Limbo
Ruggedly beautiful landscapes and elegant monochrome visuals help make up for a thin plot in Australian director Ivan Sen’s politically charged neo-western crime thriller ‘Limbo’.
Berlin 2023
Till the End of the Night
Love is only slightly warmer than death in German director Christoph Hochhäusler’s genre-blending, gender-bending, hit-and-miss crime thriller ‘Till the End of the Night’.
Under the Sky of Damascus
A superficial, ethically problematic documentary about gender-based violence in Syria whose “topic-of-the-moment” theme can’t paper over glaring flaws in structure, scope, and treatment of its subjects.
Daughter and Son
Sachiko and Ming share an apartment and predilection for role-play in Cheng Yu’s enigmatic and intriguing exploration of one relationship through the prism of many.
Les Chenilles
Two Levantine immigrants working in a Lyon café bond in this meditation on friendship and the long fingers of history which claimed the Berlinale Shorts top prize.
Berlin 2023: The Verdict
Despite dark times on the world stage, audiences poured back to Berlin’s first post-COVID festival.
73rd Berlinale Awards
Kristen Stewart’s jury awarded the Golden Bear to the French documentary ‘On the Adamant’, about a floating psychiatric hospital on the Seine.
On the Adamant
French documentarian Nicolas Philibert’s latest feature, competing in Berlin, gives voice to the patients in a psychiatric day care centre floating on the Seine.
The Walls of Bergamo
An outstanding, deeply moving documentary that finally addresses the pandemic not simply as a record of a tragedy but a collective trauma needing to be processed as a community.
Love to Love You, Donna Summer
From early days in Boston to the height of her stardom and sudden crash, this affectionate documentary made with major family involvement doesn’t probe deep enough or contextualize her career, but it reminds us that Donna Summer was a terrific performer whose talents were minimized by the moniker “Queen of Disco.”
The Fundraiser
Todd Field’s Tár supplement provides compelling extra notes to his masterfully composed film.
Eastern Front
Mostly filmed in the Ukraine war zone by brave battlefield paramedics, ‘Eastern Front’ is a raw and immersive reportage documentary that feels like an urgent first draft of history.
Art College 1994
Painter-filmmaker Liu Jian’s third animated feature (his second in Berlin competition) lacks the bite to capture the painful realities faced by Chinese art school students as their country opened up to the West and capitalist ideals.
And, Towards Happy Alleys
Indian director Sreemoyee Singh’s moving documentary And, Towards Happy Alleys transcends its overly relaxed editing and sometimes dispersive focus.
Living Bad
This companion to Bad Living is a repetitive exploration of deceitful mothers and toxic families that offers no new insights.
ALLENSWORTH
James Benning’s latest, bowing in the Berlin Forum, offers a powerful comment on racial politics in the U.S. in a static-shot portrait of the first settlement to be founded and governed by African-Americans.
Bad Living
The feel bad movie of Berlinale is a bleak and punishing look at familial decay that’s both manipulative and dishonest.
Dipped in Black
This deeply personal documentary follows an Australian Aboriginal man as he escapes the chokehold of the big city to reconnect with Country.
CineVerdict: 20.000 especies de abejas
La historia de sobre un niño de 8 años que siente una creciente desesperación de ser percibido como masculino es extraordinaria por su sensibilidad y percepción. Será un parámetro en la discusión fílmica sobre género, sexualidad e identidad.
A Kind of Testament
This strange and engrossing short blends a surreal and slippery story about a bizarre online relationship with Stephen Vuillemin’s glorious animation.
20,000 Species of Bees
Extraordinary for its sensitivity and perception, Estibollz Urresolo Sologuren’s story of an 8-year-old girl’s growing discomfort with being perceived as a boy is a landmark in the filmic discussion of gender, sexuality and identity.
The Plough
French director Philippe Garrel in The Plough is faithful to his intimist style, working with his three children in a classic tale.
Terra Mater – Mother Land
Set amidst a landscape of mountainous detritus, Kantarama Gahigiri’s short is an abstract but strikingly powerful rejoinder against the exploitation of Africa.
Remembering Every Night
Japanese director Yui Kiyohara’s second feature combines delicate human drama, mesmerising imagery and a reflection on personal and social history.
Infinity Pool
Canadian writer-director Brandon Cronenberg’s darkly satirical sci-fi horror thriller about sun-seeking tourists on a clone-killing crime spree, ‘Infinity Pool’ is a deliriously debauched joyride into Hell.
In the Blind Spot
A bold and chilling political thriller of shifting perspectives in which the weight of state-sanctioned terror begins to crush a security agent in eastern Turkey, where trauma and paranoia rip apart the social fabric.
