Berlinale: the program of films in competition

Our review *** Totem is one of those few films that focuses on a particular moment, a pivotal suspended time, which summons a past, a present and a future all at once. It does so by focusing on a young girl’s view of her family as they prepare to celebrate her…

by Christoph Hochhäusler with Timocin Ziegler, Thea Ehre, Michael Sideris, Ioana Iacob, Rosa Enskat Undercover cop Robert is supposed to gain the trust of an Internet drug dealer by faking a relationship with Leni. But true love is also at play in this clever contrivance of a film. A smart,…

A film by Rolf de Heer With Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, Darsan Sharma In a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert, BlackWoman is abandoned. Not ready to die, BlackWoman escapes, and walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to canyon to mountain to city, on a…

A film by Zhang Lu  With Xin Baiqing, Huang Yao, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Nan Ji, Wang Hongwei Divorced food critic Gu Wentong finds out where the father he had lost contact with as a child is now living. Meanwhile, he begins a relationship with a younger colleague. People come close and…

A film by Philippe Garrel
Our review : *(*)
Philippe Garrel has made in his last films (very visible in Salt of Tears) a turn in his cinema that he assumes. He tries to purify his stories and his dialogues to aim for a more direct, more concentrated, less reflective cinema,…

Our review *(*) This animated feature film certainly lacks neither imagination nor ambition. Technically speaking, the marriage between the drawings in the purest 2D manga style and the 3D textures gives us something luxuriant and rather pretty, totally assuming the kitsch that this overflow can sometimes evoke to …

A film by Emily Atef With Marlene Burow, Felix Kramer, Cedric Eich, Silke Bodenbender, Florian Panzner In the summer of 1990, Maria and Johannes create a refuge in the attic of a farm on the border that is no more. The future seems clear until Maria meets Henner and loves…

A film by Celine Song With Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro In this heartrending modern romance, Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends, are separated from each other when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York where Nora now lives with…

A film by Nicolas Philibert The Adamant, a unique floating day-care centre located on the Seine in the heart of Paris, welcomes adults with mental disorders. This film invites us to step on board and meet the patients and caregivers who are inventing a way to be together.

Our review: * Angela Schanelec continues her very minimalist cinema. Adored or rejected, noble or pretentious ambition. She continues to present herself as an artist who is not understood, who cannot be understood, and with her work she poses precisely this question: must we necessarily understand in …

A film by John Trengove With Jesse Eisenberg, Adrien Brody, Odessa Young, Sallieu Sesay, Philip Ettinger Ralphie is about to become a father but his job and his personal situation fail to make him happy. When he is inducted into a libertarian masculinity cult, this awakens repressed desires and he…

A film by Ivan Sen With Simon Baker, Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen, Nicholas Hope, Mark Coe Travis Hurley reopens the case of an Aboriginal woman murdered 20 years ago. The people in the victim’s small outback town and her family are silent because the cop is white and the truth…

A film by Margarethe von Trotta With Vicky Krieps, Ronald Zehrfeld, Tobias Resch, Basil Eidenbenz, Luna Wedler Ingeborg Bachmann meets Max Frisch in 1958, falls in love, breaks up, falls ill and escapes first to the desert and then to Italy. Von Trotta does not focus on Bachmann’s fatal end,…

A film by Giacomo Abbruzzese With Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev, Matteo Olivetti Following a long journey across Europe, Aleksei reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. In the Niger Delta, Jomo fights against the oil companies that threaten his village. Beyond borders, and life…

A film by Matt Johnson
Our review: not watched

A film by João Canijo With Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida, Vera Barreto Five women are running an old hotel. A long-standing, perhaps irreparable conflict weighs down on them. When the young Salomé arrives, old wounds are reopened. Her mother Piedade makes a drastic decision.

A film by Liu Jian
Our review: ***
#ArtCollege1994 perfectly captures an atmosphere, a milieu, an era, and delivers beautiful portraits in a dialogue questioning art (slightly philosophical and rather cultured).

Our review: ***(*) Christian Petzold admits in a press conference that after Ondine, he was in France thinking about a film that could be considered for the Cannes Film Festival. He then contracted covid, which left him …