When her lover of forty years suddenly dies, Angie discovers she has no rights even to her own apartment in Ray Yeung’s Teddy Award-winning ‘All Shall Be Well’, a heartfelt though unexceptional drama revealing Hong Kong’s unjust inheritance laws for same-sex couples.
Berlin’s transitional year unfolded uncertainly amid a dire world political situation and an imminent leadership change at the festival.
The Berlinale awards celebrated cultural differences, with the Golden Bear going to Mati Diop’s poetic and thoughtful documentary on colonialism ‘Dahomey’, which follows the return of looted cultural artefacts to Benin.
Crypto-currencies and cryogenics become intertwined in Gala Hernandez Lopez’s illusory dual-screen collage which ruminates on humanity’s speculative relationship with the future, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world.
Nepal’s first-ever competition title at the Berlinale, Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala is a visually breathtaking, emotionally engaging relationship drama about a young Tibetan’s physical and mental journey across the Himalayas in search of her vanished husband.
A filmmaker explores her struggles with motherhood and artistic stimulus through a correspondence and a short film about birdwatching in That’s All from Me, a deft epistolary short.
Three generations of Russified women in Ukraine come to grips with their identities and displacement in Svitlana Lishchynska’s rough-edged, absorbing film-as-therapy documentary.
Bowing in the Berlinale’s independently curated Forum programme, Indian filmmaker Siddartha Jatla’s second feature, ‘In the Belly of a Tiger’, combines social critique with magical realism to depict the struggles of India’s rural poor.
Gustav Möller returns to the thriller genre with his second feature ‘Sons’, bolstered by terrific performances.
Wang Xiaoshuai, controversially without an official screening permit, returns to Berlin with another superb picture about Chinese politics (and peasantry) featuring outstanding performances and stellar dialogue.
A misguided narrative full of ill-thought-out atmospheric twists spoils the cinematic attractions of Tunisian-American Meryem Joobeur’s debut feature about a family torn apart when two sons join Daesh.
A man has his heart removed in an attempt to lessen his existential anguish in Fanny Sorgo and Eva Pedroza’s expressive, lingering animation, Tako Tsubo.
The gap between African and Chinese culture proves easier to breach than the perspectives that separate a woman and a man in acclaimed director Abderrahmane Sissako’s ‘Black Tea’, a fascinating love story set in China but one that sadly gets lost in the telling.
Aliyar Rasti’s contemplative fable searches for a better future in the vast Iranian countryside.
The outmoded bleach sellers of Tangier offer a window to a simpler time and a resistance against rampant growth in Hicham Gardaf’s tranquil documentary, In Praise of Slowness.
Vietnamese filmmaker Pham Ngoc Lan’s first feature, ‘Cu Li Never Cries’, is an absorbing, beautiful ode about a pensioner’s nostalgia for her past and a young couple’s uncertainty about their future.
An elderly couple retreats from the outside world in preparation for the launch of three artificial moons in the strange and meditative experimental documentary, The Moon Also Rises.
Nelson Makengo’s beautifully shot and observed documentary ‘Rising Up at Night’ captures the darkness of Kinshasa after severe flooding and electricity cuts, along with the resilience of its people.
Ukrainian director Oksana Karpovych’s quietly powerful documentary ‘Intercepted’ combines bleakly beautiful, defiantly hopeful images of her war-ravaged homeland with recordings of phone calls made by invading Russian soldiers.
Santiago, Chile is both brought into focus and dreamily abstracted in Towards the Sun, Far from the Centre, a languid city symphony featuring a queer couple looking for a space in which they can express themselves.
A joyful feminist fantasy set in Venice in 1800, in which music unchains an orphanage full of talented girl musicians, ‘Gloria!’ will split audiences into two distinct camps.
Martin Scorsese pays personal homage to visionary film-maker duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in David Hinton’s formally traditional but thorough documentary ‘Made in England’.
