Asta Upset

The film is set in a modern day ‘Berlin Republic’ liberated from all irrelevancies. It’s about artistic production, the creative industries and above all film and cinema – a political manifesto in feature film format. It centres on Asta, tough, hardened by theory and immaculately styled right down to the emblems on her leather jacket, with current art scene jargon flowing elegantly from her lips. She’s no hippie broad, but rather a modern-day warrior, verbally sparring with legendary actress Hannelore Hoger, her ‘film mother’, about her hobby of urban gardening. After the relentless competition between curators over the funding for her exhibition ‘The Cinema! The Art’, for which Hannelore Hoger even whispers inaudible recommendations into the ear of the German President, Asta ultimately plumps for international backing from an Indian friend. He luckily happens to be with her out in the country when she bumps into her arch-enemy Ms Top Cultural Department Brass, a meeting with farreaching consequences. The film is an entertaining dissection of the current state of the cultural industry, for which ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ are relevant, yet oddly obsolete categories. (Text: Dorothee Wenner, Berlinale Forum)