Poet
Berlinale have announced the titles selected for the 72nd edition of their festival, set to take place physically from February 10 — 20.
COMPETITION
Peter von Kant (François Ozon): Peter von Kant is a successful film director. He lives with his assistant Karl, whom he likes to mistreat and humiliate. Sidonie is the great actor who was his muse for many years. She introduces him to Amir, a handsome young man of modest means. Peter falls in love with Amir on the spot and offers to share his apartment with him and help him break into the film industry. The plan works, but as soon as he acquires fame, Amir breaks up with Peter, leaving him alone to face his demons.
AEIOU - A Quick Alphabet of Love (Nicolette Krebitz): Anna is 60 and her acting heyday is now behind her. She lives on her own but has a friend and confidant in her downstairs neighbour Michel, who is also single. Reluctantly, Anna accepts a job as a language coach for 17-year-old Adrian who has a speech impediment and is something of a misfit. She recognises him as the boy who recently snatched her handbag in the street ...
Alcarràs (Carla Simón): For as long as they can remember, the Solé family has spent every summer picking the peaches in their orchard in Alcarràs, a small village in Spain’s Catalonia region. But this year’s crop may well be their last, as they face eviction. The new plans for the land, which include cutting down the peach trees and installing solar panels, cause a rift in this large, tight-knit family. For the first time, they face an uncertain future and risk losing more than their orchard.
Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis): Sara and Jean have been in a loving, stable relationship for ten years. They are happy. He is her rock, someone she can hold on to. When they first met, Sara was in a relationship with François, Jean’s best friend. One day, Sara sees François on the street. He does not see her, but she is overwhelmed by a sensation that her life could suddenly change. François does indeed get in touch with Jean to suggest that they work together again. Before long, things are in danger of spiralling out of control.
Call Jane (Phyllis Nagy): Joy, a traditional 1960s American housewife, unexpectedly becomes pregnant again. A doctor warns her that this late pregnancy poses a serious threat to her life, but the all-male hospital board refuses to grant her an exception to the strict anti-abortion legislation in place. She has nowhere to turn, until she stumbles upon the “Janes”, an underground group of ordinary women lead by Virginia, who risk everything to provide choices for women like Joy. They not only save her life, but also give her a sense of purpose: to help other women take control of their destinies.
A Piece of Sky (Michael Koch): Although a lowlander, Marco is a robust fellow. He is now working as a farmhand for mountain farmer Alois in a remote Swiss alpine village and, even at the regulars’ table at the local inn, people are slowly learning to appreciate this iced tea drinker. Anna is a local village girl; she has a daughter, Julia, from a previous relationship. Some doubt whether this new relationship will work out – but not Marco or Anna. They get married. Their love is gentle and beautiful; unable to fully fathom it, they express it in simple words. The trust between them grows and their tenderness endures; the happiness they feel at every touch is only surpassed by the warmth of stroking a cow. But soon Marco seems to be losing control of his impulses more and more often ...
That Kind of Summer (Denis Côté): Three hypersexual women are spending 26 days in a quiet house by the lake. They are: Léonie (serious), Eugénie (impulsive) and Gaëlle aka Geisha (flirtatious). All three are here voluntarily. They are being supervised by a social worker and, less closely, by a therapist. The motto of the undertaking: “hypersexuality is not a disease”. The aim of this experiment is not to heal but rather to enable a frank exploration of different experiences, forms and extremes of desire. It all takes place half-naked and fully clothed, verbally and physically, and in imagination and reality. The fact that the project staff are, if not affected, at least a little moved, is hardly surprising and corresponds to the viewer’s situation.
Everything Will Be OK (Rithy Panh): A megalith rises from a sandy desert – or rather, a scale model of such a landscape. “I am the archive”, says a young female voice while ominous string music nails viewers to their seats. This opening sets the stage for the narrative and figurative language of Rithy Panh’s dense mnemonic essay which uses stunning dioramas to tell a twenty-first century dystopian story. After a century of genocidal ideologies and destructive speciesism, animals have enslaved humans and taken over the world. In a wave of hope, the statues of the past have been removed but new ones are being erected to suppress the will of the people. This is now a planet of apes, boars and lions, and a zoological revolution is reversing and recreating the atrocities of the 20th century. As animal figures watch the film archives of our world, it feels as if Lumière has been transported into a film by Méliès or Willis H. O’Brien. We are all well aware that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as a farce. The time has now come for this farce, in which “political language inhabits our dreams and consumes us”, to allow the possibility of a “graceful and tender insubordination” to emerge.
Leonora addio (Paolo Taviani): Three surreal funerals are intertwined by the murder of a Sicilian immigrant boy in Brooklyn.
The Line (Ursula Meier): Margaret, 35, has a history of violent behaviour which has cost her a romantic relationship. She has moved back in with her mother Christina, a fragile, immature 55-year-old woman who blames Margaret, her firstborn, for ruining her dreams of a career as a concert pianist. In a state of unbridled fury during an argument, Margaret hits Christina. The law steps in, further complicating family dynamics. As she awaits trial, Margaret is forbidden from coming into contact with her mother or within 100 metres of their home. This only intensifies her desire to be closer to her family. Every day, Margaret appears at this 100-metre threshold to see her 12-year-old sister Marion and give her music lessons.
Before, Now & Then (Kamila Andini): The 1960s in Indonesia were a period of dramatic political change and turmoil, with Suharto’s coup ousting Sukarno and leading to a violent anti-communist purge. Nana, a gentle, beautiful young woman, has been badly affected by the conflict. Her husband was kidnapped and taken into the forest. Although she managed to escape from the gang leader who wanted to force her to marry him, the incident cost her father his life and drove her into poverty. Several years later, she is living comfortably as the second wife of a rich Sundanese man, with a maid to help her adjust to her new environment. But Nana’s past re-emerges in her dreams.
The Passengers of the Night (Mikhaël Hers): Paris, 1981. The winds of change are blowing on election night and the French storm the streets, elated. But Élisabeth (Charlotte Gainsbourg) struggles to share the general mood of optimism. Her marriage is coming to an end and she will now have to support her family. She is distraught, and her father and teenage children are worried that her tears simply will not dry. But what if listening to her emotions could help her to start filling the blank page of her future? What if she were to write a letter on a whim to the host of her favourite radio programme? Or invite a homeless girl into her house? What would happen if she were to make the kind of gestures that actually change lives?
