Germany 2016, 59/93 min, HDA pong film Production
by Philip Scheffner, Colorado Velcu
Berlin For Beginners - A Roma Home Movie
Members of the Velcu family from Faţa Luncii, Romania, move to Berlin and perform themselves into a possible future. In the end, they're putting together a video clip in which a young man promises his beloved a future in Berlin if her love is only strong enough to follow him.The song was written by Colorado Velcu, charismatic multi-talent, single parent to seven children; heart, motor and chronicler of an extended family from Faţa Luncii in Romania. The film continues an extraordinary collaboration based on the trust and friendship between the co-directors Philip Scheffner and Colorado Velcu. It began with the film REVISION (Berlinale, Forum 2012): The attempt to establish a common cinematic space between protagonists, filmmakers and the audience has now, three years since, been enlarged. The camera duplicates itself; besides the filmmaker’s, there are one, two, three cameras that wander from hand to hand. And not just the filmmaker, even we are allowed into a world in which humour, chutzpah and solidarity stand against poverty and exclusion. In which the Velcus, contrary to all ascriptions, reinvent themselves time and again. In which Berlin begins to glow in the shimmering colours of Bollywood. A world in which reality and fiction are sometimes only a laugh apart.
Grimme Preis (nom.), Deutsche Filmkritik Best Doc (nom.), Berlinale Forum, Vilnius