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Berlin International Film Festival · 2024

Berlin International Film Festival 2024

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35 films · 7 reviews

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The Adamant Girl

Meena stubbornly refuses to speak. She loves a man from a lower caste. Her family thinks she is possessed and the spell is cast out of her. The day begins, a road movie starts.

(Country: India; Year: 2024; Director: PS Vinothraj; Writer: PS Vinothraj; Stars: Soori, Anna Ben)

All The Long Nights (Yoake no subete)

Two work colleagues: he suffers from panic attacks, she has extreme PMS. The two try to help each other.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2024; Director: Shô Miyake; Writer: Shô Miyake, Maiko Seo, Kiyohito Wada; Stars: Hokuto Matsumura, Mone Kamishiraishi, Sawako Fujima, Haruka Imô, Ken Mitsuishi, Ryô, Kiyohiko Shibukawa)

The Cats Of Gokogu Shrine (Gokogu no Neko)

Review preview for The Cats Of Gokogu Shrine

As ever, Soda’s style is patient, unintrusive, and warmly curious.

Sunil Chauhan · 3.5 out of 5
Documentary about the cats that have set up home around the Shinto shrine in Ushimado.

(Country: Japan; Year: 2024; Director: Kazuhiro Sôda)

Full review

The Editorial Office (Redaktsiya)

Review preview for The Editorial Office

Even Kafkaesque ideas are subject to chaos.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
Satire sees a biologist mixed up in a web of fake news as he tries to reveal a story.

(Country: Ukraine; Year: 2024; Director: Roman Bondarchuk; Writer: Alla Tyutyunnyk, Dar'ya Averchenko, Roman Bondarchuk; Stars: Dmytro Bahnenko, Zhanna Ozirna, Rymma Ziubina, Andrii Kyrylchuk, Oleksandr Shmal)

Full review See: Roman Bondarchuk on fake news, politics and the situation in Ukraine in The Editorial Office

Henry Fonda For President

Review preview for Henry Fonda For President

Through a punctilious study of many of Fonda’s films, Horwath creates a comprehensive canvas that encompasses both the past and the present of the US.

Tara Karajica · 3.5 out of 5
A personal essay about the United States, viewed through the life and work of the 12 Angry Men star.

(Country: Austria, Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Alexander Horwath; Writer: Alexander Horwath)

Full review

Holy Week

A painterly Romanian landscape around 1900. A Jewish man named Leiba runs the village inn, a meeting point for Christians and Jews alike, although the conviviality masks racism and anti-Semitism. Between Passover and Easter, a spark.

(Country: Romania, France, Switzerland, Turkey; Year: 2024; Director: Andrei Cohn; Writer: Andrei Cohn; Stars: Doru Bem, Ciprian Chiriches, Ana Ciontea, Ioan Coman, George Dinu, Gábor Erdei, Bogdan Farcas, Cristina Flutur, Simona Ghita, Nicoleta Lefter, Iulian Postelnicu, Mihaela Sirbu, Palfi Tibor)

The Human Hibernation

A brother and sister are hibernating. Only the sister wakes up.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2024; Director: Anna Cornudella; Writer: Anna Cornudella, Lluís Sellarès; Stars: Clara Muck Dietrich, Janet Hubbell, Neil O'Neil, Brian Stevens)

Intercepted

Review preview for Intercepted

The silence between the calls serves as a space for the horror of them to fully take shape in the viewers’ mind.

Amber Wilkinson · 4.5 out of 5
The destruction caused by the war against Ukraine is shown in lengthy tableaux. Intercepted phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families set up a parallel world.

(Country: Canada, France, Ukraine; Year: 2024; Director: Oksana Karpovych; Writer: Oksana Karpovych)

Full review See: Oksana Karpovych on aggression and resistance in Ukraine

The Invisible Zoo (Der unsichtbare Zoo)

Across the seasons, the film gives an account of life and work and the animals and visitors at Zurich Zoo.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Romuald Karmakar; Writer: Romuald Karmakar)

In The Belly Of A Tiger

Bhagole and Prabhata are an old couple, struggling with their farm’s debts. He decides to let himself be killed by a tiger to save his family. Their last night becomes a surreal love story.

(Country: India, US, Taiwan, Indonesia, China; Year: 2024; Director: Jatla Siddartha; Writer: Amanda Mooney, Jatla Siddartha; Stars: Sorabh Jaiswar, Francis Lawrence, Pooja Pallavi, Rosely Raj, Roselynn Raj, Poonam Tiwari)

Letter from My Village (Kaddu Beykat)

Ngor and Columba live in a Senegalese village. They wish to marry, but due to the droughts and reduction in crops, Ngor does not have enough to pay the dowry. He travels to the city to find work, but there he faces exploitation and returns to the village to tell of his experiences.

