In her film IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD, Pepa Lubojacki documents the lives of three family members over a five-year period – first and foremost their brother David who is an alcoholic and homeless. Using a highly personal, diary-like collage, Lubojacki attempts to lay bare the roots of intergenerational misfortune repeatedly manifested in severe addiction. Text sculptures, long-term observations, synth-infused beats and AI-animated childhood photos merge here into a striking and playful, unsparing yet loving revelation.
The jury stated during the award ceremony on Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast: “Documenting the sysiphean struggle against family addiction, this documentary employs a refreshing range of cinematic techniques to engage the audience in the filmmaker's quest to break a family heritage of addiction. Mobilizing talking pigeons, life as kids, kinetic family photos, and cell phone footage shot in increasingly dubious abodes, the director doggedly pursues their beloved but ever evasive brother. For this remarkable achievement for recruiting documentary into a sustained practice of radical empathy, the jury awards its prize to the inventive directorial voice of IF PIGEONS TURNED TO GOLD, written and directed by Pepa Lubajacki.”
The director received the award in a moving speech: “Being unhoused or living with addiction will make you invisible to the society. This prize will give me a voice to speak up for people who suffer with addiction and for people who are unhoused. There's so many of us. It's time to put aside the shame and to speak about addiction because systemic change is the only change possible for us. Because without speaking about it, there will never be change.”
