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Despite a welcome East Side renaissance in repertory screenings, genre fests, and classical retrospectives, Los Angeles as a sprawling industry town needs a banner festival where undiscovered gems, glitzy red carpet premieres, and especially international fare can earn equal ovation. Only AFI Fest, even if scaled down from the previous decade, fits the bill.

The festival’s full-time programming team travels year-long to festivals such as the Berlinale, Cannes, and TIFF to scout the finest work, and the weighty influence of the American Film Institute ensures the glamour and the gravitas. This year, the Angelina Jolie-starrer “Maria,” the world premiere of the latest Clint Eastwood movie, “Juror #2,” and the opening night documentary tribute “Music by John Williams” are all on-brand selections. Robert Zemeckis will be in conversation with Tom Hanks on Thursday before the sold-out Friday premiere of their latest collaboration, “Here.”

Premiering in L.A. are several titles...

Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light, Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, and Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada have joined the line-up for AFI Fest running October 23-27.

The full roster includes Samir Oliveros’s The Luckiest Man In America, and Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault’s Zurawski v Texas from executive producers Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence.

Women and non-binary directors account for 48% of the official selection, and films from Bipoc filmmakers represent 26% of the line-up.

Festival highlights include No Other Land by Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal; David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds...

AFI Fest is primed and ready to roll out.

The American Film Institute revealed the full lineup for this month’s festival, scheduled to take place in Los Angeles from Oct. 23-27. Joining the previously announced roster of films will be Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, Samir Oliveros’ The Luckiest Man in America, Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault’s abortion rights documentary Zurawski v Texas (executive produced by Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence), and Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, among many others.

The lineup includes six red carpet premieres, 12 special screenings, 13 luminaries picks, 15 discovery films, 12 world cinema films, 14 documentaries, four after-dark titles, 54 films in the short film competition and 28 films from the AFI Conservatory Showcase presented by AMC Networks. Other notable titles include Durga Chew-Bose’s Bonjour Tristesse with Chloë Sevigny; Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste; Paolo Sorrentino...

Exclusive: Sandbox Films and Cph:dox — the prestigious documentary film festival in Copenhagen — are teaming up on a new award that will elevate the profile of science-themed storytelling.

The Sandbox Films Science Pitch Prize at Cph:forum, announced today, “will be presented to a science documentary project presented at the Cph:forum that demonstrates exceptional innovation in the genre, artistic merit, and a commitment to inclusivity,” according to release. Cph:forum is the festival’s “long-standing financing and co-production event dedicated to visually strong creative documentary projects with international potential.”

The new prize comes with a $25,000 cash award.

Sandbox Films, a leading production company that occupies the intersection of science and cinema, and Cph:dox have a long-standing partnership, “united by a shared passion for science documentaries that push creative boundaries,” the release noted. “Both organizations are dedicated to supporting films that explore science in bold, innovative ways, reflecting a mutual love for projects that...

Exclusive: Sffilm’s prestigious Doc Stories is set to welcome a slew of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmakers to its 10th anniversary event next month, along with industry heavyweights Keri Putnam, Laura Kim, Carrie Lozano, and Justine Nagan.

The documentary festival, which runs from October 17-20 in San Francisco, unveiled its full lineup this morning, highlighted by new work from Kevin Macdonald, Ben Proudfoot, Raoul Peck, Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, and Pedro Kos, as well as a classic from Amy Berg about a singer who stunned San Francisco with her talent more than 50 years ago. [Scroll for the full program]

Macdonald opens the festival with One to One: John and Yoko, co-directed by Sam Rice-Edwards, “which chronicles John and Yoko’s musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world set against the backdrop of a turbulent era in American history.”

The closing night film belongs to Suburban Fury,...

The 2024 edition of Sffilm Doc Stories is celebrating a milestone year as the festival toasts its 10th anniversary.

This year’s four-day program will take place from October 17 through 20, and open with Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ “One to One: John & Yoko,” about John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 18 months living in the U.S.

The festival will close out with a full circle moment, marking the premiere of Robinson Devor’s “Suburban Fury,” which was funded in part by a 2012 Sffilm Rainin Grant. “Suburban Fury” tells the story of Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square in September of 1975.

The 2024 Sffilm Doc Stories lineup includes 10 features, two shorts programs, two filmmaking and industry talks, and a documentary filmmaking workshop for teens.

The Doc Stories weekend will kick off with a free, retrospective screening of Amy Berg...

BFI Distribution has picked up UK and Ireland rights to Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary Architecton from The Match Factory.

The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in Competition and sees Russian filmmaker Kossakovsky explore the history of concrete and stone as building materials. Described as a “meditation on architecture”, it also explores what the ancient past can reveal about our future.

