Syndicado Film Sales has boarded two films selected for Berlinale: “Paul” by Denis Côté, which has its world premiere in the Panorama Dokumente section, and “Sirens Call” by Miri Ian Gossing and Lina Sieckmann, which is part of the Forum lineup.
Côté’s documentary focuses on Paul, who suffers from depression and social anxiety. He seeks safety by doing housework for dominant women, becoming the submissive “Cleaning Simp Paul.” By sharing his gently eccentric routines on social media, he combats his loneliness.
Filmed from a candid, nonjudgmental perspective, “Paul” is a portrait of an eccentric but endearing person who delivers a fresh take on our quest for well-being.
The producers are Hany Ouichou and Karine Bélanger of Coopvidéo Montréal in Canada. Distribution in Canada is handled by Métropole Films.
Côté’s first feature film “Les états nordiques” (2005) was awarded the Golden Leopard prize for Best Video at Locarno Film Festival. Côté’s “Vic+Flo Saw a Bear” won the Silver Bear for Innovation at Berlinale in 2013. “Hygiène sociale” won the best director award in the Encounters section at Berlinale in 2021.
“Sirens Call”
Courtesy of GossingSieckmann/Filmfaust/Kochmann
In their feature-length debut, Gossing and Sieckmann dive into the merfolk subculture with performance artist and siren Una the Mermaid (Gina Rønning). The film is a hybrid of science fiction, road movie and documentary to explore a subculture that is “using fantastic imagery to talk about collective trauma, politics of the body and the urge for a lifelong transition,” according to press material.
In a statement, the directors said: “In 2017, we first learned online about a subculture of people in Portland, Oregon, who identified as mer-folk.They claimed to not only dress up as sirens in silicone tails, but to really live it as an identity in their everyday. After having met Una the Mermaid in Portland for the first time – a prison psychologist and trauma advocate in her civil life – we instantly felt a very special connection. Una and her collective were incorporating the things we had envisioned for our siren figure for a long time. A siren who had the ability to combine interdisciplinary wisdom, connecting human, nature and machine while trying to form new ways of being with each other and the world.”
The film is produced by Filmfaus, in collaboration with Schalten Und Walten (Gossing and Sieckmann’s art collective), along with co-production partners Elbe Stevens Films of the Netherlands and Germany’s ZDF/Das kleine Fernsehspiel. The producers are Claus Herzog-Reichel and Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay.