(Country: Senegal; Year: 1976; Director: Safi Faye; Stars: Assane Faye, Maguette Gueye, Safi Faye)

L'Homme-Vertige: Tales Of A City

Review preview for L'Homme-Vertige: Tales Of A City

L’Homme Vertige forces you to lament changing cityscapes and the fate of residents at the mercy of local authorities and property developers

Sunil Chauhan · 3.5 out of 5
Documentary about Point-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe.

(Country: France; Year: 2024; Director: Malaury Eloi Paisley)

Full review

L' Homme-Vertige: Tales Of A City

Apartment blocks with no future are being torn down in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Malaury Eloi Paisley follows those lost in the city through the empty streets.

(Country: France; Year: 2024; Director: Malaury Eloi Paisley; Writer: Malaury Eloi Paisley)

Maria's Silence

In 1937, the Moscow art scene is in free-floating accord with Soviet power. Latvian artist Maria Leiko believes she is untouchable and unwittingly plays the role of her life: that of an innocent victim.

(Country: Latvia; Year: 2024; Director: Davis Simanis Jr; Writer: Magali Negroni, Tabita Rudzate, Davis Simanis Jr; Stars: Olga Sepicka, Arturs Skrastins, Vilis Daudzins, Inese Kucinska Lauksteine, Girts Kesteris, Glebs Belikovs, Dace Scerbina, Zenija Skuberte-Sudmale, Mihails Karasikovs, Gatis Maliks)

See: Dāvis Sīmanis on the cyclical nature of history in Maria's Silence

Mother And Daughter, Or The Night Is Never Complete (Deda-Shvili an rame ar aris arasodes bolomde bneli)

The director remembers her mother Nutsa, Georgia’s first female filmmaker.

(Country: France, Georgia; Year: 2024; Director: Lana Gogoberidze; Writer: Lana Gogoberidze)

The Nights Still Smell Of Gunpowder (As Noites Ainda Cheiram a Pólvora)

Review preview for The Nights Still Smell Of Gunpowder

A lot of the time, we talk about forgetting as a form of letting go, but in Inadelso Cossa’s sophomore docu-fiction feature, forgetting is a haunting, undead, presence.

Nikola Jovic · 4 out of 5
A filmmaker tries to revive his memories of the war raging in a Mozambique village through soundscape exploration and interviews with the villagers.

(Year: 2024; Director: Inadelso Cossa; Writer: Inadelso Cossa; Stars: Inadelso Cossa, Maria Estevão, Moises Langa)

Full review

Oasis

In 2019, a nationwide movement forms in Chile to create a new constitution. For three years, the film accompanies Indigenous, feminist, militant, legalistic, anarchist and conservative activists.

(Country: Chile; Year: 2024; Director: Tamara Uribe, Felipe Morgado)

Oasis Of Now

An undocumented mother and daughter in Kuala Lumpur meet infrequently because the girl has been sent to live with a Malay family. The mother begins to consider her choices.

(Country: Malaysia, Singapore, France; Year: 2023; Director: Chee Sum Chia; Writer: Chee Sum Chia; Stars: Thi Diu Ta, Aster Yeow Ee, Abdul Manaf bin Rejab)

Reas

Review preview for Reas

It’s quickly apparent that entering prison means becoming part of the collective body that is the prisoner population, with the choreographed movements that accompany the songs reinforcing the sense of synchronicity.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
A group of prison inmates re-enact their lives and sentences, balancing memories with fantasy.

(Country: Argentina, Germany, Switzerland; Year: 2023; Director: Lola Arias; Stars: Yoseli Arias, Ignacio Amador Rodriguez, Estefy Harcastle)

Full review

Reproduction

The ensemble of buildings that makes up the maternity clinic and art school in Hamburg where the director taught is the starting point for this sober interrogation of how motherhood and career can be combined based on three generations of German women.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Katharina Pethke; Writer: Katharina Pethke)

Republic

Eryang has turned his Beijing cave into a private micro-club with fine music and a mezzanine bed for love. No space at all, but lots of time to kill, with passion and psychedelics. They drink and ponder money, Communism and the cosmos.

(Country: China, Singapore; Year: 2023; Director: Jin Jiang; Stars: Li Bai, Li Eryang)

Resonance Spiral

The Mediateca Onshore in Malafo, a village in Guinea-Bissau, is an archive and a club for agropoetic practices. As Amílcar Cabral talks feminism on tape, the directors speak in the mangroves about the contradictions of depicting the community.

(Country: Germany, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau; Year: 2024; Director: Filipa César, Marinho de Pina; Writer: Regina Guimarães, Sana Na N'Hada; Stars: Vanessa Fernandes, Mû Mbana, Cristina Mendes, Sana Na N'Hada, Bedan na Onça)

The Secret Drawer

As Sicilian journalist Giuseppe Quatriglio turns 90, his daughter starts filming him. When he dies, she keeps on filming.