Other festival outings have included Hong Kong and Karlovy Vary while the film has its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival next month.

It is produced by Germany’s ma.ja.de Filmproduktion in co­production...

BFI Distribution has picked up UK and Ireland rights to Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary Architecton from The Match Factory.

The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale in Competition and sees Russian filmmaker Kossakovsky explore the history of concrete and stone as building materials. Described as a “meditation on architecture”, it also explores what the ancient past can reveal about our future.

Other festival outings have included Hong Kong and Karlovy Vary while the film has its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival next month.

It is produced by Germany’s ma.ja.de Filmproduktion in co­production...

From Hundreds of Beavers to In a Violent Nature and Sasquatch Sunset, all have chosen to limit or refrain from dialogue to bring audiences closer to those that cannot speak for themselves

As the old adage goes “nature is red in tooth and claw” but this year’s environmental cinema focuses on a bloodier violence which is far from inevitable. The black and white slapstick comedy Hundreds of Beavers, the gory slasher In a Violent Nature and cryptid movie Sasquatch Sunset all chose to limit or entirely refrain from dialogue in order to offer strange odes to the environment which highlight humanity’s lasting impact on the natural world.

Opting for physicality over dialogue, these three films follow in the footsteps of nonverbal nature documentaries such as Victor Kossakovsky’s Gunda and Laurent Charbonnier and Michel Seydoux’s Heart of An Oak. These documentaries offer much more than simple meditative depictions of wildlife and,...

Als eine von 21 deutschen (Ko-)Produktionen, die von 28. Juni bis 6. Juli beim 58. Internationalen Filmfestival von Karlovy Vary zu sehen sein werden, läuft Noaz Deshes „Xoftex“ im Hauptwettbewerb um den Kristallglobus.

Noaz Deshes französisch-deutsche Koproduktion „Xoftex“ geht in Karlovy Vary ins Rennen um den Kristallglobus (Credit: Arden Film)

Als einer von zwölf Filmen kann sich Noaz Deshes französisch-deutsche Koproduktion „Xoftex“ Hoffnungen machen, im Hauptwettbewerb des 58. Internationalen Filmfestivals von Karlovy Vary (28. Juni bis 6. Juli) mit dem Kristallglobus ausgezeichnet zu werden.

„Die offizielle Auswahl des 58. Kviff bietet ein einzigartiges Epizentrum von Genres und Themen, die das zeitgenössische Kino bewegen“, sagt der Künstlerische Direktor des Festivals, Karel Och, über das diesjährige Programm.

Insgesamt sind 21 deutsche (Ko-)Produktionen nach Karlovy Vary eingeladen worden:

Wettbewerb um den Kristallglobus

• „Xoftex“, Regie: Noaz Deshe

Wettbewerb Proxima

• „The Alienated“ („Vertriebene“), Regie: Anja Kreis

• „Hicbir Sey Yerinde Degil“ („Nothing in its Place“), Regie: Burak Çevik

• „Lapilli“, Regie: Paula Ďurinová

Horizons...

European Film Promotion has revealed the participants for its Producers on the Move program, which runs before and during the Cannes Film Festival.

The promotion and networking program, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, brings together 20 of Europe’s most promising producers. This year, Efp will also put a spotlight on the numerous collaborations that have developed between the around 500 participants from 37 European countries over the past quarter century.

The 20 producers were selected for the program from the nominations submitted by Efp’s member organizations, which are all European national film promotion institutes.

They are Katharina Posch (Austria), Elisa Heene (Belgium/Flanders), Kalin Kalinov (Bulgaria), Tibor Keser (Croatia), Tonia Mishiali (Cyprus), Kristýna Michálek Květová (Czech Republic), Lina Flint (Denmark), Delphine Schmit (France), Fabian Driehorst (Germany), Maria Kontogianni (Greece), Sara Nassim (Iceland), Evan Horan (Ireland), Giedrė Žickytė (Lithuania), Katarzyna Ozga (Luxembourg), Angela Nestorovska (North Macedonia), Anita Rehoff Larsen (Norway), Isabel Machado...

A 17-title buying spree from Scandinavian and Baltic distributor NonStop Entertainment includes deals for Mati Diop’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner Dahomey, and Aaron Schimberg’s Sundance title A Different Man.

Diop’s documentary Dahomey tells the story of 26 royal treasures from the Kingdom of Dahomey (located within present-day Benin in Africa) that were returned to Benin after being held in a French museum. Films du Losange handles sales.

Sold by A24, Schimberg’s A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson in the story of a man with neurofibromatosis, who undergoes surgery for a new start...

Ray Yeung’s All Shall Be Well has been set as the opening film of the 48th Hong Kong International Film Festival, which has unveiled its full lineup today.