The Shadowless Tower
Zhang Lu’s ‘The Shadowless Tower’ is gentle, impressionistic story set in historic old Beijing is a rambling account of complicated family ties and individual loneliness.
Waking Up in Silence
This tenderly moving documentary observes a group of Ukrainian children adapting to their new lives, after having been re-homed in former military barracks in Germany.
CineVerdict: Tótem
Tòtem, la segunda pelìcula de la mexicana Lila Avilés se estrena en competencia en el Festival de Berlín.
The Burdened
A hard-pressed couple in Yemen’s port city of Aden search for a doctor to perform an abortion in Amr Gamal’s excellent, understated yet hard-hitting portrait of a family and their city in desperation.
Orlando: My Political Biography
In Orlando, My Political Biography director and LGTB+ activist Paul B. Preciado extravagant manifesto pushes the boundaries of feminine-masculine genres as well as cinematographic ones.
Between Revolutions
Vlad Petri’s visually captivating yet structurally slippery found-footage film reflects on the suppression faced by young, idealistic Romanian and Iranian women under self-avowed “revolutionary” regimes.
Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey into the Desert
Margarethe von Trotta’s deeply perceptive study of Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, played by a dazzling Vicky Krieps, portrays the great writer’s struggle to combine freedom and commitment.
Past Lives
A remarkably delicate, moving romance destined to be a major indie hit, boasting superb dialogue, terrific performances and an insightful understanding of how the what-ifs of life so often dangle around the perimeters of our lives.
Jill, Uncredited
This thoughtful compilation film draws our gaze to something unregistered across decades of British cinema and television – the face of a particular extra, Jill Goldston.
Kill Boksoon
A slick but hollow Netflix actioner about an aging professional assassin balancing work and motherhood, inspired in parts by “Killing Eve” but without the bite.
All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White
Babatunde Apalowo’s masterful international debut examines a real Nigerian life engaged in a denial of love and its pleasures.
The Cemetery of Cinema
‘The Cemetery of Cinema’ conveys an important point about Guinea’s deplorable relationship with film archives, despite its director’s theatricality.
Superpower
Actor and activist Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman codirect a diary-like travelogue through war-torn Ukraine, highlighted by three brief interviews with Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky.
Perpetrator
Cult director Jennifer Reeder’s hallucinatory high-school horror thriller ‘Perpetrator’ puts a queer feminist spin on teen slasher conventions.
CINE VERDICT Matria
Matria la ópera prima de Álvaro Gago es un retrato conmovedor y lleno de humor que es contrario a la idea del matriarcado en Galicia.
BlackBerry
The backstory to the creation of the world’s once-most-popular smartphone is much wackier than can be imagined, as evidenced in Matt Johnson’s good-humored rise-and-fall business chronicle.
CINE VERDICT El Eco
La directora Tatiana Huezo regresa a su primer amor cinematográfico con El Eco documental conmovedor y bellamente fotografiado participante en la sección Encuentros en el Festival de Berlín.
The Beast in the Jungle
Had Henry James been alive and well in the 1980s, it’s unlikely you would have ever seen him getting busy on the dance floor. He probably wouldn’t have even set foot in a nightclub. And yet director Patric Chiha has had the rather novel idea to take one of the writer’s classic stories and transpose...
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Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything
Director Emily Atef’s Berlin world premiere about a teenage girl’s forbidden love for an abusive older man, ‘Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything’ is beautifully filmed but fifty shades of boring.
Last Things
The nature and potential of non-human evolution are explored to disquieting effect in Deborah Stratman’s essayistic blend of science fact and science fiction.
White Plastic Sky
Prize-winning Hungarian director duo Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó foresee a bleak future for humankind in their visually striking debut feature ‘White Plastic Sky’, an animated eco-disaster movie with a lyrical fairy-tale edge.
The Survival of Kindness
Rolf de Heer’s stripped-down story of a black woman who escapes from a cage and walks through a landscape heavy with racism and pandemic fear aligns with much of his intensely humane films, yet it feels weighed down by the uncertainty of its ultimate message.
She Came to Me
Opening the Berlin film festival, Rebecca Miller’s quirky New York rom-com ‘She Came to Me’ feels creaky and clumsy in places, but is saved by its fine cast and off-beat charm.
Iron Butterflies
The downing of Malaysian Airlines’ passenger flight MH17 in 2014 over Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine becomes a prophetic and highly symbolic event portending the current war and its methods in Roman Liubyi’s doc, whose poetry can seem forced but is still capable of shocking.