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In 2009, the best film in Competition at the Berlinale was Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Fwiw, it came away with 1.5 Silver Bears, the 1 for Best Actress Birgit Minichmayr, the .5 for tying with Adrián Biniez's Gigante for the Jury Grand Prix; the Golden Bear that year went to Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow). Three years on (!), the trio that made Everyone Else worth talking up to this day (see, for example, Kevin B Lee's new video essay on a key scene at Fandor; see, too, Mike D'Angelo on the same scene a year ago at the Av Club) is back in Competition, albeit in three different films. Lars Eidinger has drawn the shortest straw, taking on the lead in Hans-Christian Schmid's rather dismal Home for the Weekend. Minichmayr's fared better opposite Jürgen Vogel in Matthias Glasner's new film, though I seriously doubt many of us will...

I've placed this clip right at the top of this entry because it's taken from the first few minutes of Captive, just after armed terrorists have stormed what appears to be a small town or encampment on the beach somewhere out there in the Pacific, nabbed whoever's available and forced them at gunpoint onto boats waiting in the harbor. Because you know you're watching a film by Brillante Mendoza, you assume all this is taking place in the Philippines. Otherwise, unless you've Googled "Abu Sayyaf" and learned that it's "one of several military Islamist separatist groups based in and around the southern Philippines" or read the program notes ("The attack was intended to target employees of the World Bank, but they have already left the resort. The abductees are tourists and Christian missionaries who are now forced on a grueling foot march through the Philippine jungle"), you'll be disoriented as...

Of all directors working in Germany today, Christian Petzold has the surest hand and, while, after just one viewing, it's too early to stake a claim for Barbara as his best film yet, it is, in many ways, a culmination of his stylistic progression towards a classic yet vividly contemporary cinematic language. Referencing influences in interviews — like many directors who can afford the time, Petzold likes to screen films for his cast in the weeks of rehearsal before shooting begins — he's been citing quite a few of late from both Golden Age and New Hollywood. The ghost of Marnie moves through Yella (2007) in the way a camera follows a woman up a set of stairs. Jerichow (2008) transposes The Postman Always Rings Twice from the oppressive shadows of film noir to a sun-drenched summer in present-day Germany. Of the three films that comprise Dreileben (2011), Petzold's Beats Being Dead is the one...