Eye For Film >> Festivals >> BIFF >> 2023 >> Competition
View other Berlin International Film Festival Films by strand: Berlinale Classics, Berlinale Special, Encounters, Generation 14plus, Generation Kplus, Homage - Steven Spielberg, Panorama, Perspektive Deutches Kino, Retrospectives
Suzume and Manodrome
20,000 Species Of Bees (20.000 especies de abejas)
(Country: Spain; Year: 2023; Director: Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren; Writer: Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren; Stars: Sofía Otero, Patricia López Arnaiz, Ane Gabarain, Itziar Lazkano, Sara Cózar)
An eight-year-old explores her identity over a summer in the Basque country.
World premiere
Afire (Roter Himmel)
(Country: Germany; Year: 2023; Director: Christian Petzold; Writer: Christian Petzold; Stars: Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel, Enno Trebs, Matthias Brandt)
Tensions and desire bloom among five people at a holiday home by the Baltic Sea.
Full Review
See:
Thomas Schubert on imposter syndrome and tonal ambiguity in Afire
, Christian Petzold in conversation on Afire (Roter Himmel), An Affair To Remember, summers, and pronouncing Walter Benjamin and Uwe Johnson
, Christian Petzold in conversation on Afire (Roter Himmel) and summer movies
World premiere
, Christian Petzold in conversation on Afire (Roter Himmel), An Affair To Remember, summers, and pronouncing Walter Benjamin and Uwe Johnson
, Christian Petzold in conversation on Afire (Roter Himmel) and summer movies
Art College 1994
(Country: China; Year: 2023; Director: Liu Jian; Writer: Liu Jian)
World premiere
Animation set in 90s China. A group of young people prepare to face a world caught between tradition and modernity.
Bad Living (Mal Viver)
(Country: Portugal, France; Year: 2023; Director: João Canijo)
World premiere
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.
BlackBerry
(Country: Canada; Year: 2023; Director: Matt Johnson; Writer: Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller, based on the book by Jacquie McNish; Stars: Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Cary Elwes, Saul Rubinek, Rich Sommer)
The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.
World premiere
Afire and Past Lives
Disco Boy
(Country: France, Italy, Belgium, Poland; Year: 2023; Director: Giacomo Abbruzzese; Writer: Giacomo Abbruzzese; Stars: Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev)
The destinies of a man who has joined the Foreign Legion and another in the Niger Delta intersect.
World premiere
Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert (Ingeborg Bachmann – Reise in die Wüste)
(Country: Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg; Year: 2023; Director: Margarethe von Trotta; Writer: Margarethe von Trotta; Stars: Vicky Krieps, Ronald Zehrfeld, Tobias Resch, Basil Eidenbenz, Luna Wedler)
World premiere
The story of the Austrian author and how she was shaped by a trip to Egypt.
Limbo
(Country: Australia; Year: 2023; Director: Ivan Sen; Writer: Ivan Sen; Stars: Simon Baker, Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen, Nicholas Hope, Mark Coe)
World premiere
A detective 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 is complex.
Manodrome
(Country: UK, US; Year: 2023; Director: John Trengove; Writer: John Trengove; Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Adrien Brody, Odessa Young, Sallieu Sesay, Philip Ettinger)
A man loses his grip on reality after becoming involved in a libertarian masculinity cult.
World premiere
Music
(Country: Germany, France, Serbia; Year: 2023; Director: Angela Schanelec; Writer: Angela Schanelec; Stars: Aliocha Schneider, Agathe Bonitzer, Marisha Triantafyllidou, Argyris Xafis)
World premiere
A cinematic riddle, mirror, dream or puzzle in which the Oedipus myth is transposed to a period from the 1980s to the present, from the beaches of Greece to the lakes of Berlin.
20,000 Species Of Bees and Disco Boy
On The Adamant (Sur l’Adamant)
(Country: France, Japan; Year: 2023; Director: Nicolas Philibert)
World premiere
Documentary about patients and caregivers at a floating psychiatric centre on the Seine.
Past Lives
(Country: US; Year: 2022; Director: Celine Song; Writer: Celine Song; Stars: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro)
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.
International premiere
The Plough (Le grand chariot)
(Country: France, Switzerland; Year: 2022; Director: Philippe Garrel)
World premiere
Three siblings are the latest generation in a family of puppeteers. Will this be the last? A tragic event tests their desire to continue the troupe.
The Shadowless Tower (Bai Ta Zhi Guang)
(Country: China; Year: 2023; Director: Zhang Lu; Writer: Zhang Lu; Stars: Xin Baiqing, Huang Yao, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Nan Ji, Wang Hongwei)
World premiere
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.
Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything (Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen)
(Country: Germany; Year: 2023; Director: Emily Atef; Writer: Emily Atef; Stars: Marlene Burow, Felix Kramer, Cedric Eich)
World premiere
A young woman begins a relationship with a much older man.
BlackBerry and Tótem
The Survival Of Kindness (Das Überleben der Freundlichkeit)
(Country: Australia; Year: 2022; Director: Rolf de Heer; Stars: Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, Darsan Sharma)
International premiere
BlackWoman is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert and left to die. But she is not ready to give up all hope. She escapes, and walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, to find those who left her to die.
Suzume
(Country: Japan; Year: 2022; Director: Makoto Shinkai; Writer: Makoto Shinkai; Stars: Voiced by, Nanoka Hara, voiced by Eri Fukatsu, Hokuto Matsumura, Ann Yamane)
Animated adventure sees a teenager fight to close a series of "Doors of Disaster".
International premiere
Till The End Of The Night (Bis ans Ende der Nacht)
(Country: Germany; Year: 2023; Director: Christoph Hochhäusler; Writer: Christoph Hochhäusler; Stars: Timocin Ziegler, Thea Ehre, Michael Sideris)
World premiere
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.
Tótem
(Country: Mexico, Denmark, France; Year: 2023; Director: Lila Avilés; Writer: Lila Avilés; Stars: Naíma Sentíes, Monserrat Marañon, Marisol Gasé, Saori Gurza, Teresita Sánchez)
In a large house, friends and family meet for a dual ritual: it is the birthday of young father and painter Tona, but also a farewell ceremony.
World premiere
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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