(Country: Italy, Switzerland; Year: 2024; Director: Costanza Quatriglio; Writer: Costanza Quatriglio)

Shahid

Narges Shahid Kalhor is a director seeking to be rid of the “Shahid” (martyr) in her name.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Narges Kalhor; Writer: Aydin Alinejadsomeeh, Narges Kalhor; Stars: Baharak Abdolifard, Nima Nazarinia, Saleh Rozati, Thomas Sprekelsen)

Skin In Spring (La Piel En Primavera)

Medellín. Bus 243 takes Sandra to work. She is a security guard at a mall, takes her job seriously. Her uniform fits, her son is already 15, time to start something new.

(Country: Chile, Colombia; Year: 2024; Director: Yennifer Uribe Alzate; Writer: Yennifer Uribe Alzate)

Sleeping With A Tiger

Birgit Minichmayr plays avant-garde painter Maria Lassnig at all ages and in all mental states.

(Country: Austria; Year: 2024; Director: Anja Salomonowitz; Writer: Anja Salomonowitz; Stars: Christine Buchmann, Saladin Dellers, Oskar Haag, Birgit Minichmayr, Raphael Nicholas, Johanna Orsini, Justine Parsons, Dominik Raneburger, Lukas Watzl)

Techqua Ikachi, Land - My Life

Invited by the then 74-year-old James Danaqyumptewa, two Swiss artists come to witness and document the non-violent resistance of the Hopi in Arizona, combining sketches, photography and animation.

(Country: Germany, Switzerland; Year: 1989; Director: Agnes Barmettler, James Danaqyumtewa, Anka Schmid; Writer: Agnes Barmettler, James Danaqyumtewa, Anka Schmid)

Those Days in Terezín (Diese Tage in Terezín)

Looking for clues about the “Chaplin of Theresienstadt”, ghetto cabaret artist Karel Švenk, Schönemann meets his acquaintances and creates an intergenerational network of memory.

(Country: Germany, Czechia; Year: 1997; Director: Sibylle Schönemann; Writer: Lena Makarova, Sibylle Schönemann; Stars: Manka Alter, Hanna Fialová-Malka, Victoria Hanna Gabbay, Orni, Irene Ravelová)

Traces Of Movement Before The Ice

Twenty years after Swiss publishing house Pendo closed its doors, the descendants of its founders repeatedly circle, examine and lose sight of its legacy.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: René Frölke; Writer: René Frölke, Ann Carolin Renninger)

True Chronicles Of The Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital In The Last Century, When Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head Of The Fifth Ward Between 1953 And 1956 (Chroniques fidèles survenues au siècle dernier à l'hôpital psychiatrique Blida-Joinville, au temps où le Docteur Frantz Fanon était chef de la cinquième division entre 1953 et 1956)

Frantz Fanon was a renowned politician and decolonialisation activist. This feature focuses on his visionary social therapy methods during his time as a psychiatrist in Algeria from 1953 to 1956.

(Country: France, Algeria; Year: 2024; Director: Abdenour Zahzah; Writer: Abdenour Zahzah; Stars: Omar Boulakirba, Alexandre Desane, Nicolas Dromard, Gérard Dubouche, Amal Kateb)

The Undergrowth (La hojarasca)

Three sisters on the Canary Islands, their everyday lives infused with a magical, meditative lyricism.

(Country: Spain; Year: 2024; Director: Macu Machín; Writer: Macu Machín; Stars: Carmen Machín, Elsa Machín, Maura Pérez)

Voices Of The Silenced

Delves into the historical experiences of Park Soo-nam, born in colonial-era Japan, now nearly 90 years of age.

(Country: Japan, South Korea; Year: 2023; Director: Park Maeui, Park Soo-nam; Stars: Jeon Dong-rye, Nobuto Hirano, Seo Jeong-Woo, Kim Seong-soo, Lee Yong-im)

Well Ordered Nature

Essay film presents botanist and educationalist Catharina Helena Dörrien and her time in Orange-Nassau in the 18th century.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Eva C Heldman)

What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov? (Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov?)

A webcam dialogue between Berlin and Isfahan: Faraz Fesharaki documents conversations with his family over 10 years.

(Country: Germany; Year: 2024; Director: Faraz Fesharaki; Stars: Faraz Fesharaki, Hasan Fesharaki, Mitra Kia, Rahi Sinaki)

The Wrong Movie

Ex-lover Alex becomes a mini drone, the new lover is a stuntman; Timur cannot escape his mother and his drug problem, nor can Nicole her father’s ashes. An urban indie chamber drama.

(Country: US; Year: 2024; Director: Keren Cytter; Writer: Keren Cytter; Stars: Edward Baker, Ashby Bland, Devery Doleman, Laura Hajek, Suchan Kinoshita, Elijah Lajmer, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Jordan Raf, John Verdil)