Rimini (Ulrich Seidl): The death of his mother brings Richie Bravo back from his adopted home in Italy to his teenage bedroom in Lower Austria, where Charlton Heston is still flexing his biceps and Winnetou is still alive. With a schnapps in hand and velvety Wurlitzer melodies in the air, he and his “piccolo fratello” bid farewell in the cellar to the parental home. His father is in a nursing home. Pop star Richie makes his money in Rimini. Life-size posters on the walls of his villa tell of a glorious past but the present is a damp squib. Richie claims he is still “con molto amore” – a bit of a squeeze, and squeezing is what it takes to get Richie into his corset and “jacketto”, with which he rhymes “perfetto”, before ardently crooning schmaltzy German songs in staid hotel foyers. Oozing sultry charm, this Austrian gigolo inveigles his way into the minds, bodies and wallets of women of a certain age.
Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush (Andreas Dresen): Rabiye Kurnaz is someone you might generally call an ordinary woman, except that she is a real dynamo. Taking care of her children and much more, she is the one running the show in her terraced house in Bremen. Shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, her son Murat is accused of terrorism and is (one of the first) shipped off to Guantanamo prison camp. This marks the beginning of a journey into the heart of world politics for this resolute German-Turkish woman. Together with human rights lawyer Bernhard Docke, whom she soon has completely on her side (like almost everyone around her), she battles for the release of her son – using her very own brand of self-taught English – all the way to the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.
Robe of Gems (Natalia Lopez Gallardo): Isabel and her family take possession of her mother’s villa in rural Mexico where they reconnect with their long-time domestic worker Mari. But things have never been the same since Isabel’s mother left. Once so well looked after, the house is now bare and neglected. Isabel and her husband are growing apart, and their children are increasingly worried about them. Mari’s sister’s disappearance has left her family in distress and forced her to engage in criminal activities with Adan, the son of a local policeman. Isabel decides to go on a dangerous quest, neglecting her own children, as well as her housekeeper’s warning that she does not understand how things work in Mexico’s poorer regions.
The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo): Famous novelist Junhee’s reunion with two acquaintances would appear to be tinged with a slight sense of acrimony. The first of these colleagues gave up writing to open a bookstore on the outskirts of Seoul and has not given her any feedback about her last book. The second, a filmmaker, never adapted Junhee’s novel as planned. But the more pressing issue is that Junhee has not published anything in a while. Instead, she has begun to question her approach to writing and is having doubts about the sensibility that forged her style and her charismatic, scathing personality. During a stroll in the park with the film director and his wife, she meets a famous female actor who is experiencing a similar hiatus. The two connect so deeply that an idea for a film, which would be her first, soon begins to germinate in the novelist’s mind.
One Year, One Night (Isaki Lacuesta): Céline and Ramón are a young binational couple who survived the terrorist attack at the Bataclan theatre on November 13, 2015. That harrowing night has left an open wound in their lives and they are struggling to regain a sense of normality and move beyond the identity they have been assigned as victims. While Céline has repressed her experience and thrown herself back into her old life, Ramón is stuck in the past. Both are grappling with the same question: how can they survive and move on as a couple?
Return to Dust (Li Ruijun): Ma and Guiying lead lives that are similarly sheltered and difficult. He is a reticent farmer, the last of his family to remain unmarried; she is disabled and infertile, and long past what is considered to be marrying age in rural China. Their arranged marriage, uniting two people who are accustomed to isolation and humiliation, would appear to force them into a relationship that will make life worse for both of them. But instead, they seize the opportunity to rise above themselves and discover their shared destiny. They learn how to become close companions, how to speak up, how to care for each other and even how to smile. All this in spite of the hard work required of them by their quintessential bond with the land and the trials that await them on their common path.
ENCOUNTERS
See You Friday, Robinson (Mitra Farahani): A few years ago, Mitra Farahani had an idea. Could she engineer the encounter of two great filmmakers who, although they belong to the same generation, have never met in person: Jean-Luc Godard, the Swiss master who needs no introduction, and the lesser known Ebrahim Golestan, whose literary and film work is the bedrock of modern Iranian culture – two hermits of cinema’s technical and political revolution.
Axiom (Jons Jonsson): Julius is an eloquent young museum attendant loved by his friends, colleagues and his girlfriend. One day he invites his colleagues on a sailing trip on his aristocratic family’s boat. But something goes wrong. Julius is not who he seems to be.
Brother In Every Inch (Alexander Zolotukhin): Brothers Mitya and Andrey want nothing more than to conquer the skies flying jets. To achieve this, they undergo Russian military pilot training. The twins watch out for each other – in every situation. If one fails a theory test, the other steps in. In practical exercises, it is the other way around: when Mitya’s vestibular system falters, Andrey assists him in his training. Cutting the cord becomes a challenge: the aptitude test is coming up and the accompanying test flights turn out to be an extreme experience for everyone. Their flight instructor (also a pilot in real life) is not the only one to recognise that adhesive forces of a different kind prevail between the brothers.
Coma (Bertrand Bonello): Bertrand Bonello’s daughter has just turned 18. But the moment this young adult officially begins to “spread her wings” coincides with a global health crisis. Locked indoors, she experiences life in a state of limbo. In between reveries and video chats with her friends, she follows an influencer named Patricia Coma. A device she buys from her, called a “revelator”, leads her to question how much free will she actually has.
Father’s Day (Kivu Ruhorahoza): Three family stories intersect in present-day Rwanda. A mother trying to cope with the loss of her son who died in an accident gradually distances herself from her husband; a small-time criminal living as a thief and a fence introduces his son to a life of living by his wits; and a young woman taking care of the ailing father she never truly loved prepares for the organ donation that could save his life.
Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland): Peter Strickland’s fifth feature takes place in an art residency led by an upper-class aesthete who has invited a culinary collective to perform their “sonic catering” practice for a month. Hired to report on their creative process, a Greek writer begins to suffer from indigestion, to which the institution’s sarcastic doctor responds by advising him to “let food be his medicine”. While his intestinal disorders force him to acknowledge his own malaise, the collective is undermined by internal quarrels as well as external assaults from a group of sardonic, rejected candidates.
American Journal (Arnaud des Pallieres): An essay film interweaving various anonymous, often private archive images and intertitles containing a mixture of reflection, speculation and poetry. Written from January to April of an undefined year.
