But who will take care of the cat? Interview with Maria José San Martín A couple / a daily situation / a seperation. In leaving out many words you open the situation to a brider extent. How much scripted was your film / how much change during the process of shooting and editing appeared- let us know about your approach and process. [...] more

Alvaro's world is one of rivers and streams. This remote island off the Argen tinean coast is where he ekes out a humble existence. Fishing and reed-cutting are his only sources of income. Out here, it is as if time has stood still. Alvaro's homosexuality makes him just as much of an outsider as does his love of books. The only link between this forlorn part of the world in the middle of the wide ocean and the city on the mainland is skipper El Turu's little boat, "El León", [...] more

Pablo and Tina are brothers. Their parents separated while the two boys were still young. Tina's real name is Tino, but when he moved in with his father, he started to have a sexual relationship with him, changed his sex and became his father's lover. A few years later her father leaves her and Tina no longer feels attracted to men... from now on she hates them. Pablo writes film scripts and makes films. He is in love with Juan, a charming boy who returns Pablo's love. Unlike his [...] more

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself faced with reprisals, humiliation [...] more

Father and daughter are getting ready for a grand procession through the village, but things are strained between them. Dad has arranged for his thirteen-year-old daughter, Maria to play the Virgin Mary. Maria doesn’t want to, but her father insists. He hopes that this will heal her. Maria has no idea if she wants to be healed – and from what, anyway? Her father refuses to back down and Maria prepares herself for the role she has to play. But she will make the ground rules. This means [...] more

Everyone knows his trademark grey ponytail, fans and sunglasses. Karl Lagerfeld has long since succeeded in turning himself into an icon. His persona is just as dazzling as his fashion. But who is the real man behind the sunglasses? Karl Lagerfeld has long refused to provide an answer to this question. Apart from recent interviews, Lagerfeld has never discussed his private life before this extensive cinematic portrait. Working in close collaboration with his protagonist, director Rodolphe [...] more

Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Norman René, Klaus Nomi … the list of New York artists who died of AIDS over the last thirty years is countless, and the loss immeasurable. In LAST ADRESS, filmmaker Ira Sachs uses images of the exteriors of the houses, where these artists were living at the time of their deaths to mark the disappearance of a generation. This mournful film is both a remembrance of that loss, as well as an evocation of the continued presence of their work in our [...] more

As soon as twenty-two-year old Brad Lyle’s mother discovers that her son is gay she denounces him as a loser and throws him out of the house. Suicidal Brad drifts away from his suburban home in El Monte towards downtown Los Angeles. Like Alice discovers her wonderland, so Brad embarks on a queer initiation and soon finds himself plunged into the iridescent, vibrant and completely theatrical world of vogue balls. At first this underground counter-culture that exists beyond the realm of the [...] more

Alex is studying philology at Bucharest University. In order to spend more time with her girlfriend, Kiki, she decides to give up her room at the student’s hostel and move into the house where Kiki lives. The landlady is an irascible old dragon, but this doesn’t bother Alex. It means a lot to her that she can now get to know Kiki better. The girls’ friendship goes through a number of phases – from purely matey behaviour to more tender exchanges. Alex is the quieter and [...] more

Sergej Paradjanov recounts an old Georgian legend with his imaginative fantasy. The legend is about a fortress on the border whose walls are penetrated again and again. A fortune teller prophesies that a young warrior must be walled into the fortress to make it impenetrable. The fortune teller is the former love of a peasant who is freed by his lord and looses his wife. His son takes the prophesy upon himself, sacrifices himself and becomes a folk hero. “I am the only Soviet director [...] more

In 1953 Herbert Tobias was the first German photographer to work for Vogue in Paris. He was expelled from France in the same year however on account protesting during a raid at a gay venue in the French capital. Success and failure were always Herbert Tobias’ twin companions. Having taken his first photographs as a soldier in the German army, after the war he worked as an actor and fell in love. After coming out in 1950, he escaped arrest by going to Paris where he found refuge at Willy [...] more