It will mark the Asian premiere of the Hong Kong feature, which debuted in the Panorama strand of the Berlinale last month and won the Teddy Award. Starring Patra Au and Maggie Li, it centres on a lesbian couple in their twilight years. After one of them dies, the other struggles to retain both her dignity and the home they shared for more than 30 years.

Miyake Sho’s All The Long Nights,...

Why are modern buildings so ugly? It’s a question Viktor Kossakovsky asks near the end of this visual elegy of sorts for building. He doesn’t exactly want to find out the answer – he’s more interested in the hypnotic beauty of the many processes involved in modern construction. So spellbinding are some of the shots, in fact, that even when you know the implications are ominous, its hard not to stare in complete awe (a punning alternate title for this film might be Awe-chitecton). Suggestive rather than polemic, the film is loathe to dig too deeply into that subtext however, instead resting on the kind of sensory experience Kossakovsky employed for Aquarela, his essay on water in its many forms.

In publicity for this, the director has spoken of his dismay at humanity’s remorseless love affair with concrete at the expense of other materials, but such pointed concerns are left.

The Match Factory has unveiled multiple distribution deals for its Berlinale competition titles Dying by Matthias Glasner and Architecton by Victor Kossakovsky.

Dying has secured distribution in key territories including France (Bodega Film), Italy (Satine Film), Benelux (September Film Distribution), Norway (Selmer Media As), Poland (Aurora), Cis (Provzglyad), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom Film), Hungary (Cirko Films), Greece (Cinobo), Romania (Freealize), Taiwan (Andrews Film), and South Korea (Pancinema). Negotiations for additional territories are underway, with a UK deal already confirmed.

Dying, which stars Lars Eidinger, Lilith Stangenberg and Corinna Harfouch, won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for best screenplay, along with the...

The Match Factory has unveiled multiple distribution deals for its Berlinale competition titles Dying by Matthias Glasner and Architecton by Victor Kossakovsky.

Dying has secured distribution in key territories including France (Bodega Film), Italy (Satine Film), Benelux (September Film Distribution), Norway (Selmer Media As), Poland (Aurora), Cis (Provzglyad), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom Film), Hungary (Cirko Films), Greece (Cinobo), Romania (Freealize), Taiwan (Andrews Film), and South Korea (Pancinema). Negotiations for additional territories are underway, with a UK deal already confirmed.

Dying, which stars Lars Eidinger, Lilith Stangenberg and Corinna Harfouch, won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for best screenplay, along with the...

The Match Factory has revealed multiple distribution deals for two Berlinale competition titles: German director Matthias Glasner’s “Dying,” which won the festival’s Silver Bear for best screenplay, and Russian director Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary “Architecton.”

“Dying,” which stars Lars Eidinger, Lilith Stangenberg and Corinna Harfouch, also picked up the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas and the Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Jury Award. Variety‘s review describes the film as “a profoundly affecting exploration of life and loss.”

The Match Factory closed deals for the film in France (Bodega Film), Italy (Satine Film), Benelux (September Film Distribution), Norway (Selmer Media), Poland (Aurora), Cis (Provzglyad), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom Film), Hungary (Cirko Films), Greece (Cinobo), Romania (Freealize), Taiwan (Andrews Film) and South Korea (Pancinema). A U.K. deal has also been signed with the buyer yet to be announced. Wild Bunch will be distributing the film in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland.

The Match Factory has locked multi-territory deals on Berlinale titles Architecton by Victor Kossakovsky and Dying by Matthias Glasner, which picked up the festival’s Silver Bear for Best Screenplay.

Alongside the Silver Bear, Dying also picked up the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas Prize and the Berliner Morgenpost Readers’ Jury Award. The pic has sold to France (Bodega Film), Italy (Satine Film), Benelux (September Film Distribution), Norway (Selmer Media As), Poland (Aurora), Cis (Provzglyad), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF MegaCom Film), Hungary (Cirko Films), Greece (Cinobo), Romania (Freealize), Taiwan (Andrews Film), and South Korea (Pancinema). Match Factory has said negotiations for additional territories are underway, with a UK deal already confirmed. Deadline’s Stephanie Bunbury described the film as a “deep and darkly funny family drama.” The film stars Lars Eidinger, Lilith Stangenberg, and Corinna Harfouch.

Elsewhere, Kossakovsky’s Architecton has sold to me Spain (Caramel Films), Italy (Be Water), Benelux (Cherry Pickers Filmdistributie...

Winners have been announced at the 74th Berlin Film Festival, with Dahomey by French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop scooping the coveted Golden Bear for best film. Scroll down for the full list of winners, which were revealed Saturday evening at the Berlinale Palast.

