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Berlin International Film Festival · 2017

Berlin International Film Festival 2017

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50 films · 4 reviews

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2 + 2=22 [The Alphabet]

A documentary of the recording sessions for the album ABC by German electronic music group Kreidler in Tblisi, Georgia.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)

The Aimless Bullet (Obaltan)

A man struggles to support his pregnant wife, two children, lonely sister and mentally unstable mother.

(Country: South Korea; Year: 1960; Director: Yoo Hyun-mok; Writer: Lee Beom-seon; Stars: Choi Mu-ryong, Kim Jin-kyu, Moon Jeong-suk)

Animals (Tiere)

Review preview for Animals

The puzzles here are of the sort intended to be enjoyed for their twists and turns rather than their resolution.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
Reality starts to shift after a couple take a break to try to rebuild their marriage.

(Country: Switzerland, Austria, Poland; Year: 2017; Director: Greg Zglinski; Writer: Jörg Kalt, Greg Zglinski; Stars: Birgit Minichmayr, Philipp Hochmair, Mona Petri, Mehdi Nebbou, Michael Ostrowski)

Full review

Autumn Autumn

A young man and an older couple take a train from Seoul to the small town of Chuncheon. Across two separate threads, the film follows these protagonists to the temple of Cheongpyeong, a place full of memories for them all.

(Country: Republic of Korea; Year: 2016; Director: Jang Woo-jin; Stars: Yang Heung-ju, Lee Se-rang, Woo Ji-hyeon)

The Barber Of The Poor District (Hallaq darb al-fouqara)

As a barber, Miloud is barely able to make ends meet. When his shop is supposed to make way for a Koran school, his friend Hmida encourages him to fight back.

(Country: Morocco; Year: 1982; Director: Mohamed Reggab; Writer: Youssef Fadel; Stars: Mohamed El Habachi, Khadija Khamouli)

Barrage

Catherine returns to her daughter after ten years away, who’s been raised by her grandmother in the interim.

(Country: Luxembourg; Year: 2017; Director: Laura Schroeder; Writer: Marie Nimier, Laura Schroeder; Stars: Isabelle Huppert, Lolita Chammah, Elsa Houben, Themis Pauwels, Luc Schiltz, Marja-Leena Junker, Charles Müller)

Bickels [Socialism]

Exploration of the architecture of Samuel Bickels, who designed numerous kibbutz buildings and museums in Israel from the 1950s into the 1970s.

(Country: Germany, Israel; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)

Casa Roshell

At Club Roshell, men learn to be women during the day, before the parties get going at night. All manner of boundaries blur in this tiny utopia: between gay, straight and bi, male and female, past and present, reality and fiction.

(Country: Mexico, Chile; Year: 2017; Director: Camila José Donoso; Stars: Roshell Terranova, Liliana Alba, Lia Garcia, Diego Alberico, Cristian Aravena)

Casting

Drama about the casting of a Fassbinder remake.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Nicolas Wackerbarth; Writer: Johannes Held, Nicolas Wackerbarth; Stars: Andrea Sawatzki, Ursina Lardi, Andreas Lust, Corinna Kirchhoff, Markus von Lingen, Marie-Lou Sellem, Stephan Grossmann, Milena Dreißig, Victoria Trauttmansdorff, Toby Ashraf, Judith Engel)

City Of The Sun

Chiatura was once a proud ore-mining centre but today its remaining inhabitants eke out their livelihoods among the ruins of Soviet ambition.

(Country: Georgia; Year: 2017; Director: Rati Oneli; Writer: Dea Kulumbegashvili, Rati Oneli; Stars: Archil Khvedelidze, Zurab Gelashvili, Mariam Pkhaladze, Irina Pkhaladze)

Davyeon

In the wake of his older brother’s death, 13-year-old Dayveon spends the sweltering summer days roaming his rural Arkansas town. When he falls in with a local gang, he becomes drawn to the camaraderie and violence of their world.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Amman Abbasi; Writer: Amman Abbasi, Steven Reneau ; Stars: Devin Blackmon, Kordell "KD" Johnson, Dontrell Bright, Chasity Moore, Lachion Buckingham, Marquell Manning. )

Dieste [Uruguay]

A documentary about 28 buildings by Uruguayan architect and master of thin shell structures Eladio Dieste.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)

El Mar La Mar

The Sonoran Desert between Mexico and the USA: 16mm footage of vegetation, weather phenomena, animals, people and the traces they leave behind merge with a polyphonic soundtrack to create a panoramic study of a highly politicised landscape.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Joshua Bonnetta, JP Sniadecki)

A Feeling Greater Than Love (Shu'our akbar min el hob)

A study of the possibilities for militant action in both cinema and society.