Versailles in July 1789. There’s growing disquiet at the court of King Louis XVI: the people are defiant and the country is on the brink of revolution. Behind the scenes at the royal palaces emergency plans are being made. Although nobody believes that this spells the end of the established order everyone is talking of escape, including Queen Marie Antoinette and her entourage. One of Marie Antoinette’s ladies- in-waiting is Sidonie Laborde who, as the Queen’s reader, is a member [...] more

Manu is 20 years old when he arrives in Paris to look for a job. Initially, he moves in with his sister, Julie, who rents a room in a sleazy hotel. Julie's life revolves around music. She is training to be an opera singer and tries hard to partition herself off from her ebullient brother. Manu is a night bird. One night he meets Adrien, an extrovert and cultivated gay doctor in his early 50s with whom he strikes up a carefree, platonic friendship. Adrien soon introduces Manu to his [...] more

Antoine arrives in Tangiers from Europe. He is on an assignment to supervise the setting up of an audiovisual centre, his task being to expedite the process. However, Antoine is secretly hoping that he will find Cécile here. His quietly obsessive love for her has endured for more than thirty years. Cécile has forgotten Antoine. She emigrated to north Africa and has since endured the trials and tribulations of marital routine with Nathan, a doctor of Moroccan-Jewish extraction [...] more

LITTLE JOE is a deeply personal portrait and the result of an adult daughter exploring her father's 40-year career as a legendary sex symbol with beginnings in the mythic world of Andy Warhol's Factory. Joe Dallesandro embodied the image of the “new man”. He was the heterosexual man everyone wanted to be, not only physically compelling, but also an object of desire coveted by men and women alike. The Valentino of the underground, Joe was the Little Joe of Lou Reed's “Walk [...] more

The story of a sexual awakening, combined with elements of traditional Chinese opera. A film which also describes the threats - such as homophobia, xenophobia and Aids - to which the protagonist feels exposed.  more

Two girls, Ari and Oona, dream of breaking free. The Baron, frontman of their favourite band ‘Tier’ sings: “We sense everything, you won’t fool us. We are desire, lust and instinct …” But in the girls’ respective families, nobody feels, and nobody talks. Ari’s mother refuses to admit that her kids have grown up, and her brother terrorises the family. Lolita-like Ari makes up for the affection she misses at home by having sex with grown up men and [...] more

The life and work of Langston Hughes in the 1930s and 1940s during the renaissance of Jazz and Blues in Harlem, is a prime example for the identity of the gay, black artist. Poetical texts by Essex Hemphill interact with dramatised sequences and archive material, to produce a bond betwenn the stylistic levels of the film.

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Luis leaves his partner and flies to Berlin from Spain for a weekend of lighthearted partying, experimenting with drugs and casual physical encounters. He meets Viktor, a mysterious man who holds a fascinating, disconcerting attraction. Struggling with his inhibitions about being overpowered by a stranger, Luis submits to Viktor with a trusting passion. Shortly afterwards, Luis is confused with a missing Greek named Dimitri who is being desperately sought by his sister and cousin. Although Dimitri [...] more

Jakob is really a woman, but the superstitious villagers are obsessed with the idea that Jakob has to be a man in order to protect the village from a great calamity. Jakob has never been in any doubt about this destiny. She lives an isolated existence on a lonely farm. One day Jakob takes on Tom at the farm. Tentatively, the two come closer. The villagers are not at all happy about this development. A friendship has to be avoided at all costs. more

Barbara Hammer’s collage of photographs, documents, interviews, lyrical passages and dramatised scenes recalls the lives of two surrealist artists and lesbian Resistance fighters whose work and whose fate has largely been forgotten: Claude Cahun (whose real name was Lucie Schwob, 1894–1954) and her girlfriend and lover Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe, 1892–1972). Claude Cahun (writer Marcel Schwob’s niece) and Marcel Moore were halfsisters. They fell in love around 1910 [...] more

Lima, Peru. Darkness.
Makuti, a middle-aged single mother is desperately searching for her nineteen-year-old daughter Mía who left home to work on the streets. Makuti and her daughter are no ordinary women: they are transsexuals and their language is known as Loxoro. This film tells the story of a search that crosses boundaries into a remote and unknown world where the unfamiliar is the familiar. more