Small, Slow But Steady (Sho Miyake): Keiko, a young pro boxer, was born with a hearing impairment. Boxing is a real challenge for her, but the club she belongs to is like a second home. After winning two difficult fights, a creeping fear begins to grow inside her. The club chairman, the only person who had accepted her as a boxer, is plagued by health issues and is losing his eyesight. Having learned that the gym is about to close for good, a confused Keiko goes on to her third bout. But perhaps the biggest challenge she faces is trying to understand the true nature and strength of her will to fight.
MUTZENBACHER (Ruth Beckermann): An audition for men aged between 16 and 99. There are no props nor make-up, just pure improvisation. All that is required is the willingness to engage openly with the topic and language of the words on the page. No small challenge, since the text in question is the scandalous novel published anonymously in 1906 “Josefine Mutzenbacher, or the Life Story of a Viennese Whore, as Told by Herself” which, as this film confirms, continues to be the subject of passionate and controversial discussions about desire, even today. What might be world-class pornographic literature for some is seen by others as an abusive depiction of child sexuality.
A Little Love Package (Gastón Solnicki): Vienna, 2019 – the end of an era. The smoking ban in public places means that a part of Kaffeehaus culture has disappeared. Of all moments, this is the one that Angeliki chooses to buy an apartment with help from her interior designer, Carmen. Angeliki seems to have something against all of them: either the parquet floors creak, the tiles are the wrong colour or she is bothered by the proximity to a restaurant. How will she ever find a new home in this environment? Carmen feels like she is talking to a brick wall. Moreover, she simply cannot understand why Angeliki is refusing to part with her money.
The City and The City (Christos Passalis, Syllas Tzoumerkas): Nicknamed “the mother of Israel”, the Greek city of Thessaloniki was for centuries home to a large diaspora of Sephardic Jews until the outbreak of the Second World War. In the winter of 1943, the Nazi regime dispatched Eichmann’s deputies to Greece where they quickly and rigorously carried out their programme of ghettoisation and deportation which led to the extermination of more than 90 percent of the city’s Jewish population. I Poli ke i Poli aims to reconstruct this dramatic history through six intertwined chapters drawn from the lives and perils of Thessaloniki’s Jewish community.
Queens of the Qing Dynasty (Ashley McKenzie): Star, a suicidal teen now too old for foster care, develops a candid rapport with An, a student from Shanghai who is assigned to watch her while she is in hospital. A nightly exchange of secrets, text messages and possessions quickly expands the boundaries of their relationship, altering their inner chemistry.
Sonne (Kurdwin Ayub): In a moment of ordinary madness, three girlfriends decide to shoot a burqa music video. Yesmin is Kurdish and wears a headscarf, Bella describes herself as “half-Yugo(slavian)” and Nati “comes from Austria”. They get along like a house on fire in their Viennese “twerk bitch” dialect. Yasmin’s little brother – no saint himself – squeals on Yesmin to their parents. But who could have known that Yesmin’s cool dad would “like” their video and would start chauffeuring these “talented women” from one Muslim community festivity to another. The three soon become famous, but then their views begin to diverge: Bella and Nati find a surprising new cause in the shape of Kurdish patriotism; but, caught between the reality show of her own life and the many others in her smartphone, Yesmin starts to feel alienated from her culture, her religion, the chauvinists around her and, finally, even from her friends.
Unrest (Cyril Schaublin): Another time is possible! At least that is the case in the early days of industrial clockmaking in Switzerland in around 1877, when the disparity between the authorities, manufacturers and models gives rise to parallel temporal dimensions, each with their own timetable, values and ideology. In this proto-Taylorist society, where dignitaries and their gendarmes control the exact time and dictate the rhythms of production and community, a group of workers form an anarchist union in association with the First International federation of workers’ groups. This is where Josephine, who is in charge of assembling the movement, the heart of the mechanical watch, meets the Russian cartographer Pyotr Kropotkin, who is currently in the Jura valleys. Inspired by anarchist ideas, they demand the liberation of time and counter the values of the marketplace and nationalism with solidarity and pacifism.
The Death of My Mother (Jessica Krummacher)
FORUM
Afterwater (Dane Komljen): Drawing inspiration from the scholar G. E. Hutchinson – whose studies of lakes established the discipline of limnology, and whose writings provide the source of the earlier observation – the film begins with its two leads travelling from Berlin to a lake outside the city. Eventually, despite its seemingly fixed boundaries, the body of water they set up camp beside somehow flows into another, populated by its own increasingly out of time figures. They will not be the only ones.
Poet (Darezhan Omirbayev): Didar is a poet, but he cannot live from his poetry. He has to write early in the mornings before setting out for his day job as a newspaper editor. But the sense of crisis that pervades his life is not only linked to his economic situation. At work, pessimistic discussions are held about Kazakh’s dwindling significance, dying languages and the worldwide dominance of English. Everywhere people are staring at screens. The triumph of content, commercialisation and social media is unstoppable. In a world like this, is there anyone left who’s still interested in poetry?
Shall I Compare You to a Summer’s Day (Mohammad Shawky Hassan): A glance leads to a smile, a smile to a rendezvous: every love story begins the same way. These narratives are stored in songs and poems and live on beyond their inevitable endings, as Shakespeare’s titular sonnet 18 also suggests.
Camouflage (Jonathan Perel): For two minutes, all we see are calves, bare feet and asphalt. Every time a foot hits the ground, it makes a slapping sound, accompanied by the runner’s rapid breathing. The rhythm is steady, and yet there is an urgency to the shot. The runner is Félix Bruzzone, a writer who lives near the Campo de Mayo military base on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. His research and experiences serve as the basis for Jonathan Perel’s film Camuflaje. He explains what drives him in voice-over: his mother was disappeared by the military when he was an infant. It was only after purchasing a property close to Campo de Mayo that he learnt that she also died there.
This House (Miryam Charles): Bridgeport, USA, 2008: a teenage girl dies in her bedroom, the victim of a violent crime. Ten years later, the director compiles her imagined biography, connecting Haiti, Quebec and the US and asking what constitutes a safe home.
The Middle Ages (Alejo Moguillansky, Luciana Acuna): As director Alejo and dancer Luciana desperately try to keep their professional and everyday lives going in the pandemic, their daughter Cleo discovers both Beckett and the power of the market.
