Berlin International Film Festival
-
First Announcements from Robust Berlinale Slate Include Two Josephine Decker Titles
The Berlinale has a rather hefty program: Competition, Out of Competition, Special, Panorama, Forum, Forum Expanded, Generation, Perspective, Retrospectives — and that gets us about halfway there. In the last few days, three section lineups have trickled out of the press office, offering Berlin’s signature mix of international auteurs, Sundance holdovers and the downright esoteric. Familiar titles for a plebe like me include the Park City world premieres 52 Tuesdays; Boyhood; Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter and God Help The Girl, as well as the out of competition, Vincent Cassel and Léa Seydoux starring Beauty and the Beast — which appears to be more Disney than Cocteau. […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 16, 2014 -
After the Wave: Atsushi Funahashi on Nuclear Nation
Nuclear Nation, Atsushi Funahashi’s remarkably touching and informative doc about some of the 1,4000 now-homeless refugees that were forced to abandon their town in the wake of the Fukashima nuclear catastrophe, foregoes the agitprop route, one which given the scale and potential world historical costs of the still unfolding fallout from the disaster seems appropriate, for a more grounded and humanitarian look at the tragedy. Instead the 39-year-old Funahashi, best known in Japan as a narrative filmmaker whose previous credits include 2005’s Big River and 2012’s Cold Bloom, remains focused on a group of refugees who exhibit tremendous poise and […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 17, 2013 -
Director Marten Persiel Discusses This Ain’t California
A while back I wrote about Marten Persiel’s This Ain’t California, the Berlinale-winning “punk fairytale” about skateboarding in East Germany that caused a bit of a stir overseas for its liberal use of staged reenactments. Regardless of the controversy, Persiel’s film is like nothing I’ve seen in recent years, the closest comparison probably being Grant Gee’s 2007 Joy Division (written by Jon Savage), which employs a collage of images to conjure up the Manchester atmosphere during that music scene’s heyday. In fact, Manchester and East Berlin shared a similar aesthetic in the ’70s and ’80s, composed of drab grey buildings […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 10, 2013 -
10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Director Ken Loach
Few filmmakers bring to life social issues as vividly as Ken Loach. Whether helming grand historical dramas about family, love and civil war (The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Land and Freedom) or character-driven films detailing the plight of the working class (Kes, Riff-Raff, Sweet Sixteen, Bread and Roses) Loach is a master of creating universal stories that are immensely relatable regardless of time or place. His latest effort, a documentary, The Spirit of ’45, which had its world premiere at this year’s Berlinale, continues the grand tradition with a story as relevant today as it was over half a […]
by Ariston Anderson on Mar 27, 2013 -
Christian Petzold on Barbara
With Barbara, German auteur Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow) delivers one of 2012’s better character studies, a tense and sparing Cold War-era drama about a female doctor (Petzold muse Nina Hoss) who’s relegated to a hospital near the Baltic Sea after trying to leave the German Democratic Republic. It’s 1980, and the movie effortlessly conveys the period in all its stark unease. Honored at the 62nd Berlinale and serving as Germany’s official Foreign-Language entry for the 85th Academy Awards, Barbara sees its eponymous heroine grapple with the restraints of politics and her own fears in a manner as mysterious as it […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Dec 21, 2012 -
Benoit Jacquot, Farewell, My Queen
The court intrigue that animates Benoit Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen — set during the final days of Marie Antoinette’s reign — could be the stuff of so many costume dramas. To his great credit, however, the 65-year-old Parisian director, best known on this side of the pond for his 1995 hotel chamber drama A Single Girl, offers an elliptical, accumulative account of the events, keeping them tightly focused on the experience of the Queen’s private reader Sidonie (Léa Seydoux) as the storm clouds of revolution gather from outside the corridors of Versailles and the regime’s demise very quickly becomes inevitable, even […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 11, 2012 -
Director Kim Nguyen on War Witch
War Witch is a film about resilience. Resilience of an individual, of a community and even of the architecture of a society. French-Canadian filmmaker Kim Nguyen tells a story that is set to become a benchmark in jungle films. From the painful, complex situation of the child soldiers, he weaves an intelligent movie which enables the viewer to penetrate their reality and the multi-level relationship these children create with their environment. Set in stunning natural landscapes, War Witch transports us from play to gunfire, from tenderness to abuse, from hardcore survival to ghostly magic. It also reveals the raw, powerful […]
by Anne-Christine Loranger on May 17, 2012 -
Berlin Film Festival
How does one best measure the success ofa film festival? Are record-breaking ticket sales enough, or do other factors, such as quality of the films screened, quantity of A-list celebrities walking the red carpet and overall “buzz” generated, come into play? If revenue is the sole gauge, then there’s no question that the Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (colloquially known as the Berlinale) is one of the world’s most prosperous annual film events. By 7 a.m. each morning of the 10-day festival, hundreds of sleepy Berliners can be found queuing up at the makeshift ticket office in the Potsdamer Platz shopping mall, […]
by Andrew Grant on Apr 17, 2012 -
David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Jiro Ono, the world’s most acclaimed sushi chef, is not one to rest. As hard working an octogenarian as you’re ever likely to encounter on screen, Jiro is a celebrity in Japan, but little known here in the States. That is likely to change thanks to director David Gelb’s portrait of the man, his two sons and the philosophy of diligence, hard work and perfectionism they demonstrate in Jiro Dreams of Sushi. A hit at last year’s Berlinale and Tribeca Film Festival, it depicts the rigorous work ethic that Jiro, who began making sushi professionally shortly after World War II, […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 7, 2012 -
Una Noche at the Berlinale
Two weeks ago I was on the phone to a lab in Canada, who were holding our film, telling them that 6 lab rolls of Una Noche were missing. The movie was supposed to premiere in Berlin in a matter of days. I proceeded to go through every frame of footage in the NYC lab double-checking to see if the shots were there. They were not. I did not tell anybody. I did not want to believe it myself. When the colorist, Martin, told me that we might have to use black slates with “missing shot” written on them, my breathing spontaneously […]
by Lucy Mulloy on Mar 2, 2012
