Berlin International Film Festival
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Filming During Malaria Season: Kelly Daniela Norris and T.W. Pittman on Nakom
Nakom is the first ever feature film in the Kusaal language and the first Ghanaian narrative film to have screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Following the world premiere in Berlin, the film made its U.S. debut at the New Directors/New Films festival in New York. Last month, Nakom was nominated for the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award for films budgeted less than $500,000. On the eve of their Berlin premiere, co-directors Kelly Daniela Norris and T.W. (Trav) Pittman said they were most excited to screen in Nakom, the rural village in northern Ghana where they lived for four […]
by Taylor Hess on Dec 7, 2016 -
“The Military System and a Movie Set are Similar”: Rachel Lang on Baden Baden
Described as the most daring section of the Berlinale, Forum aims to straddle art and cinema. Launched in the late ’60s to diversify the festival, Forum still showcases perhaps the most progressive and experimental films of the 400 total that are slated in Berlin’s beast of a festival. There were 44 titles selected for Berlinale’s Forum program this year, and of the 34 world premieres and 9 international premieres, several played at Berlin’s arthouse Arsenal cinema in the festival’s wake. Though this year’s program was focused on the Arab region, Forum is known for its dissidence and commitment to presenting unpredictable and unconventional lineups. This year, the […]
by Taylor Hess on Nov 30, 2016 -
Things to Come Writer/Director Mia Hansen-Løve on Pain, Acting, and Embracing Complexity
After winning the Silver Bear for Best Director earlier this year at her world premiere in Berlin’s 66th International Film Festival, Mia Hansen-Løve brings her latest picture, Things to Come, to the New York Film Festival’s main competition slate on October 14th. Starring Isabelle Huppert in an arresting performance as Nathalie, a Parisian philosophy professor, Hansen-Løve’s film follows Nathalie as she picks up the pieces of her life even as it is disassembling. While her mother is sick, her job is compromised, and her husband is leaving her, Nathalie forges ahead, carving a new, albeit unfamiliar course for her future. In […]
by Taylor Hess on Oct 13, 2016 -
“I Think Filmmaking Can Also Be as Simple as Being a Good Person to Those Around You”: Paola Mottura on Film Markets and Support Programs
In 1996, Chris Kraus traveled to Germany to attend the Berlin Film Festival. Even though the Berlinale rejected her experimental film, she was invited to screen it at the European Film Market, the business epicenter of the festival. “A profitable trade show in which product deemed unsuitable for the Festival is bought and sold,” is how Kraus later described the EFM in her 2000 book, Aliens & Anorexia. Arriving in Berlin with neither pre-arranged business meetings, networking contacts, nor party invites, the EFM was “like Room 101 in Orwell’s 1984, a cavalcade of horrors where you confront your deepest fears,” […]
by Taylor Hess on Aug 16, 2016 -
Dispatches from Sundance, Berlin, True/False and Rotterdam
Sundance Film Festival 2016 by Adam Cook Few film festivals carry inscribed connotations the way that Sundance does. For this newcomer to Park City, a visit to this beacon of American indie cinema came loaded with preconceptions about both the nature of the “Sundance film” (part myth, part truth) and the tendency for the collective critical response to hyperbolize and rush to proclaim the year’s early favorites. Given the calendar-based approach of looking at movies in the context of their year, Sundance emerges on the heels of last year’s best-of lists, nearly 12 months ahead of when its own lineup will […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 21, 2016 -
“The Original Pitch Couldn’t Be Said in Less than a Thousand Words”: Robert Greene and Kate Lyn Sheil on Kate Plays Christine
After winning the Special Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance, filmmaker Robert Greene and actress Kate Lyn Sheil arrived in Berlin for their international premiere of Kate Plays Christine. Of the 44 titles slated in Berlinale’s Forum, Greene’s documentary is one of only three American films to have been selected to screen. The film is described as a documentary, but the nature of the project has a complicated and multi-layered explanation. On one level, the film follows Kate preparing for a role, but the character she must assume isn’t written in a script. She’s researching to play […]
by Taylor Hess on Mar 3, 2016 -
“Shooting the Interview Like a Game”: Kamilla Pfeffer on Who is Oda Jaune?
After seeing only one Oda Jaune painting in an art catalogue at a bookstore, Kamilla Pfeffer had found her next subject. Born in Bulgaria, Oda Jaune is a German painter currently based in Paris, and has had her work exhibited all over the world. The nature of her paintings and the process of her practice are the primary interests in Pfeffer’s documentary, Who is Oda Jaune?, but how to first engage with the introverted artist is Pfeffer’s requisite challenge. “Oda’s work has a way of speaking to my irrational side,” says German actor Lars Eidinger during his short interview with […]
by Taylor Hess on Mar 1, 2016 -
“The Vanity of Trans-People Versus the Humanity of Trans-People”: Sara Jordenö and Twiggy Pucci Garcon on KIKI
“One of my friends was killed over there,” says Christopher Waldorf, reflecting back to a scene from KIKI, the 66th Berlinale’s Teddy Award-winning documentary. In an early scene from the film, Waldorf is captured voguing down a dangerous street in Harlem. “The Trade are straight hood guys,” says Waldorf, explaining the threat of violence and harassment that the Trade inflicts on Voguers like himself. “The only reason we were able to joke around when we were filming there,” chimes in another featured subject in the film, Gia Marie Love, “is because we were with white people.” First-time documentary filmmaker Sara […]
by Taylor Hess on Feb 29, 2016 -
Berlinale 2016 Dispatch #2: Midnight Special, Creepy, and A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery
The only American narrative in Berlinale’s Competition selection this year was Midnight Special, Jeff Nichols’s cryptic homage to utopian sci-fi and early Spielbergian iconography, and something of a return to the more fantastical genre territory seen in his breakout, Take Shelter. In the film, which reportedly had a budget of $18 million and tends to look like it cost ten times that, Roy (Michael Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton) are on the lam in Texas following their apparent kidnapping of a young boy named Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), a “special child” coveted by the CIA, cultish rural religious organizations, and other […]
by Blake Williams on Feb 22, 2016 -
Berlinale 2016 Dispatch #1: Homo Sapiens, Eldorado XXI, and Havarie
Away from the spotlight of the Berlinale’s (increasingly arbitrary-looking) pick of films competing for the Goldener Bär, the festival’s Forum section sits pretty as a well-established delivery system for reliably bold films that can range anywhere from quirky American character studies to rigorous, avant-garde documentaries. Many Forum artists and filmmakers are unknown quantities in North America, and walking into most of the screenings is as close I get lately to genuine tabula rasa cinema experiences; you really don’t know what you’re going to get here. Lately, the Teutonic-favored American artist/filmmaker James Benning has been taking his feature-length works to the […]
by Blake Williams on Feb 16, 2016