The State and Me (Max Linz): Judge Praetorius-Camusot’s legal routines are interrupted when the ghost of a member of the Paris Commune turns up at an event celebrating German-French relations.
Europe (Philip Scheffner): Zohra has received a French residence permit for medical reasons, but when her health improves, she is supposed to leave the country.
A Flower in the Mouth (Éric Baudelaire): A film diptych about time running out and how to live through the days that remain. The first act, filmed as an observational documentary in the world’s largest flower market, follows millions of bouquets transiting through a cavernous refrigerated hangar to be sold at auction.
For the Many – The Vienna Chamber of Labour (Constantin Wulff): The portrait of a truly unique institution: anyone treated unfairly at work can find help and guidance here. Wulff observes workers’ concerns and the start of the pandemic with considerable sensitivity. How is the value of our work changing?
Geographies of Solitude (Jacquelyn Mills): For decades, Zoe Lucas has catalogued the flora and fauna on Sable Island, a thin strip of land off the Canadian coast. Experimental filmmaker Jacquelyn Mills joins her to observe the sand dunes, freshwater ponds, wild horses and washed-up plastic waste.
Happer's Comet (Tyler Taormina): A mid-night mosaic of a suburban town steeped in alienation. While peering into the late night moments of many residents, we notice that some of them quietly escape into the dark of night via rollerblades.
Jet Lag (Zheng Lu Xinyuan): Xinyuan films her trip from Vienna to China. The hazmat suits on the aeroplane and the layers of tape sealing off each room in the quarantine hotel conjure up images of crime scenes or medical thrillers, although once she does gymnastics on the bed, the mood immediately shifts.
Dry Ground Burning (Adirley Queirós, Joana Pimenta): n the Sol Nascente favela on the edge of Brasília, a group of women hijack a pipeline to sell oil to the community.
Memoryland (Kim Quy Bui)
My Two Voices (Lina Rodriguez): My Two Voices proposes a poetic reflection on the fluid nature of identity, centered on Ana, Claudia and Marinela, three Latin American women who share their intimate experiences of immigration to Canada.
Hot in Day, Cold at Night (Park Song-yeol)
We Haven’t Lost Our Way (Agnieszka Żulewska, Andrzej Konopka, Oskar Hamerski): This loose adaptation of the P.C. Jersild novel follows a professor who quits his job and a translator in difficulties. He sends her recordings of the mysterious journey he has embarked on, but is the journey even real? Or just proof of his madness?
Nuclear Family (Erin Wilkerson, Travis Wilkerson): Tormented by images of nuclear war since his childhood, the director tours nuclear test facilities across America with his family. The film re-examines recurring violence, nuclear and human history, overlapped with memories of the massacre of Native Americans.
Rewind and Play (Alain Gomis)
Scala (Ananta Thitanat)
Super Natural (Jorge Jácome): A group of performers – some with, some without disabilities – explore the island of Madeira, where the rich flora and fauna, artificial intelligences and underwater beings all make collective mischief.
Striking Land (Raul Domingues)
Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter (Gustavo Vinagre): Gustavo Vinagre shows young queer people in São Paulo defying both the virus and the political failure of their government.
The Kegelstatt Trio (Rita Azevedo Gomes)
The United States of America (James Benning)
The Veteran (Jeronimo Rodriguez)
FORUM EXPANDED
Devil’s Peak (Simon Liu)
Diva (Nicolas Cilins)
Fire Emergencies (Kevin Jerome Everson)
Gazing... Unseeing (Mohamed Abdelkarim)
Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)
If from Every Tongue It Drips (Sharlene Bamboat): The film follows the lives of a couple living in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. As their personal lives unfold on camera, the lines between rehearsal and reality, location and distance, self and other dissipate and reinforce one another.
If Revolution Is a Sickness (Diane Severin Nguyen)
Instant Life (Anja Dornieden, Juan David González Monroy, Andrew Kim)
Jail Bird in a Peacock Chair (James Gregory Atkinson)
Kumbuka (Petna Ndaliko Katondolo)
Majmouan (Subtotals (Mohammadreza Farzad)
Moune Ô (Maxime Jean-Baptiste)
Mun koti (My Home (Azar Saiyar)
MU/T/T/ER (Esther Kondo Heller)
O dente do dragão (Dragon Tooth (Rafael Castanheira Parrode)
One Big Bag (Every Ocean Hughes)
Parasite Family (Prapat Jiwarangsan)
Sab changa si (All Was Good (Teresa A Braggs)
Sol in the Dark (Mawena Yehouessi)
Sonne Unter Tage (Sun Under Ground (Mareike Bernien, Alex Gerbaulet)
Surface Rites (Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko)
vs (Lydia Nsiah)
Yarokamena (Andrés Jurado)
FORUM SPECIAL
77sqm_9:26min (Forensic Architecture): On April 6, 2006, Halit Yozgat was murdered by the National Socialist Underground at an Internet café in Kassel. State intelligence officer Andreas Temme was in the café around the same time. An architectural dissection of his police statement.
Dilim dönmüyor – My Tongue Does Not Turn (Serpil Turhan): Serpil Turhan’s grandparents gave up Kurdish for Turkish and the village for the city, just as her mother gave up Turkish for German and Istanbul for Berlin in turn. The director gently compiles fragments from the life of a family marked by migration.
Dirt for Dinner (Branwen Okpako): Born in Saxony, Afro-German Sam Meffire has had a chequered life. At the start of the 1990s, his face was used as the symbol of an open-minded state, before he became a police officer, friend of the minister of the interior and eventually a criminal.
Fremd. Yaban (Hakan Savaş Mican): Meryem is visiting Berlin from Turkey, although she’s come at the wrong moment for Adem, whose architecture course is his only focus. A sensitive study of the dynamics between the Gastarbeiter generation and the following one, between mother and son.
In der Wüste (Rafael Fuster Pardo): Fernando is Chilean, Timur is from Turkey, both are penniless artists living together in Kreuzberg. They wander through the city in search of money and distraction. This portrait of friendship in the urban desert is full of mischievous charm.
The Empty Center (Hito Steyerl): Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz: in the 1990s, the former death strip became the site for emblematic construction projects and a new centre of power. Steyerl’s incisive essay reveals a whole nexus of political forces based on exclusion and suppression.
The Maji-Maji Readings (Ricardo Bacallao): A theatre reading about the Maji Maji uprising in the former German East Africa reveals that colonial, racist patterns of thought still dominate in Germany today. Philippa Ébené, Grada Kilomba and others linked to the production all get to have their say.
