Berlin International Film Festival 15 – 25 February 2018
Berlin, Germany Berlinale website
With over 400 films on show, the Berlinale offers an incredibly eclectic, fun and hugely exciting blend of new cinema.
With over 400 films to screen over the next ten days, the Berlinale retains the lead as the first big European festival event of the year. The selection films presented in Competition this time round reach from high-profile premieres like Wes Anderson’s fantastical new stop-motion animated feature Isle of Dogs, which serves as the festival’s opening feature, and Gus Van Sants Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot , starring Joaquin Phoenix, Jonah Hill, Rooney Mara, Jack Black, and Udo Kier, to bold new works from always exciting directors such as Christian Petzold (Transit), Philip Gröning (My Brother’s Name is Robert and He is an Idiot), Laura Bispuri (Figlia mia), Lav Diaz (Season of the Devil) and Steven Soderbergh (Unsane), starring Claire Foy and shot completely on iPhone.
The line-up of the 67th Berlin International Film Festival promises a range of excting home-grown films amongst some big hitters and some hidden gems.
With 18 competing films out of 24 titles selected for the Competition strand, the 67th edition of the festival promises to be intriguing, fun and hugely exciting.
Opening with Etienne Comar’s first feature debut Django, this year’s Berlinale starts off moderately it seems, but only to wow critic and audiences alike later in the run with hotly anticipated titles such as Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting follow-up, Trainspotting: T2, and the world premiere of James Mangold’s Logan, the third in the growing ‘Wolverine’ franchise, starring Hugh Jackman.
We are particularly looking forward to the new film by Sabu, Mr. Long and other promising works by exciting new and established filmmakers such as Argentinian-born Chilean film director Sebastián Lelio (Una Mujer Fantástica), Romanian film director Calin Peter Netzer (Ana, Mon Amour), the much underrated Portugese auteur Teresa Villaverda (Colo) and Spanish film director Álex de la Iglesia, whose latest offering El bar will screen ‘out of competition’.
With Andres Veiel ( Beuys), Thomas Arslan (Helle Nächte) and Volker Schlöndorff (Return To Montauk), there are three German directors in Competition this year, while the Austrian actor and comedian Josef Hader will also make his directorial debut at the festival with Wild Mouse.
The Panorama and Forum sections are as always packed with titles from around the world, but the one stand out that seems to anchor all is I Am Not Your Negro from Raoul Peck, about the writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin.
The Berlin Film Festival’s annual retrospective will be devoted to science fiction films. Focusing on two themes – ‘the society of the future’ and ‘the strange and the other’ – the sidebar ‘Future Imperfect. Science · Fiction · Film’ will screen a total of 27 international features, including classics, cult films and largely unknown productions from countries including Japan as well as central and European Europe. Among the titles featured will be Richard Fleischer’s 1973 sci-fi Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston as a New York detective investigating the murder of a company CEO in a world ravaged by over-population and environmental pollution, along with the first big screen adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984, George Lucas’ THX 1138, Polish Piotr Szulkin’s nuclear holocaust survival picture O-bi, O-ba: The End of Civilization, Byron Haskin’s The War Of The Worlds and the 1918 Danish silent film A Trip To Mars.
For the third time, the ‘Berlinale Special’ strand will present a selection of TV series in the official programme. Six German and international productions will have their world premieres at the festival this year. Audiences will be able to see the first two episodes of each series.
For more information about the programme and how to book tickets visit the Berlinale website.
Pamela Jahn
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Check out the full competition line-up below:
Ana, Mon Amour, Dir. Calin Peter Netzer
Bamui Haebyun-eoseo Honja (On The Beach At Night Alone) Dir. Hong Sangsoo
Beuys Dir. Andres Veiel
Colo Dir. Teresa Villaverde
The Dinner Dir. Oren Moverman
Django Dir. Etienne Comar
El bar (The Bar) Dir. Álex de la Iglesia – Out of competition
Félicité Dir. Alain Gomis
Final Portrait Dir. Stanley Tucci – Out of competition
Hao ji le (Have A Nice Day) Dir. Liu Jian
Helle Nächte (Bright Nights) Dir. Thomas Arslan
Joaquim Dir. Marcelo Gomes
Logan Dir. James Mangold – Out of competition
Mr. Long Dir. Sabu
The Party Dir. Sally Potter
Pokot (Spoor) Dir. Agnieszka Holland
Return To Montauk Dir. Volker Schlöndorff
Sage Femme (Midwife) Dir. Martin Provost – Out of competition
T2 Trainspotting Dir. Danny Boyle – Out of competition
Teströl és Lélekröl (On Body And Soul) Dir. Ildikó Enyedi
Toivon Tuolla Puolen (The Other Side Of Hope) Dir. Aki Kaurismäki
Una Mujer Fantástica (A Fantastic Woman) Dir. Sebastián Lelio
Viceroy’s House Dir. Gurinder Chadha – Out of competition
Now in it’s 66th year, the Berlinale opens on 11 February 2016 with Hail, Caesar! , the latest offering by Joel and Ethan Coen, starring George Clooney and other Hollywood greats, which sets the tone for a star-studded festival that still promises to offer plenty of discoveries, some true gems and real treasures across the sidebars as well as in the main Competition line-up.
Screening in Competition, we particularly look forward to Midnight Special by Jeff Nichols, director of Mud and Take Shelter. Starring his long-time collaborator Michael Shannon in another leading role, the film centres on a father and son who go on the run after the dad learns his child possesses special powers. Also competing for a Golden Bear are Boris Without Béatrice, from Denis Côté, who presented his eccentric debut Vic + Flo Saw A Bear at the 2013 Berlinale, Bosnian director Danis Tanović’s Death In Sarajevo (aka Looking For Europe), a film based on the play by French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Levy, and Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune, which centres on a Danish commune in the 1970s.
Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, a modern day adaptation of the ancient Greek play Lysistrata by Aristophanes, will play out of competition, alogside Dominik Moll’s News From Planet Mars, his long-awaited follow-up to The Monk. Plus, we look forward to the latest from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Creepy, which screens in the Berlinale Special strand.
Under the title “Hachimiri Madness – Japanese Indies from the Punk Years”, the Forum is showing a special programme of newly digitised and subtitled Japanese 8-mm films from 1977 to 1990 which breathe the rebellious spirit of that era, very few of them have ever been shown internationally. The series includes Sion Sono’s I am Sion Sono!!, in which the then 22-year-old introduced himself to audiences as a punk poet in nonchalant, self-confident style, and Shinya Tsukamoto’s The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo, a hugely creative, wild cyberpunk drama, while also taking in the largely unknown early works of directors such as Sogo Ishii (today Gakuryu Ishii) and Shinobu Yaguchi, alongside Masashi Yamamoto’s anarchic feature debut Saint Terrorism and Nobuhiro Suwa’s gangster ballad Hanasaseru Gang.
The Berlinale Classics section will open with Fritz Lang’s 1921 silent film classic Der müde Tod (Destiny), presented in a digitally restored version and with new music, which will be performed live by the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin. Also screening in the strand are John Huston’s classic Fat City (1972), The Road Back (1937) directed by James Whale, and Heiner Carow’s East German semi-autobiographical film Die Russen kommen (The Russians are Coming, 1968), which is set in the waning days of World War II and was originally banned before completion by the GDR authorities.
Pamela Jahn
For more information about the programme and how to book tickets visit the Berlinale website.