The doc borrows its name from the former West African kingdom of Dahomey, located in the south of today’s Republic of Benin. It was founded in the 17th century by King Houegbadja. Under his reign and that of his descendants — a three-century dynasty — the kingdom was a considerable regional power, with a highly structured local economy, a centralized administration, a system of taxes, and a powerful army, including the famous Amazon women (Agodjié).

Diop’s doc opens in November 2021 as twenty-six royal treasures from the former Kingdom are about to leave Paris to return to their country of origin. Along with thousands of others, these artifacts were...

The Berlin Film Festival kicked off its 74th edition February 15 with the opening-night world premiere screening of Small Things Like These, the Irish drama starring Oscar-nominated Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy. It started 10 days of debuts including for movies starring Rooney Mara, Isabelle Huppert, Gael García Bernal, Kristen Stewart and more.

This year’s Competition lineup features films from a swath of international filmmakers including Olivier Assayas, Mati Diop, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont and Abderrahmane Sissako.

The Berlinale runs through February 25.

Keep checking back below as Deadline reviews the best and buzziest movies of the festival. Click on the titles to read the full reviews.

Another End ‘Another End’

Section: Competition

Director: Piero Messina

Cast: Gael García Bernal, Renate Reinsve, Bérénice Bejo, Olivia Williams, Pal Aron

Deadline’s takeaway: The script, while ambitious, is laden with philosophical musings that often feel detached from the emotional core of the story. Another End...

It’s very easy to misread the title of Victor Kossakovsky’s latest documentary as “Architection,” since it is, in some ways, a detective story about the world we live in, albeit one in which it is very easy to figure out whodunit (spoiler: we did it to ourselves). The actual title, Architecton, is a Greek word that means “master builder,” and the film plays with the irony of what that may mean — pitting the “master builders” of yesteryear against the “master builders“ of today — from the very beginning, using a cryptic line from “L’aquilone,” a rumination on bygone times by Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli (1855-1912). “There is something new within the sun today, or rather ancient,” he writes. This fascinating, engrossing film interrogates the subtext of this seemingly paradoxical statement.

In a haunting prolog, we see the ruins of a housing estate in what is presumably war-torn Ukraine...

The awards ceremony for the 74th Berlin International Film Festival kicks off Saturday night, where this year’s jury, headed by 12 Years a Slave and Black Panther actress Lupita Nyong’o, will hand out the coveted Gold and Silver Bears.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s Iranian drama My Favourite Cake is being given good odds for an award this year. The drama, about a 70-year-old widow and her tentative attempts at romance with an age-appropriate taxi driver, was a critical fave. A win for the film would also send a political message after the Iranian government banned the directors from attending Berlin. If the jury picks out Cake for the Golden Bear it would be the third time in 10 years —following Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (2015) and There Is No Evil (2020) from Mohammad Rasoulof —that Berlin has given its top honor to Iranian directors in absentia. World sales for My...

Judgment in Stone: Kossakovsky Gazes Into the Concrete Jungle

Celebrated documentarian Viktor Kossakovsky explores our complex relationship with concrete in the abstract visual feast, Architecton. For those familiar with his previous explorations, such as 2020’s Gunda, in which we follow a sow whose piglets are eventually removed from her care for slaughter, Kossakovsky employs an unstructured visual aesthetic of observation. Contemplative, meditative and mesmerizing, his latest utilizes the juxtaposition of past and present ruins, from ancient Lebanon to contemporary Ukraine as an exploration for our modern methods designed for destruction, destined to pollute. A circle of life emerges through this roving collage of images, a circle we’ve interrupted through our harmful use of concrete in a world where our manipulation of space has been reduced to a dangerous uniformity.…...

Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs and Mati Diop’s Dahomey earned strong average scores on Screen’s Berlin jury grid, while Bruno Dumont’s The Empire divided critics.

A Traveler’s Needs stars Isabelle Huppert as a French woman teaching in Korea and is currently on an average of 2.9, with one score still to come (from Paolo Bertolin from cinematografo.it). Screen’s own critic awarded it four stars (excellent), while three critics gave it three stars (good) and three gave it two (average).

Click on the jury grid above for the most up-to-date version.

The score is currently slighter...

“We need a new idea of beauty,” says Michele De Lucchi, the Italian architect who talks us through certain stretches of “Architecton,” a singularly imposing and sonorous new documentary from Russian non-fiction auteur Victor Kossakovsky. His argument is that the earth can no longer sustain the kind of hefty architectural grandeur, built from the fabric of the Earth itself, that we’ve asthetically prized for centuries, and nor can the cycle of more disposable concrete construction continue without devastating environmental impact. It’s a sound point, even as Kossakovsky’s film trades in entirely classic ideas of beauty to jaw-dropping effect. Whether gazing in rapt widescreen across wondrous ancient structures, ruined recent cityscapes or the oceanic shift and shake of a stone quarry in action, this is blatantly dazzling, epic-scale filmmaking that nonetheless invites viewers to consider the implications of our awe.

