The Berlin Film Festival is back for another year with a bumper programme full of films, many of them world premières.

The festival runs from 16 to 26 February

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BIFF Latest Reviews

Sisi & I
Sisi & I
In this wild reinterpretation of the “Sisi” myth, the focus is on Austrian Empress Elisabeth’s close friendship with her last lady-in-waiting, Irma Countess von Sztáray, who falls in love with the charismatic Sisi and is captivated by her modern ideas.
Orlando, My Political Biography
Orlando, My Political Biography
Docufiction interpretation of Virginia Woolf's novel.
Disco Boy
Disco Boy
The destinies of a man who has joined the Foreign Legion and another in the Niger Delta intersect.
The Cemetery Of Cinema
The Cemetery Of Cinema
Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out with his camera in search of the birth of filmmaking in Guinea.
Opponent
Opponent
Iman, an Iranian, lives with his family in Sweden in an ever-changing succession of refugee hostels. To increase his chances of obtaining residence permits for them all, he resumes his career as a wrestler – and is confronted with the reason he had to flee.
Samsara
Samsara
Samsara is the Buddhist cycle of death and reincarnation. From the temples of Laos, alongside with teenage monks, we will accompany a soul in its transit from one body to another through the bardo.
Passages
Passages
A married man cheats on his husband with a woman... then tells him about it.
Manodrome
Manodrome
A man loses his grip on reality after becoming involved in a libertarian masculinity cult.
Iron Butterflies
Iron Butterflies
In summer 2014, sunflower fields and coal mines in eastern Ukraine turned into a 12 square kilometer crime scene. A multi-layered investigation into the downing of flight MH17, in which a butterfly-shaped shrapnel was found in the pilot's body, implicated the state responsible for a war crime that remains unpunished.
Past Lives
Past Lives
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 her American husband.
A-Z of Berlin International Film Festival 2023 reviews >>>

Berlin International Film Festival Features

The tip of the iceberg
Milad Alami on character creation, films that linger, and Opponent
Layers of mystery
llker Çatak in conversation on Oscar shortlisted The Teachers’ Lounge, Wim Wenders, and the films that inspired him
Stepping into character
Glenn Howerton on character creation and learning to like his work in BlackBerry
Like a fever dream
Jesse Eisenberg on exploring troubled masculinity in Manodrome
From the cradle to the grave
John Trengove on masculinity in crisis and Manodrome
Girl reimagined
Jennifer Reeder on the power of femininity and the agency of blood in Perpetrator
A smouldering story
Thomas Schubert on imposter syndrome and tonal ambiguity in Afire
Cinema as a means of resurrection
Maite Alberdi on Pablo Larrain, Raul Ruiz and The Eternal Memory
Targets of desire
Christian Petzold on An Affair To Remember, summers and Afire
Waves of emotion
Domien and Wendy Huyghe talk about wrapping a tale of grief within an adventure in Sea Sparkle
'We made magic'
Lila Avilés on the meeting between the worlds of adults and children in Tótem
'I am trying to tell the story with my soul more than with my mind'
Roman Liubyi on mixing dance and performance into documentary Iron Butterflies

Berlin International Film Festival News

Documentary takes Golden Bear
On The Adamant named best in Berlin
News

59th New York Film Festival early bird highlights Futura, Jane By Charlotte, James Baldwin: From Another Place and The Velvet Underground

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