Tokyo Godfathers

Preceed by poetry reading by Berfusra and Bard Wildly (07.12.)

Christmas films so often rely on saccharine sweet tropes around family and community; Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers flirts with these tropes before roundly dismantling them through a gritty emotionality that reveals the messiness of family dynamics. Fantastical in its coincidental meetings, unflinching its portrayals of parental failings, and tender in its characters’ bids for redemption, Tokyo Godfathers is the perfect anti-Christmas Christmas film.

“As a rule, I don’t really care for Christmas films. I was saturated in the US’s overtly capitalist interpretation of the holiday which is masked by a paper-thin veneer of family values. As a queer immigrant, found family in a new country is intense, sometimes painful, and profoundly beautiful. This film doesn’t shy away from the painful parts of family that so many other films gloss over. The tender treatment of a trans character whose gender identity isn’t all encompassing is refreshing in a way that trans people like myself crave in cinema.” (Ari Cottingham)

Ari Cottingham is a queer Afro-Latine poet, performance artist, and service industry worker. They have published and performed widely, and in 2025 they were the recipient of a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. Whilst working as part of the bar and Meyhane team at SINEMA, Ari also organizes Berlin Spoken Word, a weekly community open mic that, this December, celebrates a decade of enduring the Berlin arts scene.

Bard Wildly has been poeting around Berlin for a while now, and is happy to get to be here to share some words with you.
After transitioning at 30, he enjoyed a very brief twink life, which quickly turned into twink death, and is now firmly in his gay uncle era.
When not wearing the poetry hat, Bard is an illustrator and tattooer to the queers.
You can follow him on the curséd app at @bard.tattoo.
 He has some dope new stickers that he wants to give you, so find him after the show and ask for yours.

Berfusra is a Kurdish singer-songwriter, poet, drag king, and performance artist from Turkey, a Philologist with a degree in English Literature, and currently pursuing a master’s degree in Cultural Studies and American Literature. Their main topics include identity, race, mental illness, trauma, love and intimacy, as well as a never-ending curiosity about nature and the beauty all around us.