What is it about man-made landmarks that moves...

Kirsten Niehuus, head of German film fund Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, is confident that the changes to film funding proposed by the German government recently will have a “very positive effect on the production scene in Berlin-Brandenburg.”

The proposed changes to the funding system were presented last week to German lawmakers in the Bundestag by commissioner for culture and media Claudia Roth (see here).

Kirsten Niehuus, Martin Moszkowicz

Speaking to Variety Saturday at a party Medienboard hosted at Berlin’s Holzmarkt, Niehuus said the changes “will mean that we would have a tax system in place that could compete, for instance, with Budapest or Prague, so that not so many German productions would go and shoot somewhere else, and more foreign productions would come and shoot in Germany.”

Looking at the media landscape across Germany she notes that one major challenge is the decision by high-end outlets such as Paramount+, HBO and Sky to cancel local productions,...

Having championed the cause of animals in farmyard doc Gunda, Victor Kossakovsky is making a fresh appeal to the world through new work Architecton: stop using concrete.

The visually arresting documentary, world premiering in Competition at the Berlinale, explores how unsustainable modern building practices relying on concrete are destroying the planet and suggests there are lessons to be learned from ancient constructions.

Without explanation or commentary, the work juxtaposes mesmerizing images of mountains being dug out for raw materials; vast landfill sites, bombed-out, collapsed apartment blocks in Ukraine and quake-hit towns in Turkey, with the majestic remains of the 2,000-year-old Roman temple complex of Baalbeck in Lebanon, which still puzzles archaeologists to this day on how it was built.

“Buildings made from concrete are lasting 40, 50 years. In the UK, you destroyed 50,000 buildings last year, imagine what is happening in the rest of Europe,” says Russian-documentarian Kossakovsky, in a timely comment...

The Match Factory has acquired international rights to Russian director Victor Kossakovsky’s new documentary Architecton ahead of its Berlinale world premiere.

The film project follows the filmmaker’s farmyard doc Gunda, which played in Berlinale Encounters in 2020, and Aquerala, which world premiered Out of Competition In Venice in 2018.

The Match Factory describes Kossakovsky’s new film as “an epic, intimate and poetic meditation” on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal mankind’s present destruction.

Focusing on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele de Lucci, Kossakovsky reflects on the rise and fall of civilizations, using imagery from the temple ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to Ad 60, to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey following a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in early 2023.

“Victor Kossakosvsky possesses the remarkable ability to amplify seldom-heard voices on the screen. Demonstrating his mastery in previous works like Gunda and Aquarela,...

The Match Factory has acquired the international rights to the Russian director Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary “Architecton,” which world premieres in the competition section of the Berlinale. A24 financed the film and will distribute it in North America.

“Architecton” follows Kossakovsky’s highly acclaimed “Gunda,” which played in Berlinale Encounters in 2020, and “Aquarela,” which screened in Venice’s out of competition section in 2018.

“Architecton” is described as “an epic, intimate and poetic meditation on architecture and how the design and construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward.”

The film centers on a landscape project by the Italian architect Michele de Lucci, which Kossakovsky uses to reflect on the rise and fall of civilizations. He captures breathtaking imagery from the temple ruins of Baalbek in Lebanon, dating back to 60 Ad, to the recent destruction of cities in Turkey following...

The Match Factory has acquired international sales rights to Russian director Victor Kossakovsky’s documentary Architecton which world premieres next month in the Berlinale’s Competition section

Architecton is billed as a meditation on architecture and how the design and the construction of buildings from the ancient past reveal our destruction — and offer hope for survival and a way forward.

Kossakovsky’s previous films include 2020 Berlinale Encounters title Gunda and Aquarela, which played out of competition at Venice in 2018.

Architecton is produced by Heino Deckert for Germany’s Ma.ja.de. A24 financed and will distribute the film in North America.

A Different Man.The Berlinale have begun to announce the first few titles selected for the 74th edition of their festival, set to take place from February 15 through 21, 2024. This page will be updated as further sections are announced.COMPETITIONAnother End (Piero Messina)Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky)Black Tea (Abderrahmane Sissako)La Cocina (Alonso Ruiz Palacios) Dahomey (Mati Diop)A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)The Empire (Bruno Dumont)Gloria! (Margherita Vicario)Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)From Hilde, With Love (Andreas Dresen)My Favourite CakeLangue Etrangère (Claire Berger)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)Who Do I Belong To (Meryam Joobeur)Pepe (Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias)Shambhala (Min Bahadur Bham)Sterben (Matthias Glasner)Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants)A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)Sleep With Your Eyes Open. ENCOUNTERSArcadia (Yorgos Zois)Cidade; Campo (Juliana Rojas)Demba (Mamadou Dia)Direct ActionSleep With Your Eyes Open (Nele Wohlatz)The Fable (Raam Reddy...