Merry Christmas Deutschland oder Vorlesung zur Geschichtstheorie II (Raoul Peck): Raoul Peck’s graduation film at the DFFB dips into the prevailing mood in Germany in 1984 and the conception of democracy of the time. Images of the grey city, people in a festive mood and clips from West German television exert an atmospheric pull.
Normality 1–X (Hito Steyerl): At the turn of the century, neo-Nazi marches, racist attacks and the defiling of Jewish graves formed part of everyday life in Germany and Austria. Steyerl’s series of essayistic shorts give an account of violence mistaken for normality.
A Fine Day (Thomas Arslan): A long summer’s day in Berlin: a young actress still in training wanders through the city. She ends things with her boyfriend, meets another man, thinks about love. With typical restraint, Arslan crafts a narrative of purpose and exploration.
This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past (Cana Bilir-Meier): A visit to a mall, old photos, a bomb scare, an attack: lines of connection and ruptures between everyday life as a migrant in past and present alike, between youthful exuberance and ongoing racist violence in Germany.
Beirut the Encounter (Borhane Alaouié): In the midst of the civil war, a Shiite man from West Beirut and a Christian woman from the east of the city try to see each other one last time before she emigrates to the US. Newly restored, a film that has lost nothing of its topicality.
Come With Me to the Cinema – The Gregors (Alice Agneskirchner): From the 1950s onwards, Erika and Ulrich Gregor brought countless film historical milestones to Berlin and shaped cinema discourse in post-war Germany. A look at the life and work of the couple without whom Arsenal and the Forum wouldn’t exist.
West Indies (Med Hondo): This stirring 1979 musical encompasses 400 years of French occupation of the West Indies: a theatre stage becomes a slave ship where Africa, Europe and the Caribbean interlock. Med Hondo’s classic now returns to the big screen in a new restoration.
PANORAMA
Talking About the Weather (Annika Pinske): Clara, 39, is taking a PhD in philosophy in Berlin. When she visits provincial Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for her mother’s birthday party, she realises how far she has moved away from her roots in her search for a self-determined life.
The Apartment with Two Women (Kim Se-in): A family argument escalates and Su-kyung hits her daughter Yi-jung with her car. Just an accident, she claims. Malicious intent, contradicts her daughter. Her rebellion marks the beginning of an arduous process for both women to cut the cord.
Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (Nina Menkes): Using examples from over 120 years of film history, Nina Menkes explores the male gaze in cinema: to what extent is the objectification and sexualisation of the female body ingrained in film language? And what impact does this have on society?
Swing Ride (Chiara Bellosi): When a fairground sets up outside her window, 15-year-old Benedetta meets Amanda who defies gender norms – and not just that. Fascinated, the two grow closer. A coming-of-age film about an unusual friendship and the experience of empowerment.
Dreaming Walls (Amélie van Elmbt, Maya Duverdier): The end of an eight-year upmarket renovation of the legendary Chelsea Hotel is partly longed for and partly dreaded by the artists who still live there. The film grants us access to their apartments and interweaves the past with the present.
Klondike (Maryna Er Gorbach): It is July 2014. There is a wall missing in Irka and Tolik’s house – a casualty of the hostilities on the Russian-Ukrainian border. But even when the MH17 passenger jet is shot down nearby, pregnant Irka still wants to stay put in her home.
A Love Song (Max Walker-Silverman): Faye is camping by a lake in the vast expanse of the American mountains in order to meet her childhood sweetheart Lito after decades apart. A musical and visually stunning film about remembering and the love for that which no longer exists.
Myanmar Diaries (The Myanmar Film Collective): How does it feel to be forgotten by the world? After the military coup in February 2021, these film diaries of young opposition activists in Myanmar use the cinema screen to communicate with the world in a different way than allowed TV news.
Into My Name (Nicolò Bassetti): Nic, Leo, Andrea and Raff determine their own gender identities. Each of their gender biographies is different, but the societal barriers to their social, physical and legal changes are the same. Together they are strong.
Nelly & Nadine (Magnus Gertten): Nelly and Nadine meet in Ravensbrück concentration camp. They spend the rest of their lives together. Decades later, Nelly’s granddaughter goes in search of clues. A poignant film about a love story and the need for individual and collective remembrance.
We, Students! (Rafiki Fariala): The filmmaker turns the camera on himself and his friends, capturing their everyday life as students of Bangui University. At once clear-eyed and poetic, they share their thoughts about their future in the Central African Republic.
Until Tomorrow (Ali Asgari): Student Fereshteh has to hide her illegitimate baby for one night from her parents who turn up for a surprise visit. Her friend Atefeh helps her. They embark on an odyssey through Tehran during which they must carefully weigh up who their allies are.
Taurus (Tim Sutton): Self-destructive rap musician Cole meanders through a toxic mix of numbness, narcissism and alienation. This radical portrait of a broken man eschews clichés and psychological interpretations.
Love, Deutschmarks and Death (Cem Kaya): Cem Kaya’s dense documentary essay celebrates 60 years of Turkish music in Germany. An alternative post-war history that is at the same time a musical Who’s Who – from Yüksel Özkasap to Derdiyoklar and Muhabbet.
Happiness (Askar Uzabayev): For her job as an influencer, she wears orange and a broad smile. The “Happiness” brand is her doctrine, but her home is a dark place where brute force has ruled for years. This film shows us what it costs to escape the trap of misogyny.
Beautiful Beings (Guðmundur Arnar Guðmundsson): Balli, 14, is an outsider. But then he meets three boys of his own age. A coming-of-age drama which finds poetic images for a tentative, emergent friendship that threatens to falter due to gender-normed codes of conduct, and violence.
Bettina (Lutz Pehnert): A biography set in East and West Berlin in which singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner, born in 1947, sings about life in the GDR, her feelings of being uprooted in West Berlin, and looks back with humour and honesty on a life of resistance.
Lullaby (Alauda Ruiz de Azúa): Amaia and Javi are new parents. When he disappears for weeks on end to work, she seeks support from her parents. But Amaia’s mother suddenly falls ill. A sensitive study of the caring, cross-generational role of women.
Concerned Citizen (Idan Haguel): Ben and Raz are painstakingly pursuing their desire to have a child, and the migrant neighbourhood where this gay couple has set up their new flat is on the up. But a conflict over a newly planted tree in the city brings deep-seated prejudices to light.
