Berlinale 2021. Lineup on Notebook

The titles for the 71st Berlin International Film Festival are being announced in anticipation of the event running March 1 - March 5, 2021. We will update the program as new films are revealed.

Introduction

COMPETITION

Albatross (Xavier Beauvois): Laurent, a young police officer in a small town in Normandy, plans to marry Marie, with whom he has a daughter nicknamed Poulette. He loves his job despite the social misery he witnesses on a daily basis. Then one day, his life is thrown into turmoil when he accidentally kills a farmer threatening to commit suicide…

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude): Emi is a schoolteacher, whose career is threatened when a clip of her having sex with her spouse is uploaded on a adults-only site. When she is forced to face a group of furious parents asking for her dismissal, she clashes with them over their morality concerns, resulting in a debate that exposes the hypocrisy, prejudice and discrimination inherent in our social norms.

Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha, Maryam Moghaddam): A woman is executed by her husband and she has trouble keeping up her disabled daughter. On the other hand, her husband’s family insist that she marry her brother and stay with them.

Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde (Dominik Graf): In 1920s Berlin, Dr. Jakob Fabian, who works by day in advertising for a cigarette company and by night wanders the streets of the city, falls in love with an actress. As her career begins to blossom, prospects for his future begin to wane.

Forest — I See You Everywhere (Bence Fliegauf)

Mr. Bachmann and His Class (Maria Speth)

I'm Your Man (Maria Schrader): Alma (Maren Eggert) is a scientist at the famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin. In order to obtain research funds for her studies, she is persuaded to participate in an extraordinary study. For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot tailored to her character and needs, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be the perfect life partner for Alma. Alma meets Tom (Dan Stevens), a machine in human form, a robot in a class of its own, created solely to make her happy.

Introduction (Hong Sang-soo): A meeting with his father, a trip to Berlin, the end of his first love, and a famous actor's advice: this is Youngho's introduction to life.

Memory Box (Joana Hadjithomas, Khalil Joreige): The lives of three women are connected by a box that resurfaces containing notebooks, photographs and audiotapes.

Natural Light (Denes Nagy): World War II, occupied Soviet Union. István Semetka is a simple Hungarian farmer who serves as a Sub-Lieutenant in a special unit scouting for partisan groups. On their way to a remote village, his company falls under enemy fire. As the commander is killed, Semetka has to overcome his fears and take command of the unit as he is dragged into a chaos that he cannot control.

Next Door (Daniel Brühl): A dark-comedy about gentrification and social inequality in Berlin.

Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)

A Cop Movie (Alonso Ruizpalacios): Two professional actors undergo an immersive process to interpret police officers Teresa and Montoya and experience what it takes to be a cop in Mexico. A radical experiment combining documentary and fictional elements, the film gives voice to one of Mexico’s most controversial institutions: the police force, and unravels the causes of the impunity crisis that plagues the justice system.

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Koberidze): It’s love at first sight when Lisa and Giorgi meet by chance on a street in the Georgian city of Kutaisi. Love hits them so suddenly, they even forget to ask each other’s names. Before continuing on their way, they agree to meet the next day. Little do they know that an evil eye casts its spell on them. Will they manage to meet again? And if they do, will they know who they are? Life goes on as usual in their hometown, street dogs stray, the soccer world cup begins and a film crew on its quest to find true love might be what they need.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi): Episode 1: When Meiko realizes that the man her best friend has talked about as "hitting on her" is her ex-boyfriend, whom she broke up with a year and a half ago, she wonders what she should do. Episode 2: A college professor in his fifties wins the Akutagawa Prize. His student, who failed to graduate, out of spite, plots to trick him and has his class-friend-with-benefits visit the professor's office. Episode 3: A system's engineer, unemployed as a result of a computer virus, attends a women's college reunion for the first time in twenty years. She meets a housewife with a child who seems to be the classmate she couldn't find at the reunion. The two talk to each other and confirm the feelings they have harbored in their hearts.

SPECIAL

French Exit (Azazel Jacobs)

The Mauritanian (Kevin Macdonald)

Best Sellers (Linda Roessler)

Courage (Aliaksei Paluyan)

Language Lessons (Natalie Morales)

Limbo (Cheang Soi)

Tides (Tim Fehlbaum)

Je suis Karl (Christian Schwochow)

Tina (Dan Lindsay, T. J. Martin)

For Lucio (Pietro Marcello)

Who We Were (Marc Bauder)

^Bloodsuckers

ENCOUNTERS

As I Want (Samaher Alqadi): Cairo, January 25, 2013. A string of severe sexual assaults takes place during a rally celebrating the second anniversary of the revolution. Egyptian women decide to take action. The future of their country depends on their individual emancipation.

Azor (Andreas Fontana): Yvan De Wiel, a private banker from Geneva, goes to Argentina in the midst of a dictatorship to replace his partner, the object of the most worrying rumours, who disappeared overnight.

The Beta Test (Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe): A married Hollywood agent receives a mysterious letter for an anonymous sexual encounter and becomes ensnared in a sinister world of lying, infidelity, and digital data.

Bloodsuckers (Julian Radlmaier): Set in 1928, a penniless Soviet refugee falls in love with an eccentric young vampiress spending the summer at the seaside with her awkward servant.

Social Hygiene (Denis Côté): Antonin is many things: a hedonist, a delinquent, a wannabe writer and filmmaker. His way with words is put to the test in his encounters with five women who not only rival his wit but also challenge, in caring or cruel ways, his effort to escape reality.

The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher): Lisa moves out of the apartment she has shared with Mara and into one where she will live alone. Boxes, furniture and a farewell party turn the film into a weird magnetic field where friends, lovers, relatives, neighbours and strangers attract each other.

District Terminal (Bardia Yadegari, Ehsan Mirhosseini): As junkie poet Peyman attempts to finish a poem, his city of Tehran falls prey to pollution and a lethal virus.

Moon, 66 Questions (Jacqueline Lentzou): When a grave illness strikes down her father Paris, Artemis decides to return home to care for him. After a long journey, father and daughter rekindle their relationship.

We (Alice Diop): Pieces of life are brought together in an attempt to grasp something of life in the inner cities and suburbs of modern-day France. A commuter train appears to connect different worlds, but is there such a thing as ‘we’ in our fragmented societies?

Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva): Inspired by ancestral interpretations of the bond between humankind, nature and the cosmos, Rock Bottom Riser is a vibrant essay film set in Hawaii that explores the different kinds of matter to be found in geology, ethnography and astronomy.

The Scary of Sixty-First (Dasha Nekrasova):Two roommates discover and relive the murky secrets of their new Upper East Side apartment which used to belong to paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Taste (Lê Bảo): Bassley, a Nigerian footballer in Vietnam, is unable to make a living since he broke his leg. He and four middle-aged women he sometimes works for decide to escape the disappointment of their daily lives. They go to an old house where together they create a special world for themselves. But this intimate utopia cannot last forever...