For his fifth and final edition, outgoing Berlin Film Festival artistic director Carlo Chatrian has assembled a promising lineup, rich in prestige, star-driven titles as well as more eclectic films containing the political elements intrinsic to the fest’s DNA.

“I am very happy and proud of this year’s lineup,” Chatrian tells Variety. “I think it achieved the balance between highly anticipated titles by filmmakers who are relevant in cinema history and, as always, films that you don’t expect to find in competition. At the same time I know that expectations can be a double-edged sword.”

The 74th annual Berlinale, held Feb. 15-25, will feature such films as “La Cocina” with Rooney Mara; sci-fi drama “Another End” with Gael García Bernal and Renate Reinsve; and the historical drama “Small Things Like These” starring “Oppenheimer’s” Cillian Murphy.

Chatrian spoke with Variety to break down the lineup that looks...

Berlinale co-directors Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek are going out with a bang in their final year, with a lineup unveiled today featuring the latest works by Olivier Assayas, Bruno Dumont, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Jane Schoenbrun, Alonso Ruizpalacios, Matias Pineiro, Travis Wilkerson, Kazik Radwanski, Annie Baker, and more.

When the co-directors were asked by Screen Daily about their departure, Chatrian said, “It’s quite simple. Mariette and I had a mandate of five years. It is true that at the beginning I said that I was willing to go on because there was a shared will with the [German] Ministry [of Culture] to go on. But then the people who have the responsibility to see the future of the Berlinale thought this structure of two leaders was not the right one and I don’t consider myself able to run the festival alone. And that was the decision of the Ministry.

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival has revealed the 20 titles selected for its official Competition as well as its competitive Encounters strand.

Scroll down for full list

New films from Claire Burger, Olivier Assayas, Hong Sangsoo, Bruno Dumont, Abderrahmane Sissako and Mati Diop are among those selected for the Competition lineup, with stars including Rooney Mara, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sebastian Stan and Cillian Murphy, who leads the festival’s opening film Small Things Like These.

Festival heads Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek unveiled the selections at the House of World Cultures in Berlin today (January 22).

The 2024 Berlinale will run February...

The Berlin Film Festival on Monday unveiled the titles selected for its official competition and its sidebar Encounters competitive section.

A total of 20 films have been selected for the international competition, with highlights including La Cocina, directed by Alonso Ruiz Palacios and starring Rooney Mara. The pic is described as a “kinetic and cinematic love story” set over a single day in a Times Square kitchen. French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop returns with Dahomey, a 60-minute doc about art repatriation and Hong Sangsoo plays in competition with A Traveler’s Needs, starring Isabelle Huppert. Scroll down for the full lineup.

The Berlin Film Festival takes place February 15-25.

Organizers have already announced more than 100 titles across sidebars spanning Panorama, Forum, and Berlinale Special. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, a feature documentary about influential British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger narrated by Killers of the Flower Moon...

The 74th Berlin International Film Festival unveiled its full lineup Monday at its official press conference in the House of World Cultures in Berlin. Berlinale managing director Mariëtte Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian presented the films that will compete for this year’s Golden and Silver Bears both in the competition and encounters sections.

Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios, a Berlinale regular and two-time Silver Bear winner — for A Cop Movie in 2022 and Museo in 2018 — returns to Berlin competition with his English-language feature debut La Cocina. Rooney Mara and The Cop Movie alum Raúl Briones star in the drama set over the course of a single day in a bustling New York City restaurant. Briones plays an undocumented cook in a relationship with Julia (Mara), an American waitress who cannot commit to their relationship. Fifth Season and WME are selling North American rights to La Cocina with HanWay handling international sales.

Variety is debuting an exclusive clip from Farah Nabulsi’s thriller “The Teacher,” starring Imogen Poots (“The Father”) and Saleh Bakri. The film will have its world premiere on Saturday at the Toronto Film Festival in the Discovery section.

The film is Nabulsi’s feature debut following her Oscar-nominated and BAFTA award-winning short “The Present,” which also starred Bakri.

“The Teacher” follows Palestinian schoolteacher Basem (Bakri), who acts as a father figure to two of his students, Yacoub and Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), amidst turmoil in the West Bank. Upon meeting British volunteer worker Lisa (Poots), Basem struggles to reconcile his life-threatening commitment to political resistance and his emotional support for Yacoub and Adam with the chance of a new romantic relationship.

