Berlin film festival roundup: I missed my shot at the Bears in the 'burbs

Why did I watch a bizarre 'Holocaust farce' when I could've been enjoying festival winner Nader and Simin, a Separation?
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Leila Hatami and Peyman Moaadi in Nader and Simin, a Separation
Unmissable ... Nader and Simin, a Separation won the Golden Bear for best film, but how do you pick the best at the Berlinale? Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A rifle butt swung and opened a hole and blood spurted out. The child fell to the ground. The policeman shot him in the head, told his partner to collect the fallen dealer's weapon ("I can get 20 grand for that") and strolled back to his squad car.

  1. A Separation
  2. Production year: 2011
  3. Countries: Iran, Rest of the world
  4. Cert (UK): PG
  5. Runtime: 122 mins
  6. Directors: Asghar Farhadi, Asghar Farhadi
  8. More on this film

Brutal, polemical, awfully dumb, José Padilha's Elite Squad 2, the shoot-first-take-names-later sequel to the winner of the Berlin film festival's main prize in 2008, was made for a walk-out. Across Berlin French director Céline Sciamma's Tomboy – a quirky study of gender politics centred on a young girl who enjoys being mistaken for a boy – had other critics talking ("My favourite film of the year so far" – Hollywood News. "Pick of Berlin" – Film4) but I couldn't hear them. My ears were ringing from the bellowing of Rio de Janeiro's special forces, shooting-to-kill their way through the complexities of the city's drug problem.

Knowing when to leave at a film festival like the Berlinale is key, but you don't realise that until you've sat through three or four Elite Squads. With the competition films playing in the larger venues around Potsdamer Platz, anything smaller, sharper and potentially more interesting debuts on the edges. If you want to catch the best of the festival you have to cull the duds and head for the 'burbs.

In the east, the Kino International played Michaël R Roskam's Bullhead ("Notably stylish" – Screen Daily) to a packed house (I was in the city centre watching Philippe Le Guay's gentle, disposable class comedy Service Entrance). In the west the Delphi Filmpalast screened Hugo Vieira da Silva's dark family drama Swans. Critical reaction to that was mixed, but it must have been better than Paula Markovitch's The Prize, an autobiographical account of growing up under the fascist regime of 1970s Argentina, that (despite a sparky lead from seven-year-old Paula Galinelli Hertzog) studiously plodded on into eternity.

Time is the problem for the festival rookie. The solution might be to do the thing backwards: read the first-night reviews of those who know better and play catchup with them the next day. With hindsight Asghar Farhadi's Nader and Simin, a Separation was a better bet than Wolfgang Murnberger's bizarre and zippy "Holocaust farce" My Best Enemy, but I didn't know that then. So I watched as the shouty SS officer and the plucky concentration camp inmate played out their ludicrous game of identities swapped and re-swapped, vaguely aware that somewhere else something big, something newsworthy was happening.

Nader and Simin won the Golden Bear. My Best Enemy was called a "strained attempt at second world war tragi-comedy [that] isn't funny". I felt stupid.

It's not that important. It's all experience. But when you've spent a week chasing vapours it's hard not feel like you've missed every trick. Honestly, I'd like to start this year's Berlinale over again, see what people with a bit more knowledge saw and do it properly this time.

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