Berlin International Film Festival

Latest reviews

• 
  Duel

  Review preview for Duel

  A remarkably efficient film.

  A car driver is relentlessly pursued by a truck.
• 
  Sisi & I

  Review preview for Sisi & I

  Sisi & I weaves a tapestry of finely observed moments with the sparkling duo of Wolff and Hüller at the top of their game.

  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

  Review preview for Orlando, My Political Biography

  Capturing the experience of living in a world where one’s gender doesn’t fit better than almost any other film to date, Preciado’s work is all about claiming space and present day narrative.

  Docufiction interpretation of Virginia Woolf's novel.
• 
  Disco Boy

  Review preview for Disco Boy

  If there’s vacillation in general at work, the slippery nature of the film, greased with the sweat of physical and metaphorical dance, remains beguiling.

  The destinies of a man who has joined the Foreign Legion and another in the Niger Delta intersect.
• 
  The Cemetery Of Cinema

  Review preview for The Cemetery Of Cinema

  Eventually, Diallo will travel far beyond the villages, to another country, to continue his quest, going to lengths few documentarians would consider - but what he learns there will reveal that the real answer lies back home.

  Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out with his camera in search of the birth of filmmaking in Guinea.
• 
  Opponent

  Review preview for Opponent

  It’s a tremendously challenging role, in which Maadi excels.

  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

  Review preview for Samsara

  While attempting to describe the crux of Samsara is, essentially, as impossible as catching lightning in a jar, join me on a journey of imagination and we’ll give it a go.

  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

  Review preview for Passages

  One of the most subtle films of the ongoing year.

  A married man cheats on his husband with a woman... then tells him about it.
• 
  Manodrome

  Review preview for Manodrome

  Trengove seems determined to defy the standard solutions to this sort of mess.

  A man loses his grip on reality after becoming involved in a libertarian masculinity cult.
• 
  Iron Butterflies

  Review preview for Iron Butterflies

  Liubyi’s film succeeds in bringing home not just the enormity of the crash itself but of the scale of what was lost aboard.

  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.

A–Z of Berlin International Film Festival 2023 reviews →

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

News

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