Una Femmina - The Code of Silence (Francesco Costabile): Hardship and beauty lie cheek by jowl in Rosa’s home in the wilds of Calabria. When she becomes aware of her family’s involvement in the mafia, she has to decide how far she is willing to go in order to break out of the ’Ndrangheta.
Fogaréu (Flávia Neves): After years of absence, Fernanda returns to her uncle’s ranch in Goiás in mid-western Brazil. Her appearance and her uncomfortable questions expose ableist and colonial structures and shake the façade of her bourgeois family.
Grand Jeté (Isabelle Stever): Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.
Working Class Heroes (Miloš Pušić): Lidija is working for a dubious real estate company. It is her job to protect the construction site’s image and cover up the dirty tracks left by Serbian turbo-capitalism. But when the workers rebel, her complicity is put to the test.
Somewhere Over the Chemtrails (Adam Koloman Rybanský): When a villager is injured by a car at a party, firefighter Brona is immediately convinced that it is an attack perpetrated by an “Arab”. His colleague Standa sees things differently. A laconic film that explores the causes of racism.
No Simple Way Home (Akuol de Mabior): Akuol de Mabior is the daughter of a martyr of the revolution in South Sudan. As her mother is sworn in as vice president, the young woman tries to find out if this country torn by civil war can ever become her home.
No U-Turn (Ike Nnaebue): As a young man, Ike Nnaebue tried to flee to Europe. Twenty years later, he retraces the steps of his journey back then to find out what motivates young people today to expose themselves to the dangers of a passage into an uncertain future.
Northern Skies Over Empty Space (Alejandra Márquez Abella): With a keen sense of how to deploy omens that herald change, Alejandra Márquez Abella portrays a period of epochal change in rural Mexico – as seen by those who are usually restricted to the role of passive supporting actor.
Convenience Store (Michael Borodin): A supermarket in a Moscow suburb is the heart of darkness for the Uzbek “employees” who work there around the clock and are threatened, abused and imprisoned. Mukhabbat escapes and reveals the vicious circle of modern slavery. A truly surreal real-life trip.
Nobody's Hero (Alain Guiraudie): Clermont-Ferrand, central France. Médéric, 35 years old, meets and falls in love with middle-aged sex worker Isadora, who is married. When the city center is the scene of a terrorist attack, Selim, a young, homeless guy, provokes a wave of paranoia by taking refuge in Médéric’s building.
PERSPEKTIVE DEUTSCHES KINO
Echo (Mareike Wegener): The police officer Saskia Harder, traumatised by a bomb attack in Afghanistan, has barely initiated the investigation into the identity of a bog body in provincial Brandenburg when a blind bomb from the Second World War has to be defused in the village.
Forces (Constantin Hatz): The life of the meek Daniels, who cares for his terminally ill father and is exploited by his aggressive brother, is characterised by cold feelings and violence. When he meets the outsider Marcel, however, he believes he has found a friend.
Ladies Only (Rebana Liz John): In the women's compartments of local trains in Mumbai, women report what makes them angry. Their answers come together to form a fascinating tapestry which not only composes a portrait of Indian society, but also points far beyond it.
Rondo (Katharina Rivilis): A weekend on the Baltic Sea with her new boyfriend Lars becomes déjà-vu for Zoé, throwing her back into another time, to a weekend which she already spent in this place - with another man whom she loved very much.
The Silent Forest (Saralisa Volm): After a murder in the Upper Palatine forest, trainee forester Anja sees parallels to the unsolved death of her father 20 years previously. Her investigations touch on a dark secret.
Sorry Comrade (Vera Brückner): In order to be with his great love Hedi, Karl-Heinz wants to move to the GDR. However, the pressure of the Stasi, who want to instrumentalise him, forces the couple to a ludicrous escape via Romania, in which everything that can go wrong does go wrong.
We Might As Well Be Dead (Natalia Sinelnikova): The skyscraper on the edge of the forest is known for its carefully selected house community. When a dog disappears, the security officer Anna has to fight the irrational fear of the residents. The utopia with a view of the forest is slowly unravelling.
GENERATION
Rookies (Thierry Demaizière, Alban Teurlai)
Beba (Rebeca Huntt): A raw, poetic self-portrait in which young, NYC-born Afro-Latina Rebeca ‘Beba’ Huntt stares down historical, societal, and generational trauma.
The Quiet Girl (Colm Bairéad)
Comedy Queen (Sanna Lenken)
Kind Hearts (Olivia Rochette, Gerard-Jan Claes): The entrancing love story of Billie and Lucas, a young Brussels couple. The film paints a candid portrait of the formative but also uncertain facets of every (first) love.
Oink (Mascha Halberstad)
Millie Lies Low (Michelle Savill)
My Father’s Truck (Mauricio Osaki): When Nhi’s grandmother becomes seriously ill, she has to go on the road with her father a taciturn man named Trung, whom she hardly knows, during his work as a truck driver in the region of Hanoi.
Sublime (Mariano Biasin): Manuel lives in a small coastal town. He plays bass in a band with his best friends. One of them is Felipe, with whom he shares a strong friendship. Unbreakable bond. Until the time comes to put it to test.
Girl Picture (Alli Haapasalo): Best friends Mimmi and Rönkkö work after school at a foodcourt smoothie kiosk, frankly swapping stories of their frustrations and expectations regarding love and sex.
GENERATION 14 PLUS
Alis (Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck): Ten young women reside in a home for girls from the streets of Bogotá. They talk about their roommate, Alis. Alis is the sum of their experiences, their longings, their struggles. Alis is a collective invention and at the same time a protected space that makes it possible to express painful truths in this sensitively reflected documentary.
Bubble (Tetsurō Araki): For Hibiki, the world has been turned upside down. Bubbles that override gravity, competitions for scarce resources, a momentous encounter with a mysterious girl. In his modern anime fairy tale, director Tetsurō Araki creates a dazzling universe, which becomes a playground for fundamental questions about becoming and decaying, with creative ingenuity.
Kalle Kosmonaut (Günther Kurth, Tine Kugler): The long-term documentary about Kalle, a boy from the prefabricated housing projects along the Allee of the Cosmonauts, paints a different picture of Berlin: “Poor” is not “sexy” here, it means: bad opportunities. The directing duo respectfully accompanies Kalle and leaves the charismatic boy to speak, supplementing scenes with animated sequences where background knowledge is meaningful.
