Tag: berlinale
Berlinale 2025 Interview: THE LONGING Director Toshizo Fujiwara Talks Social Realism, Mentorship, and Learning From Each Other
Toshizo Fujiwara is leaning forward in his Zoom window as I speak, listening intently and smiling in recognition. We’re discussing the warmth that he demonstrates towards people in his filmmaking, and the more that he shares, the more the rhythms...
Berlinale 2025 Review: MICKEY 17, Bong Joon Ho Takes Us to the Stars in Angry and Amusing Sci-fi Comedy
With his latest film, Bong Joon Ho reaches for the stars but what his characters discover in the far reaches of space is just another version of the messed-up world they left behind, a world Bong has laid bare for...
Berlinale 2023 Review: IN WATER Dazzles
Shin Seokho, Kim Seungyun, and Ha Seongguk star in director Hong Sang-soo's latest contemplation on creativity and art.
Friday One Sheet: THE ECHO
The power of a single image is full on display for in the key art for Tatiana Huezo's rural Mexico documentary, The Echo. A child hugs a tree. Simple. Not so fast. The colour scheme is cool blues with a...
Friday One Sheet: NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
With a healthy respect for negative space, youthful skin and earth tones, the key art for Sundance winner, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, succeeds in its own minimalism. There is not even any punctuation in the title. Gazing directly at the...
DEMONS: Take A First Look A Daniel Hui's Berlin Selected Dark Satire
Singpore director Daniel Hui wades right in to the thick of the debate around sexual politics, manipulation and abuse of power with his new feature Demons. Following a successful bow at the Busan International Film Festival the film has now...
Berlinale 2018 Unveils First Titles, Weimar Cinema, Body Politics and Latin America Make the Cut
Berlinale 2018 unveils the latest crop in its 68th line-up
HAVE A NICE DAY: Full Trailer Premiere For Acclaimed Chinese Animated Thriller
The simple fact that Chinese animator Liu Jian's thriller Have A Nice Day even exists at all is somthing of a marvel. Independent animation is a tough arena to succeed in in any nation, independent animation intended for adults exponentially...
Berlinale 2016 Review: WE ARE NEVER ALONE Delivers A Powerful, Harrowing And Way Too Vivid Parable
Petr Václav, the Czech filmmaker living and working in France, returns to the theme of racial discrimination already addressed in his feature debut Marian (1996). Prejudice based on race persists as a hot topic in the Czech Republic, attracting ever...
Berlinale 2016 Review: GENIUS Proves That Not All Talent Translates
Elvis Costello famously quipped, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture", and while I hardly agree with the overall sentiment -- if I did, I wouldn't exactly be doing this -- his point is well taken. Success in...
Berlinale 2016 Review: First, SOY NERO Dazzles, Then It Disappoints
How important is a single shot? Not a sequence, nor an edit. Can a solitary, unbroken shot make or break a film? Can it upend one's total reception of a work? Because there is a shot at the very beginning...
Berlinale 2016 Review: BADEN BADEN, A Promising Yet Frustrating Debut
An amiably aimless jaunt set in the French city of Strasbourg (and not the German spa town of its title) Baden Baden has much in common with its main character, an amiably aimless misfit just coasting through life. Both main...
Berlinale 2016 Review: THINGS TO COME Artfully Tells A Tale As Old As Time
Everything new is old again (or is it the other way around?) in Mia Hansen-Love's elegant and understated take on the cycles of life, Things To Come. With an astute eye and a sensitive-if-hardly-mushy script, Hansen-Love lets us know...
Berlinale 2016 Review: THE WORLD OF US, A Complex And Compelling Children's Tale
Following the enormous promise shown in her terrific shorts Guest (2011) and Sprout (2013), director Yoon Ga-eun delivers in spades with her feature-length debut The World of Us, a beautiful look at the undulating friendships and rivalries between a trio...
Berlinale 2015 Review: 45 YEARS, A Heart-Wrenching Look At Late Marriage
How much can, or should we, let the past affect the present? If our lives went one way instead of another, can we mourn too much what we didn't have? If you think you were not your spouse's only great...
Berlinale 2015 Review: NOBODY WANTS THE NIGHT: A Beautiful But Flawed Epic
Spanish auteur Isabel Coixet (Elegy, My Life Without Me) opened Berlinale with her latest and most ambitious film to date, Nobody Wants the Night. Based on real life persons (though it was unclear whether the events actually occurred), it is...
Poster Premiere For Sam de Jong's PRINCE
The Netherlands has been producing a remarkable amount of impressive young talent over the past few years and it would appear that now is the time to add Sam de Jong's name to that list. de Jong makes his feature...
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Berlinale 2014 Review: SPROUT's Short and Sweet Seoul Odyssey
A little girl's trip to the market becomes a charming journey through modern Korea in Yoon Ga-eun's delightful short film Sprout, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last October. Korean indie cinema often makes a point of demonstrating...
Berlinale 2014 Review: HISTORY OF FEAR Is Brooding, Atmospheric, And Glacially Slow
History of Fear is set in an unnamed Argentine suburb, an idyllic community where rich families' vast estates are bordered on every side by barbwire fences and imposing gates. The presumed effect is to keep the people inside safe, but...
Berlinale 2014 Review: THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY Proves Middlebrow Is Timeless
They've been making movies like The Two Faces of January since before they made movies. A graying man, his blonde haired bride, and the younger cad who comes between them. Crime and chase amidst sun dappled vistas. Cops and con...