(Country: Lebanon; Year: 2017; Director: Mary Jirmanus Saba)

Foreign Body

Samia and Imed are living in France illegally. Widow Madame Berteau is an immigrant too, but enjoys wealth and status. Making her acquaintance offers the chance of a residency permit and moving up in the world, resulting in a thorny ménage-à-trois .

(Country: France, Tunisia; Year: 2016; Director: Raja Amari; Writer: Raja Amari; Stars: Hiam Abbass, Sarra Hannachi, Salim Kechiouche, Marc Brunet, Majd Mastoura)

For Akheem

Daje lives with her mother in St. Louis. Like many black teenagers in the neighbourhood, she struggles in school, as her everyday life is shaken again and again by her friends being killed around her.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Jeremy S Levine, Landon Van Soest)

Golden Exits

The arrival of a young foreign girl disrupts the lives and emotional balances of two Brooklyn families.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Alex Ross Perry; Writer: Alex Ross Perry; Stars: Emily Browning, Analeigh Tipton, Chloë Sevigny, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, Jason Schwartzman, Adam Horovitz, Craig Butta)

Green River. The Time Of The Yakurunas

Documentary travels to the Peruvian Amazon to examine the lives of its indigenous inhabitants.

(Country: Peru; Year: 2017; Director: Diego E Sarmiento Pagan, Álvaro Sarmiento; Writer: Álvaro Sarmiento; Stars: Julio Renerio, Custodio Sangama, Samuel Sangama, Andrea Sinarahua, Albina Tapullima)

House In The Fields (Tigmi Nigren)

Documents the last summer spent together by two sisters in a Berber village in the Atlas Mountains.

(Country: Morocco; Year: 2016; Director: Tala Hadid; Stars: Khadija Elgounad, Fatima Elgounad)

Inmates (Qui)

Everyday life in a closed psychiatric clinic in northern China: shot over a period of one year.

(Country: China; Year: 2017; Director: Ma Li)

Lady Of The Lake

Loktak Lake in north-eastern India is a place of unique natural beauty, but now resettlement plans threaten its inhabitants’ everyday existence.

(Country: India; Year: 2016; Director: Haobam Paban Kumar; Writer: Sudhir Naoroibam; Stars: Ningthoujam Sanatomba)

The Last Witness (Choehuui jeung-in)

A detective is entrusted with reopening an unsolved murder case, with the trail of evidence leading all the way back to the Korean War.

(Country: South Korea; Year: 2016; Director: Lee Doo-yong; Writer: Kim Sang-Jung; Stars: Hah Myung-joong, Jeong Yun-hui, Choi Bool-am, Hyun Kil-soo, Han Hye-sook)

Loving Pia (At elske Pia)

A 60-year-old intellectually disabled woman embarks on her first relationship with a man.

(Country: Denmark; Year: 2017; Director: Daniel Borgman; Writer: Daniel Borgman; Stars: Pia Skovgaard, Céline Skovgaard, Jens Jensen)

Low Tide (Motza El Hayam)

After losing his job and an unhappy divorce, a history teacher signs up as a reserve soldier, yet keeps putting off his period of duty, while a foreign journalist is looking for a way to get to Gaza. The story of two drifters in a land at constant war.

(Country: Israel; Year: 2017; Director: Daniel Mann; Writer: Daniel Mann; Stars: Susanne Gschwendtner, Gal Hoyberger, Amit Bar-am)

Mama Colonel (Maman Colonelle)

Honorine is affectionately referred to as Maman Colonelle and heads a Congolese police unit whose task is to protect women and children.

(Country: DRC; Year: 2017; Director: Dieudo Hamadi)

Menashe

Review preview for Menashe

Rather than pick apart rituals... Weinstein simply lets us see them in action as part of the natural fabric of his life

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
A man faces losing custody of his son after the death of his wife.

