"Tomboy," a French film about a 10-year-old girl named Laure who is, well, a tomboy. Or somewhere on the spectrum between tomboy and transgendered, but too young to really tell.
When her family moves and she starts over with a new neighborhood of kids, she gets the chance to reinvent herself as a boy, introducing herself as "Mikael." The story is basically about whether she can keep up the pretense and how the other kids will react when, inevitably, they find out the truth.
Aside from the girl's parents, all the actors in the film were young kids, and they were impressive.
"Dom," or "The House," a Czech/Slovak co-production (oh! Czech! Slovak! some of my many favorite languages!) This might fall under the category of slow-paced films that get described with words like "contemplative," but I enjoyed it. It's the story of a hard-headed, old-fashioned father, who's determined to build a house in their village for his daughter to live in, and his young, modern daughter, who definitely does not want to live in that house. In fact, she wants nothing more than to leave Slovakia for London.
The story of generational conflict and parents' dreams for their children not matching the childrens' reality was pretty universal, but one thing the director mentioned in the Q&A after the show was that this conflict expressing itself specifically through building a house was typical of Slovakia, where a whole generation grew up under Communism, unable to travel, and the only place they could channel their creative energy and dreams for their families was into construction.
Still to come: "Romeos," which sounds like fun, and an Iranian film that sounded really interesting until I read the extra bit of description that wasn't in my program, something about a "terrible tragedy." Oops. The Berlinale tends to swing toward heavy topics anyway, so it's usually a good idea to avoid the ones that straight up say they'll depress you. Oh well, at least it will be interesting!
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