'Stay Awake' Receives Special Jury Mention in Berlin International Film Festival
Update: 2/22/22
Stay Awake, written and directed by alumnus Jamie Sisley '15 and produced by alumnus, Adjunct Professor and Senior Production Advisor Shrihari Sathe '09 received a special mention from the Generation 14plus youth jury. The dramedy, inspired by Sisley’s own family, looks at the struggles of brothers Ethan (Wyatt Oleff) and Derek (Fin Argus) as they try to care for their addicted mother Michelle, played by Chrissy Metz.
The jury called Stay Awake “a strong and at the same time complex portrait of two young men who are discovering who they are.” Sisley portrays “complicated family dynamics…in a ruthless yet tender manner,” they concluded.
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Original: 2/17/22
The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival revealed its competition line-up with eight projects by Columbia filmmakers participating in the prestigious festival. The Berlinale takes place from February 10–20, 2022, and marks one of the most important events on the festival calendar. The fest has changed to a hybrid format this year due to ongoing pandemic-related uncertainty, with the European Film Market moving online and the festival continuing as an in-person event. The award ceremony was hosted on February 16.
A list of the participating projects by Columbia filmmakers can be found below:
Berlinale Special Gala films
The Outfit
Alumnus Graham Moore (CC) '03, Co-Writer, Director
Chicago, 1956. Leonard is a master English tailor who makes beautiful clothes for the only people around who can afford them: a family of vicious gangsters. One night, two killers knock on his door in need of a favour, and Leonard is thrust into a deadly game of deception and murder.
Generation 14plus
Stay Awake
Alumnus Jamie Sisley '15, Writer and Director
Alumnus, Adjunct Professor and Senior Production Advisor Shrihari Sathe '09, Producer
Set against the backdrop of the prescription drug and opioid crisis in the USA, Sisley depicts the individual consequences of a societal tragedy, while taking an unflinching yet gentle look at a complicated web of relationships.
Generation Kplus Shorts
Louis I., König der Schafe (Louis I., King of the Sheep)
Alumnus Markus Wulf '20, Co-Writer, Director
Alumna Maggie Briggs '19, Co-Writer, Co-Producer
Alumnus Jorge Granados Ross '21, Co-Producer
Alumnus Esteban Garzía Vernaza '20, Editor
When the wind blows a paper crown in front of Louis’ nose, he proclaims himself king – and changes noticeably. Paying close attention to detail, the stop-motion animation gets to the heart of the absurdity of power structures.
Berlinale Co-Production Market
The Wolf Will Tear Your Immaculate Hands
Alumna Nathalie Álvarez Mesén '20, Writer and Director
In the 1790s, Isabel, a conservative European governess, travels to Colonial Latin America—her mother’s birthplace —to educate the two daughters of a widower. Slowly, Isabel discovers that a wildness runs within the women in the house, regardless of class and ethnicity. Awakening from her sheltered existence, Isabel welcomes this force—an animal that would rather tear everything down than be contained.
Berlinale Series Market
Vanda
Alumnus Simao Cayatte '12, Director
Vanda is a hairdresser living in Lisbon, who suddenly finds herself alone, with no husband or home but with two children to raise in the midst of the financial crisis. With a blonde wig and a toy gun, she takes destiny into her own hands and robs a bank.
Berlinale Talent Co-Pro Series
Picadero
Alumnus Mauricio Leiva Cock '13, Co-Writer
Alumnus Mauro Mueller '13, Producer
Picadero follows Llanos, who sets up in Barcelona to escape a dark family past. He makes a living as a private investigator documenting the secrets and scandals of the city’s bourgeoisie: adultery, divorce cases, rebellious offspring, and more.
Berlinale Talent Project Market
Alumna Maya Korn '19, Producer
Set in a desert town ravaged by unexplained suicides, Lucky Strikes centers on a young girl struggling with her sexuality who realizes that her adolescent transformation may be otherworldly. Korn was also selected as one of this year’s Berlinale Talents.
Forum Expanded: Closer To The Ground
Professor of Anthropology Rosalind Morris, Main Artist
The Zama Zama Project is a multi-format installation about the world of informal mining in the abandoned gold mines of South Africa. It features high-resolution, immersive video and narrative documentary shorts about the lives of men and women who make their living scavenging for gold. This collaborative project grows out of long-term research in the Witwatersrand gold-mining region that stretches over more than two decades.
Jole Dobe Na (Those Who Do Not Drown)
Alumnus, Associate Professor of Visual Arts and Concentration Head of Photography Naeem Mohaiemen (Anthropology) '19 , Main Artist
Jole Dobe Na (Those Who Do Not Drown) was conceived in response to a prompt given by Raqs Media Collective to think about modes of care, and the afterlife of caregivers. The film is set In an empty hospital in Kolkata where a man faces protocols of blood, a subtly discriminatory office, and a vacant operating theater. His mind is on a loop of the last months of his wife’s life, when a quiet argument developed. They were an estranged couple, thrown back into intimacy by an unknown illness. Even in a dreamworld of his making, the paranoia of infection is twinned with a hesitant intimacy.
The Berlinale is one of the largest public film festivals in the world, attracting tens of thousands of visitors from around the globe each year. The festival was created for the Berlin public in 1951, at the beginning of the Cold War, as a “showcase of the free world.” Shaped by the turbulent post-war period and the unique situation of a divided city, the Berlinale has developed into a place of intercultural exchange and a platform for the critical cinematic exploration of social issues. To this day it is considered the most political of all the major film festivals. Thanks to its numerous industry initiatives, the Berlinale is a significant driver of innovation and an important economic event internationally as well as for companies in Germany and Berlin.