(Country: US; Year: 2017; Director: Joshua Z Weinstein; Writer: Joshua Z Weinstein, Alex Lipschultz, Musa Syeed; Stars: Menashe Lustig, Ruben Niborski, Yoel Weisshaus) , Trailer

Full review See: Menashe co-writer/producer Alex Lipschultz on the challenges of making the film

The Mirage (Al-Sarab)

When the jobless Mohamed finds a roll of banknotes, it turns out to be more of a curse than a blessing: his attempts to exchange the money lead to surreal encounters and culminate in an endless, dream-like odyssey.

(Country: Morocco; Year: 1980; Director: Ahmed Bouanani; Stars: Mohamed Habachi, Mohamed Saïd Afifi, Fatima Regragul)

Motherland

The planet's busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies.

(Country: US, Philippines; Year: 2017; Director: Ramona Diaz)

My Happy Family

Tbilisi, Georgia, 2016: In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents' home and live alone. Without her family and her husband, a journey into the unknown begins.

(Country: Georgia; Year: 2016; Director: Nana Ekvtimishvili, Simon Groß; Writer: Nana Ekvtimishvili; Stars: Ia Shugliashvili, Merab Ninidze, Berta Khapava, Tsisia Qumsishvili, Giorgi Tabidze, Dimitri Oragvelidze)

Newton

Review preview for Newton

Even though Newton is a stickler, there's an appealing purity to his views and he remains likeable almost despite himself.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
A young bureaucrat named Newton is sent to the jungle to monitor an election there. But Maoist blockades, forced police protection and indifferent voters make defending democracy no easy task.

(Country: India; Year: 2017; Director: Amit Masurkar; Writer: Amit Masurkar, Mayank Tewari; Stars: Rajkummar Rao, Pankaj Tripathy, Anjali Patil, Raghuvir Yadav, Mukesh Prajapati)

Full review

Occidental

As protests rage on the Paris streets, two suspicious men rent the bridal suite at the Hotel Occidental.

(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Neïl Beloufa; Stars: Anna Ivacheff, Idir Chender, Paul Hamy, Louise Orry-Diquéro, Hamza Meziani, Brahim Tekfa, Françoise Cousin, Pierre Rousselet, Brune Renault, Geoffrey Carey)

Oh the Days! (Alyam, Alyam)

Following death of his father, Abdelwahed hopes to support his nine-person family by working in France. As the visa fails to appear, the everyday life and lack of perspectives in rural Morocco come into focus.

(Country: Morocco; Year: 1978; Director: Ahmed El Maanouni; Writer: Ahmed El Maanouni; Stars: Ben Brahim)

Open Wounds - A Journey Through German Genre Films (Offene Wunde deutscher Film)

A journey through the German cinema of the Sixties to the Nineties.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Dominik Graf, Johannes F Sievert)

Org

Experimental "non-film".

(Country: Italy, Argentina; Year: 1979; Director: Fernando Birri; Writer: Fernando Birri, based on a story by Thomas Mann; Stars: Terence Hill, Lidija Juracik, Isaac Twen Obu, Nolika Pareda, Pietro Santalamazza, Francesco Di Giacomo, Julio García Espinosa, Jean-Luc Godard, Herbert Marcuse, Jonas Mekas, Glauber Rocha, Roberto Rossellini)

Railway Sleepers (Mon Rot Fai)

Thailand’s first railway line was opened in 1980. This observational documentary breaks down the two-day journey from north to south.

(Country: Thailand; Year: 2017; Director: Sompot Chidgasornpongse; Stars: Francois Langello)

Rifle

A taciturn former soldier is employed to guard a small landholder’s estate. When an agricultural company seeks to buy up the land, he reacts in drastic fashion.

(Country: Brazil, Germany; Year: 2016; Director: Davi Pretto; Writer: Davi Pretto, Richard Tavares; Stars: Dione Avila De Oliveira, Evaristo Pimentel Goularte, Francisco Fabrício Dutra dos Santos, Sofia Ferreira, Andressa Nogueira Goularte)

Rustlers (Cuarteros)

The life of Isidro Velázquez.

(Country: Argentina; Year: 2016; Director: Albertina Carri)

The Sea Stares At Us From Afar (El mar nos mira de lejos)

Past and present flow together in this documentary portrait of a coastal landscape and its inhabitants.

