Berlin
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Berlin 2018: The Heiresses review
★★★★☆ In opposition to other typically comical stories of later-life affirmation, Marcelo Martinessi’s The Heiresses is a film brooding with melancholy and a sense of loss. A story about losing and finding romance but choosing independence instead, this deeply felt Paraguayan drama shines a light on the nation’s fractured identity by crossing numerous generational and class…
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Berlin 2018: Our picks of the programme
The 68th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival kicks off today with Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. A return to the stop-motion animation the American auteur employed in his quirky re-imagining of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson’s latest may sound like an incongruous choice to open a festival that prides itself on its…
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Berlin 2017: On Body and Soul review
★★★☆☆ Opening on a woodland as two deer search through the snow for food, it’s clear from the start On Body and Soul isn’t a conventional love story. Their eyes meet and the stag wanders over to the doe, laying his head on her neck, an act of warmth and compassion in an otherwise cold,…
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Berlin 2017: Ana, Mon Amour review
★★★☆☆ Child’s Pose director and Golden Bear-winner Cãlin Peter Netzer returns to the Berlinale with Ana, Mon Amour, a tale of love, addiction and the memories of failed romances that linger and won’t be chased away. When we first meet, Ana (Diana Cavallioti) and Toma (Mircea Postelnicu) they’re at the preliminary stage of their relationship,…
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Berlin 2017: Adriana’s Pact review
★★★★☆ “Every family has their secrets,” claims Chilean director Lissette Orozco whilst introducing her debut film Adriana’s Pact – but what happens when these secrets get out? A deeply personal documentary about guilt and culpability, we see what happens when the personal and the political become inextricably entwined. Do the wounds of the past heal? And…
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Berlin 2017: When the Day Had No Name review
★★★☆☆ In 2012, the bodies of four teenage boys were discovered on the outskirts of the Macedonian capital of Skopje. They had left home the previous morning to go on a fishing trip, but were found lying on the bank of the lake with bullet holes in their heads. Teona Strugar Mitevska’s When the Day…
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Berlin 2017: Colo review
★★☆☆☆ Portugal’s economic crisis is explored through the strained dynamic of a family slowing falling apart in Teresa Villaverde’s austerity drama Colo. You wouldn’t know it by the clothes she wears or the furniture in their well-appointed apartment but the financial crisis has hit Marta’s (Alice Albergaria Borges) family hard. She lives with her mother…
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Berlin 2017: Somniloquies review
★★★★☆ Most of us at some point have experienced a moment in a dream where you realise you are asleep but are utterly powerless to affect any change to the narrative your brain has spun. This sensation continues to fascinate and infuriate scientists. The dreamworld is a place we’ve all visited, yet one few of…
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Berlin 2017: Hostages review
★★★★☆ In 1983, a group of young people from relatively privileged backgrounds attempted to hijack a plane and fly to the West from Soviet-controlled Georgia. With his fourth feature Hostages, Rezo Gigineishvili gives a bleakly thrilling account of the tragedy and how it unfolded. We first meet our angry young people on a beach. A…
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Berlin 2017: Barrage review
★★☆☆☆ Laura Schroeder’s Barrage, the intriguing tale of three generations of women navigating the roles of mother and daughter, has gained a lot of attention due to the casting of Isabelle Huppert opposite her real-life daughter Lolita Chammah. Sadly, Huppert’s role as Elizabeth, the film’s domineering matriarch, is resigned to fringes for much of the…