A co-production involving many European countries, Goodbye Bafana tells the apparently true story of the white South African prison guard James Gregory, whose life became entwined with that of the political prisoner Nelson Mandela because he was one of the few guards to speak fluent Xhosa. The life story of Nelson Mandela is of course a screenplay waiting to happen, but director Bille August’s sideways approach to the material lacks a strong hook other than the slow transformation of Gregory’s white supremacist point of view, which is predictable and robs the story of suspense, turning the film into a slide-show presentation of scenes from the life of the guard and his family in a manner reminiscent of reverent TV biopics that would rather be long than exclude minor details. 

François Ozon continues to flirt with literature, melodrama and comedy camp in Angel, which is the closing film here at the Berlin Film Festival. The first full English-language project from the French director is based on the 1957 Elizabeth Taylor novel, which recounts the rise and fall of the titular penny novelist in early 20th century Britain. Like Almodóvar’s La mala educación (Bad Education), Angel is the fullest expression of the director’s obsessions, combining the high camp of 8 femmes (8 Women) with moments of pure melodrama while continuing to explore the intersecting realms of real life and fantasy that were also an important part of Swimming Pool and Sous le Sable (Under the Sand) -- as well as Bad Education. What kind of audience would accept Angel on its own terms is hard to say, though an intimate knowledge of Ozon’s previous work would certainly be helpful.

A woman is stalked by a dark past and tempted by a devouring capitalist future in German director Christian Petzold’s metaphysical head-scratcher Yella. Nina Hoss (Die weisse Massai / The White Masai) stars as the titular East-German protagonist who finds herself between two formerly divided countries and economical systems when she starts working in the West. In trying to reconcile wide-ranging socio-political and economical ideas with its very small cast of characters, Petzold and co-screenwriter Simone Baer trade in much of the humanity of their characters for ideas that seem to derive from the characters’ beloved balance sheets -- and are just as lifeless. The story's many murky twists and turns may be so profound they never become clear, not even for the audience. It is part of the Official Competition here in Berlin.

Nigerian-born UK writer-director Kevin Aduaka contrasts two subsequent stories about acquired identities in his feature debut Elvis Pelvis. At once mutually exclusive and intrinsically linked by the main character and a father figure, Aduaka’s feature also reflects on such diverse topics as the inevitability of the death of our fathers but not of our heroes, the cultural influence of the US on the rest of the world and the impossibility to really know oneself or one’s close relatives. A delirious stylistic collage of saturated colour footage, stark black and white sequences and split screens never feels overly arty for arty’s sake, instead underlining the idea that transformations or other ways of looking at the same problems might in the end still prove to be insufficient and a more mystical dimension might be needed to attain peace. Festivals such as the Forum section where it premieres here in Berlin and adventurous arthouse distributors should give Elvis Pelvis a look.