(Country: Spain, Netherlands; Year: 2017; Director: Manuel Muñoz Rivas)

Simulation (Tamaroz)

Three uninvited friends, an unwilling host, a gun: at the police station later, each will give their own version of what actually happened on the drunken evening.

(Country: Iran; Year: 2017; Director: Abed Abest)

somniloquies

Exploration of the liminal state between wakefulness and dream.

(Country: US, UK, France; Year: 2017; Director: Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)

So Long Enthusiasm (Adiós entusiasmo)

Ten-year-old Axel lives with his mother and three sisters in a flat in Buenos Aires. If the mother weren’t imprisoned in one of the rooms, they’d be a perfectly normal family. Arguments are hardly unusual, but what happens when there’s no way out?

(Country: Argentina, Colombia; Year: 2017; Director: Vladimir Durán; Stars: Camilo Castiglione, Laila Maltz, Mariel Fernandez, Martina Juncadella, Rosario Blefari)

Spell Reel

Experimental documentary about a cinema movement involved in the Guinea-Bissau liberation movement.

(Country: Germany, Portugal, France, Guinea-Bissau; Year: 2017; Director: Filipa César)

Strange Birds

Mavie moves to Paris from the provinces. After seeing an ad in a café, she lands both a flat and a job from Georges, a cynical old bookshop owner who’s never actually sold a book.

(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Élise Girard; Writer: Élise Girard, Anne-Louise Trividic; Stars: Lolita Chammah, Jean Sorel, Virginie Ledoyen, Pascal Cervo, Bellu Bellali, Nicolas Combet, Max Robin, Ronald Chammah, Tullio Giannotti, Stefano Montefiori, Angelo Laudisa, Mouloud Gali, Ronan Mallejac, Léonie Chanteloup, Cyril Robin)

Streetscapes [Dialogue]

A fictionalised dialogue between a film director and his therapist, based on the protocols of Emigholz’s own psychoanalysis sessions and filmed in buildings by Julio Vilamajó, Eladio Dieste and Arno Brandlhuber in Uruguay und Berlin.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2017; Director: Heinz Emigholz)

The Theatre Of Disappearance (El teatro de la desaparición)

The surreal daily life on the border between North and South Korea, a pottery in Morocco, art spaces, industrial facilities, far-flung landscapes: a mysterious survey of the earth and all it holds which observes and invents in equal measure.

(Country: Argentina; Year: 2017; Director: Adrián Villar Rojas)

Three Lights (Mittsu no hikari)

Four people alienated from their everyday lives come together, generating hope that things might now be different. They decide to record a song in a studio on an industrial estate, but one of them then threatens the harmony of this fragile community.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2017; Director: Kohki Yoshida; Stars: Ryo Ikeda, Hiroshi Suzuki, Kazuha Komiya, Emi Maki, Natsumi Ishibashi)

Tinselwood

Documentary tracking residents of south-east Cameroon.

(Country: France; Year: 2017; Director: Marie Voignier)

The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always The Densest Shade Of Blue (Yozora wa itsudemo saikô mitsudo no aoiro da)

Is the moon really only this blue in Tokyo and why doesn’t anyone else see it? Shinji and Mika would both say they’re strange and chance brings them together again and again.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2017; Director: Yûya Ishii; Writer: Tahi Saihate, Yûya Ishii; Stars: Ryûhei Matsuda, Sôsuke Ikematsu, Mikako Ichikawa, Takahiro Miura, Paul Magsign, Ryô Satô, Shizuka Ishibashi, Tetsuji Tanaka)

Traces (Wechma)

An rebellious youngster ends up on the wrong side of the tracks.

(Country: Morocco; Year: 1972; Director: Hamid Benani; Stars: Mohamed Alkaghat, Tawfik Dadda, Khadija Moujahid, Abdelkader Moutaa)

Werewolf

Review preview for Werewolf

An arresting debut.

Luke Shaw · 4 out of 5
Two methadone users struggle to escape from their desperate day-to-day situation.

(Country: Canada; Year: 2016; Director: Ashley McKenzie; Writer: Ashley McKenzie; Stars: Andrew Gillis, Kyle M. Hamilton, Bhreagh MacNeil)

Full review