The story – based on true events – takes place against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering insight into the lives of the people living in the region from all religious and cultural backgrounds.

Leonor Varela with Anne-Katrin Titze on The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future: “For me the stories that came to mind to build my character had to do with familiar echoes in the disconnect …”

Francisca Alegría’s The Cow Who Sang A Song Into The Future (La Vaca Que Cantó Una Canción Hacia El Futuro), co-written with Fernanda Urrejola, Manuela Infante and shot by Inti Briones, stars Leonor Varela with Mia Maestro, Alfredo Castro, Marcial Tagle, Enzo Ferrada Rosati, Laura Del Rio Rios, María Velasquez, and 2222, the cow.

Leonor Varela as Cecilia with a calf: “it’s so sad, they’re separated from their mother very early on, but their instinct is to suck.” Photo: Inti Briones

In recent years, a number of outstanding films brought to the forefront an issue society at large is all too willing to ignore, namely the treatment of farm animals and...

As our Sundance 2023 cinematography cover continues, this time we interviewed the Dp behind the film festival selection, ‘Plan C’—cinematographer Derek Howard. Let’s hear and learn what Howard has to say about the intricate filmmaking process, and why he chose the Canon C500 Mark II camera and Cooke Panchro/i Classic lenses to tell the story.

BTS of Plan C – Sundance 2023 selection. Dp Derek Howard ‘Plan C’: Sundance 2023 selection – Shot by Derek Howard

‘Plan C’ is one of the Sundance 2023 selections. The film tells the story of a secret grassroots organization that persistently fought to expand access to abortion pills across the USA keeping hope alive during a global pandemic and the fall of Roe v. Wade. ‘Plan C’ was shot by Dp Derek Howard on the Canon C500 Mark II, paired with Cooke Panchro/i Classic Primes. We interviewed Howard so he could elaborate and educate others...

Russian documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky and the production team behind his Oscar-shortlisted feature “Gunda” will follow up with the second instalment in his “Empathy Trilogy.”

AC Independent will handle the North America sale and Cinephil will be selling international rights. They will be kicking off sales this week at the European Film Market in Berlin.

The new film focuses on the health of the oceans and the effects of industrial fisheries. The “Empathy Trilogy,” of which “Gunda” formed the first part, looks at the sentience of non-human animals.

After a pre-production shoot in June 2022, principal photography is planned for June 2023, with a projected release date in 2025.

While “Gunda” captured the lives of farm animals, notably the engaging mother sow who was its eponymous protagonist, for this new project, Kossakovsky is collaborating with the German artist known as K49814 to record her quest to raise awareness of our depredation of the...

Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, a winding misadventure about a sweet-tempered donkey, inarguably qualifies as an animal’s-eye view of all that’s warm and cruel, comical and arbitrary about human nature. And of the world of animals, which can be so beautiful and terrifying at once. It’s similar to other, more sobering movies about animals, in this way — I’m thinking of recent documentaries like Andrea Arnold’s dairy farm chronicle Cow, or Victor Kossakovsky’s black-and-white, ethically produced Gunda, about a mother pig — only Eo, being a work of fiction,...

It was only after a year of filming Nadeem and Saud — two brothers who had dedicated their lives to rescuing the black kite birds of New Delhi — that director Shaunak Sen started to get a clearer picture of the film he was making.

Sen hadn’t set out to make an environmental film, although the pollution and subsequent destruction of the Indian city’s ecosystem was at the heart of why the black kites were falling from the toxic skies. He’d also never even contemplated making a political film, yet mounting protests and unrest in New Delhi were becoming the undeniable backdrop of the story he was filming. Sen knew leaning into the political and environmental issues would be a trap. “The truth is I’ve always actually found a lot of environmental discourse genuinely unappealing because a lot of it is either gloom and doom, or it’s...

Neon’s boutique label Super has secured U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s acclaimed drama Saint Omer, following its world premiere earlier this month at the Venice Film Festival, where the film won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, as well as the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future Award for Best Debut Feature.

Inspired by a true story, Saint Omer is billed as a contemporary version of the Medea myth. The film follows the novelist Rama (Kayije Kagame) as she attends the trial of Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanga), a young woman accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her to the rising tide on a beach in northern France. As the trial continues, the words of the accused and witness testimonies will shake Rama’s convictions and call into question our own judgment.

One of just four films selected to competition this year at the Venice,...

Super, the boutique distribution label from Neon, has acquired U.S. rights to Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer” after it won the Silver Lion Grand Jury prize in Venice along with the Luigi De Laurentiis Lion of the Future award.