Scheme (Farkhat Sharipov): The focus is on Masha, a teenager who, through a friend, gets caught in an opaque web of dependency and exploitation. In complex images that capture Masha's lack of anchors and connections, as well as her search for support, the film creates the multi-layered portrait of coming of age in new-rich Almaty, precise, vivid, dramatic and of universal relevance.
Stay Awake (Jamie Sisley): Night after night, the brothers Ethan and Derek take their opium-addicted mother to the emergency room. When Ethan receives an acceptance from the university, the chance arises to break out of the complicated co-dependent relationship. In his feature film debut, a further development of his short film of the same name (Generation 2015), Jamie Sisley vividly explores the heart-wrenching effects the opioid crisis in the USA has on individuals.
The Land of Sasha (Julia Trofimova): Sasha doesn't have a father, but an earring - reason enough for his teenage mother to worry. When he is supposed to paint the waiting room of a psychiatric hospital, he meets his future love there: Zhenya. Deep voice, creative like he is, many problems. Carried by the light of summer in Kaliningrad, two idiosyncratic characters explore their feelings, talents and fears together.
GENERATION KPLUS — SHORT FILMS
The Most Boring Granny in the Whole World (Damaris Zielke): Greta is bored with her grandmother, because anything that is fun is not allowed there - and because everything that is boring is among granny’s hobbies: hoarding souvenirs and looking at photos of the deceased. When granny sleeps, Greta plays her funeral. Lovingly stop-trick animated, and told through the hot-headed Greta’s perspective, the film initiates a sensitive conversation about death and memory.
Alma and Paz (Cris Gris): After the death of their mother, sisters Alma and Paz have to consider parting with their childhood home. For Paz, who arrives back from the city to make arrangements for selling the property, it seems clearer. For the younger Alma, the plantation in the Mexican countryside is full of memories. A story told in warm pictures about parting, origins and growing up.
Hush Hush Little Bear (Māra Liniņa): Counting sheep with a difference: A little bedtime story in which a bear family plays the main role - while the sheep who knit clouds play the supporting role. In a world made entirely of wool, two smart-alec, rebellious bear cubs tustle between comforting tiredness and parental care in a film artfully staged with engaging fantasy and love.
Datsun (Mark Albiston): One last tour with his late father's Datsun - the car is due to be sold tomorrow. With a friend and little brother in the back seat, 14-year-old Matt goes to a party. The sudden appearance of the police, however, acts like an incendiary device to his charged mood. Mark Albiston, already a guest at Generation several times, is once again a master of youthful escalation.
Rooster (Myo Aung): A very young girl from Myanmar is supposed to marry a man from China whom she has never seen before, and to follow him to a country she has never set foot in. However, the man who is supposed to bring her and her family a better life is prevented from arriving, and a rooster is supposed to replace him at the ceremony. Gong ji gently and mysteriously tells of a serious topic in suspiciously beautiful Images.
Louis I., King of the Sheep (Markus Wulf): When a crown rolled in front of his hooves, Louis, a sheep among other sheep, grabs it, puts it on and becomes king. From then on, he plays through everything that kings do to banish boredom and to demonstrate power. With a lot of humour, historical borrowings and a profound sense, the detailed stop-motion animation drives abuse of power to extremes in order to expose it.
Luce and the Rock (Britt Raes): Colourfully composed, geometric images tell the magical story of Luce, the only child in a small village, and of the friendship with a boulder. One day, it rolls off the mountain into the middle of the village's community square. While the adults are at a loss, Luce discovers the child in a rock. Cinematic art off the beaten track, challenging and smart.
The Queen of the Foxes (Marina Rosset): The queen of the foxes is the saddest of them all. In order to make her happy, her worried gang swarms out at night to lay at her feet the secretly written, but ultimately unsent love letters retrieved from the city's rubbish. With its beautifully painted and animated images, La Reine des Renards is an ode to love.
To Vancouver (Artemis Anastasiadou): Tomorrow, Vicky’s big brother will go away and leave the Greek village. Here at home, in the abandoned industrial landscape by the sea, there is no work. But Vicky definitely doesn't want to let Yorgos go. In order to avoid the unstoppable, she practices an old spell that people tell about the forest and an abandoned mine.
The Dependent Variables (Lorenzo Tardella): In a dark, velvety theatre there is a first kiss between Pietro and Tommaso. When the lights come back on, however, the two students have different expectations of what might follow. The chaos of awakening desire in its complexity and sensuality is told and made almost physically tangible through looks and gestures, approach and retreat, hope and fear.
Wheels on the Bus (Surya Shahi): At school, they preach that all evil will return in the next life. But nobody looks when Bhyal's classmates blackmail him to make wheels for their toy bus. Bhyal, who lives with his mother on the outskirts of the village and works as an iron smith at night is an ‘Untouchable’. A cinematic examination of the caste system in a small mountain village in Nepal.
Suzie in the Garden (Lucie Sunková): With the allotment garden in which her parents have a small house, Zuza enjoys a wonder world of her own. She is curious about the secrets of the other gardens. A black dog and a blue key eventually lead her to a hidden, overgrown garden. A magical world that only child’s eyes can see unfolds by virtue of strong oil painting on glass.
GENERATION 14 PLUS — SHORT FILMS
At Sixteen (Carlos Lobo): What do you do with the desire that is just awakening? At dance performances, in concerts, during sports, while skating, eyes are searching and bodies are exposed. Each space possesses its own choreography, its own music. Almost without words desire and rejection, hope and disappointment become tangible.
Born in Damascus (Laura Wadha): In her documentary, the Scottish-Syrian director tries to reconcile the two worlds in her head: her fond memories of visiting relatives in Damascus and what has happened in Syria since then. She confronts her cousin, who fled from there, with her recordings from then - and thus calls back memories that were buried under trauma.
Fever (Matias Carlier): Aleister and Joana spend their days together in the skate park. Tomorrow, Joana will go away. Tonight, they want to have fun together again. But all day long Aleister has been seeing visions of an old man walking the streets with a bow and arrow. A flowing film, told in large pictures, which explores the realm between friendship and love.