Real historical murder cases inspired ‘The Devil’s Bath’, a relentlessly grim but atmospheric psychological horror thriller from Austrian writer-director duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala.
A wonderfully observed sketch of a family lunch in late-1990s China, Remains of the Hot Day not only captures period mood but is compiled from glimpses of myriad miniature dramas.
A depressed Chinese woman tired of her unaffectionate family and middle class life heads towards a breakdown in ‘Some Rain Must Fall,’ the first feature by Qiu Yang, whose minimalist storytelling is full of atmosphere and foreboding.
A young girl avoiding her home and a woman returning to hers after a long absence form a brief but profound bond in Selin Oksuzoglu sparkling short, Bye Bye Turtle.
Three people in Beirut representing the past, present and future of Lebanon experience the hopes, disappointments and decimated sense of stability in Myriam El Hajj’s sad yet defiant documentary tracing the country’s ups and downs since 2018.
Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’s fanciful exploration of the inner life of one of Pablo Escobar’s cocaine hippos, Pepe, is an idiosyncratic affair as piercing and beguiling as it is confounding.
Hong Sang-soo’s third collaboration with Isabelle Huppert is the weakest outing for both the director and actor so far.
Las voces de tres mujeres dan autenticidad a una película a punto de rebasada por propósitos didácticos. Memorias de un cuerpo que arden que se estrena en la sección Panorama en la Berlinale.
The voices of three women give authenticity to ‘Memories of a Burning Body’, premiering in the Panorama section at the Berlinale.
In her first solo directing stint ‘Langue étrangère’, Camera d’Or winner Claire Burger cleverly evokes the fears and anxieties of two middle-class 17-year-old European girls about to inherit a world racked with violently diverging political opinions.
Shot over 15 years, Birgitte Stærmose’s deeply empathetic documentary, focused on child survivors, is an intimate and diligent depiction of the lingering aftermath of war.
A young girl draws a circle on the ground and people are drawn to stand within its borders in Joung Yumi’s typically mannered and strangely engrossing monochrome animation.
Another stunning documentary from Victor Kossakovsky full of gob-smacking immersive images of the natural world, pitched this time as a call for a harmonious alliance between nature and architecture.
When her lover of forty years suddenly dies, Angie discovers she has no rights even to her own apartment in Ray Yeung’s Teddy Award-winning ‘All Shall Be Well’, a heartfelt though unexceptional drama revealing Hong Kong’s unjust inheritance laws for same-sex couples.
Berlin’s transitional year unfolded uncertainly amid a dire world political situation and an imminent leadership change at the festival.
The Berlinale awards celebrated cultural differences, with the Golden Bear going to Mati Diop’s poetic and thoughtful documentary on colonialism ‘Dahomey’, which follows the return of looted cultural artefacts to Benin.
Crypto-currencies and cryogenics become intertwined in Gala Hernandez Lopez’s illusory dual-screen collage which ruminates on humanity’s speculative relationship with the future, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world.
Nepal’s first-ever competition title at the Berlinale, Min Bahadur Bham’s Shambhala is a visually breathtaking, emotionally engaging relationship drama about a young Tibetan’s physical and mental journey across the Himalayas in search of her vanished husband.
A filmmaker explores her struggles with motherhood and artistic stimulus through a correspondence and a short film about birdwatching in That’s All from Me, a deft epistolary short.
Three generations of Russified women in Ukraine come to grips with their identities and displacement in Svitlana Lishchynska’s rough-edged, absorbing film-as-therapy documentary.
Bowing in the Berlinale’s independently curated Forum programme, Indian filmmaker Siddartha Jatla’s second feature, ‘In the Belly of a Tiger’, combines social critique with magical realism to depict the struggles of India’s rural poor.
Gustav Möller returns to the thriller genre with his second feature ‘Sons’, bolstered by terrific performances.
Wang Xiaoshuai, controversially without an official screening permit, returns to Berlin with another superb picture about Chinese politics (and peasantry) featuring outstanding performances and stellar dialogue.