Yo, or Love Is a Rebellious Bird, by Anna Fitch and Banker White
Silver Bear for Documentary In Berlin International Film Festuval
By: Susan Hall - Feb 21, 2026
Yo, the only documentary in the main competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, was shown at the Berlin Palast with "the team" in attendance. Banker White, co-director, cradled a puppet rendition of Yo, the film’s lead character, in his arms as he helped her “sign” a poster hung above the red carpet.
Yo became a friend of Banker’s wife, Anna Fitch, in Pacific Grove, California, decades before the film was completed.
At first, I thought “Yo” came from the medieval “yes,” or was some gesture of presence. It turns out to be a diminutive of “Yolanda.” Making feelings, people and location manageably smaller is one of Yo's principle themes.
Yo is portrayed as both eccentric and visionary. Fitch describes her as “a great-grandmother, career weed dealer, intellectual, psychic, hostess, tyrant, a captivating storyteller.” Born in Switzerland in 1924, she had a difficult childhood but flourished at art school in Basel with all the other “kooks,” as her father called them. There her friends were the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely and artist Eva Aeppli.
By the 1960s, at the height of the counterculture era, Yo was living the life Fitch would later capture on film-- — a life that unfolded after she recovered from a disastrous acid trip. “I think she went to the precipice,” Fitch notes. “It’s a dangerous place to go. She could have died or lost her mind, and she fought her way out.”
Fitch and Yo immediately connected. Their intimacy and empathy runs through every frame of the film.
After Yo died, Fitch at first couldn’t bring herself to watch the footage she had shot. “All I could see at first was what I didn’t ask her, what I didn’t say and didn’t record. I couldn’t see what we had. I could only see what we didn’t have.”
That’s partly why she began reconstructing her subject’s life — and building a puppet facsimile of her. To keep Yo close, she recreated her world in miniature. As viewers, we feel the pull of miniaturization: we want to tend and nurture; we’re drawn to the condensed, packed feeling of experience in small spaces. Photographs, of course, reduce memory to a manageable size. But using puppets to keep someone alive for us — that’s unusual. A new kind of remembering.
Fitch recreated Yo's home in miniature. She says, "It was the first time in many years that I cried. I had to move through something. Then I began to enjoy the footage. I began to see things in the footage. Banker saw some amazing things in the footage...When you lose someone and you don’t want to let them go, how do I bring her back? As a filmmaker, you get to invent your own world and your own reality.”
In the film, Fitch admits that one reason she worked on the project for so long was to keep Yo close. “It feels good. The process of bringing it to the world is very dynamic and alive, and Yo feels present in that too.”
Yo certainly is. And so is Fitch. In the film, every moment is a surprise — and a satisfying one. All the curious elements an artist can imagine work together in Yo, in beautiful color. Renowned Polish artist Wilhelm Sasnal brought his particular eye to The Assistant, a 2025 film based on Robert Walser's book. He painted copies of artworks that hung on the wall of his set and his unique vision brings depth to the film.
Squablles among heirs over one of Yo's rugs is battled out in the Fitch/White film by stick insects. Fitch is an entomologist by training. Brava!