In order to be able to follow our impressions on the films during this new edition of the Berlinale, in addition to our social networks twitter and facebook (and our youtube channel on which we relay our interviews as well as recordings of the press conferences), we propose to you as for each edition a critical notebook.
The rating scale applied is as follows:
– very bad film
* passable film
** good film
*** very good film
**** excellent film
***** masterpiece
Competition critical diary
Totem
Till the end of the night
by Christoph Hochhäusler with Timocin Ziegler, Thea Ehre, Michael Sideris, Ioana Iacob, Rosa Enskat Undercover cop Robert is supposed to gain the trust of an Internet drug dealer by faking a relationship with Leni. But true love is also at play in this clever contrivance of a film. A smart,…
The survival of kindness
A film by Rolf de Heer With Mwajemi Hussein, Deepthi Sharma, Darsan Sharma In a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert, BlackWoman is abandoned. Not ready to die, BlackWoman escapes, and walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to canyon to mountain to city, on a…
The shadowless tower
A film by Zhang Lu With Xin Baiqing, Huang Yao, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Nan Ji, Wang Hongwei Divorced food critic Gu Wentong finds out where the father he had lost contact with as a child is now living. Meanwhile, he begins a relationship with a younger colleague. People come close and…
The plough
Suzume
Someday we’ll teach other everything
A film by Emily Atef With Marlene Burow, Felix Kramer, Cedric Eich, Silke Bodenbender, Florian Panzner In the summer of 1990, Maria and Johannes create a refuge in the attic of a farm on the border that is no more. The future seems clear until Maria meets Henner and loves…
Past Live
A film by Celine Song With Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro In this heartrending modern romance, Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends, are separated from each other when Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York where Nora now lives with…
On the Adament
A film by Nicolas Philibert The Adamant, a unique floating day-care centre located on the Seine in the heart of Paris, welcomes adults with mental disorders. This film invites us to step on board and meet the patients and caregivers who are inventing a way to be together.
Music
Manodrome
A film by John Trengove With Jesse Eisenberg, Adrien Brody, Odessa Young, Sallieu Sesay, Philip Ettinger Ralphie is about to become a father but his job and his personal situation fail to make him happy. When he is inducted into a libertarian masculinity cult, this awakens repressed desires and he…
Limbo
A film by Ivan Sen With Simon Baker, Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen, Nicholas Hope, Mark Coe Travis Hurley reopens the case of an Aboriginal woman murdered 20 years ago. The people in the victim’s small outback town and her family are silent because the cop is white and the truth…
Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the desert
A film by Margarethe von Trotta With Vicky Krieps, Ronald Zehrfeld, Tobias Resch, Basil Eidenbenz, Luna Wedler Ingeborg Bachmann meets Max Frisch in 1958, falls in love, breaks up, falls ill and escapes first to the desert and then to Italy. Von Trotta does not focus on Bachmann’s fatal end,…
Disco Boy
A film by Giacomo Abbruzzese With Franz Rogowski, Morr Ndiaye, Laëtitia Ky, Leon Lučev, Matteo Olivetti Following a long journey across Europe, Aleksei reaches Paris to enlist in the French Foreign Legion. In the Niger Delta, Jomo fights against the oil companies that threaten his village. Beyond borders, and life…
BlackBerry
Bad living
A film by João Canijo With Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida, Vera Barreto Five women are running an old hotel. A long-standing, perhaps irreparable conflict weighs down on them. When the young Salomé arrives, old wounds are reopened. Her mother Piedade makes a drastic decision.
Art College 1994