Funkele (Nicole Jachmann): Merel and Robin are best friends. They wander around, have fun, talking about everything, including sex. When boys join them, the balance of their friendship shifts. Merel attracts the boys and Robin sees them as competition. Through secret glances, groping gestures and carefully observed moments, Funkele tells of the awakening of desire and of female solidarity.
Lay Me by the Shore (David Findlay): The last exams at school, everyone is in a celebratory mood. The transgender teenager Noah is one of them - but he’s often thrown out of this happy mood and overtaken by tormenting memories. In dazzling snapshots cut against each other, the trauma of the death of a friend is vividly experienced.
Memoir of a Veering Storm (Sofia Georgovassili): Anna secretly sneaks out of school with her boyfriend to carry out her decision for an abortion. Bluntly factual and yet with tender sympathy, the camera accompanies Anna's path, approaches and contrasts with images of a nature in which some things seem simpler and some things unfathomable.
Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics (Terril Calder): Torn between two cultures: The one voice in the Métis girl's head is Jesus, who implants self-doubt in her with the seven deadly sins. The other voice is the legendary Anishinabek figure Nokomis, who teaches the girl to accept herself for who she is. In a dark, beautiful stop-motion animation, the film casts light on colonial trauma.
Tinashé (Tig Terera): Thrown out of his home by his own mother, the smart title hero moves in with his best friend. With a captivating soundtrack and stylish images, Tinashé tells the universal story of the transition to adult life, the search for identity and escapades, first love and real friendship - and it is also a respectful portrait of a young Australian from an ancient culture.
West by God (Scott Lazer): America, a suburban dealer, a blonde teenage girl. After they've checked each other out at the swimming pool, he picks her up in his tuned car for a joyride. Up until this point, it's a well-known story. But then, layer by layer, everything becomes completely different. He can talk to her about the fact that it might not be so cool after all when your own life itself has become a rap song.
BERLINALE SPECIAL
Heart of Oak (Laurent Charbonnier, Michel Seydoux)
1341 Frames of Love and War (Ran Tal)
Nothing Lasts Forever (Jason Kohn)
North Terminal (Lucrecia Martel): This documentary directed by Lucrecia Martel features the Argentinian northern singer Julieta Laso.
Nest (Hlynur Palmason): A story of siblings as they build a tree house together. We follow their life and process for a year or two through happiness and suffering, through winter and summer, though light and darkness.
A German Party (Simon Bruckner)
This Much I Know To Be True (Andrew Dominik): Shot on location in London and Brighton last year, the movie will document the duo’s first performances of the albums and will feature a special appearance by close friend and long-term collaborator, Marianne Faithfull.
BERLINALE SPECIAL GALA
Against the Ice (Peter Flinth): In 1909, Denmark’s Alabama Expedition led by Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen was attempting to disprove the United States’ claim to North Eastern Greenland.
About Joan (Laurent Larivière): At the corner of a street in Paris, Joan Verra runs into her first love, a once young Irishman. Overwhelmed, she leaves for her country house and revisits the last 40 years, building a fantasized picture of her life. Her son Nathan, just back from Montreal, accompanies her in these moments. A long-a
Gangubai Kathiawad (Sanjay Leela Bhansali): The film is about the life of Gangubai Kothewali, a young girl sold into prostitution by her suitor Ramnik Lal, and how she becomes the madam of a brothel in Kamathipura.
The Forger (Maggie Peren): Jewish aesthete Cioma, 21, does not let anyone take away his joy of life, especially not the Nazis. In 1942, he has to find new ways to make his living in Berlin and escape deportation. In the process he discovers his talent for forgery: not only with passports, but also his own identity.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Sophie Hyde): A retired school teacher and widow yearns for some adventure, human connection and good sex, which she was robbed of in her stable but stale marriage. To make things right, she devises a plan and hires the services of a sex worker for a night of bliss.
Incredible But True (Quentin Dupieux): Alain and Marie moved to the suburb house of their dreams. But the real estate agent warned them : what is in the basement may well change their lives forever.
Dark Glasses (Dario Argento): Diana, a young woman who lost her sight, finds a guide in a Chinese boy named In. Together they will track down a dangerous killer through the darkness of Italy.
The Outfit (Graham Moore): After a personal tragedy, an English tailor who used to craft suits on London’s world-famous Savile Row is ended up in Chicago. He’s operating a small tailor shop where he makes beautiful clothes for the only people around who can afford them: a family of vicious gangsters.
BERLINALE SHORTS
Agrilogistics (Gerard Ortín Castellví)
Memories from the Eastern Front (Radu Jude, Adrian Cioflâncă): This is Radu Jude’s third collaboration with Adrian Cioflanca, and it tells the story of hostilities on the Eastern Front.
It’s Raining Frogs Outside (Maria Estela Paiso)
Bird in the Peninsula (Atsushi Wada)
By Flávio (Pedro Cabeleira)
Further and Further Away (Polen Ly): Before their impending departure for the capital city, two siblings must first bid farewell to the place they called home, each in their own way.
Dirndlschuld (Wilbirg Brainin-Donnenberg): Orbiting her own family’s history, a filmmaker pulls narratives from the abysses of time that cast a shadow over the postcard idyll.
Four Nights (Deepak Rauniyar)
Haulout (Evgenia Arbugaeva, Maxim Arbugaev)
Heroínas (Heroines (Marina Herrera)
A Story for 2 Trumpets (Amandine Meyer)
House of Existence (Joung Yumi)
Kicking the Clouds (Sky Hopinka)
Sunday Morning (Bruno Ribeiro): Gabriela is a young black pianist who will perform in her first big recital. No entanto, a dream with her deceased person destabilizes Gabriela’s mind and heart, putting her portrayal of her at risk.
Exalted Mars (Jean-Sébastien Chauvin): A man is dreaming of a city. Unless the city is dreaming of him.
Retreat (Anabela Angelovska)
The Sower of Stars (Lois Patiño)
Soum (Alice Brygo)
Starfuckers (Antonio Marziale): An intimate evening between a film director and an escort is disrupted when a familiar face arrives.
Trap (Anastasia Veber)
Will My Parents Come to See Me (Mo Harawe): An experienced Somali policewoman once again accompanies a young inmate through the procedures of the Somali justice system.
BERLINALE CLASSICS
Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda)
Larks on a String (Jiří Menzel)
Our Music (Jean-Luc Godard)
Tommy (Ken Russell)
Suzhou River (Lou Ye)
Brothers (Werner Hochbaum)