“Saint Omer” was recently shortlisted for France’s submission to the Academy Awards and will premiere at the New York Film Festival and play the BFI London Festival. Neon plans a theatrical release.

“Saint Omer” is Diop’s debut fiction feature, which she co-wrote with Amrita David and Marie NDiaye, and it stars Kayije Kagame, Guslagie Malanda, Valérie Dréville and Aurélia Petit. Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral of Srab Films produced alongside Arte France Cinéma and Pictanovo Hauts-de-France.

Inspired by a true story, “Saint Omer” revolves around Rama, a young novelist who attends the trial of a women who is accused of killing her 15-month-old daughter by abandoning her on a beach.

Super has taken North American rights to Colm Bairéad’s award-winning drama The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin), which was recently announced as Ireland’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards and selected for the 2022 European Film Awards.

The film is based on the story “Foster” by Irish author Claire Keegan, who has just been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It’s set in rural Ireland in 1981 and follows the quiet, neglected girl, Cáit (Catherine Clinch), who is sent away from her overcrowded, dysfunctional family to live with her mother’s relatives for the summer. She blossoms in their care, but in this house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one painful truth.

The Quiet Girl premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prix of the Generation Kplus International Jury for Best Film. It then...

Danish editor Molly Malene Stensgaard, best known for her decades-long collaboration with Lars von Trier, won’t be returning for the third season of his cult series “The Kingdom,” she confirmed at Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival, where she also joined the Crystal Globe jury.

“It will be strange,” she admitted. Ghita Norby, Soren Pilmark and Peter Mygind will reprise their original roles.

“I did [‘The Kingdom’] less than a year after graduating from film school, where I learnt all sorts of rules. The first thing I heard from Lars was: ‘Forget them.’ It felt odd to stop this work relationship after almost 25 years. But it also felt right.”

After “The Kingdom,” which premiered in 1994 – with Jacob Thuesen and Pernille Bech Christensen also on editing duties – they went on to work on, among other films, “The Idiots,” “Dancer in the Dark” and “Melancholia,” with 2018 “The House That Jack Built” marking their final collaboration,...

The lucrative prize is now in its 19th year.

The five nominees for this year’s Nordic Council Film Prize have been unveiled at the Haugesund International Film Festival in Norway today (August 24).

The lucrative prize, now in its 19th year, comes with an award of $47,000, which is shared equally between the screenwriter, director and producer. The winner will be unveiled on November 2 in Copenhagen.

The nominees include two films that premiered at the Berlinale: Finland’s Any Day Now from writer-director Hamy Ramezan, selected for the Generation 14plus strand this year; and Viktor Kossakovsky’s Norwegian documentary Gunda, which...

There will be before Cow, and there will be after Cow. But in all seriousness... Andrea Arnold's documentary film Cow is the latest offering on the Vegan Cinema menu, premiering at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival in a brand new out-of-competition section called Cannes Première. The film features almost no talking, and no dialogue except for a few words spoken in the background by farm workers. There is some music, but that's a different surprise. Instead, the camera focuses on cows at a factory farm in the UK. Specifically one older bovine and two of her calves, which she gives birth to in the film. This isn't the first film to do this – Viktor Kosakovskiy's Gunda, which premiered at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, also features nothing but footage of farm animals roaming around. But this time we get a much closer look at the brutality of factory farming, and...

Paramount’s thriller sequel opened on Thursday 3.

Thriller sequel A Quiet Place Part II will look to replicate its success in international markets when it opens in 563 UK cinemas this weekend.

The film took $48.4m (£34.3m) across its opening three-day weekend in North America. This represented the best debut in the territory since the pandemic began; and, given social distancing measures, compares well with the $50.2m three-day opening of the first film in April 2018, which went on to gross $188m (£133.1m) across the US and Canada.

It moved up to $58m (£41.1m) including Monday, and had $65.2m (£46.2m) as of...

Warner Bros.’ chiller “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” topped the box office with £2,708,455 in its opening week as the U.K. basked in late May sunshine and a long bank holiday weekend.

The good weather that traditionally keeps audiences outdoors did not appear to have a detrimental effect on the box office, with Sony’s family-friendly “Peter Rabbit 2” scoring £2,045,999 in its second week in second place, according to numbers released by Comscore.

However, if going purely by weekend numbers, “Peter Rabbit 2” collected £2 million, a shade over the £1.9 million taken by “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It.”

“Peter Rabbit 2” has now collected more than £7,484,061 in the U.K. Upcoming key market releases for the film include China (June 11), Japan (June 25), France (June 30), Germany (July 1), Italy (July 1), Spain (July 16) and Brazil (August 26).

Disney’s “Cruella” opened simultaneously on streamer Disney Plus and in cinemas and collected £1,453,635 in third place.